Introducing Fezziwig

When I spotted the little brown rat, huddled under the house in their cage on the day we went to pick them up, my heart skipped a beat. I've only ever known one agouti rat before, our first ever male rat, and I've longed to have another one ever since. The closest I've ever come was our agouti hooded boy, Ali, who was a lovely little character.

I'd not really believed that there would be a brown rat waiting for us, so while I'd planned names for almost every eventuality, I didn't have a solid choice for our Fezziwig at first. It was like he knew because he wasn't in any great hurry to get out the cage and had to be chased around a bit before the guy could get him out.

Look at the little squish!

This is pretty much how he looked at us for the entire first week and a half that we had them.

In the end I narrowed down the name options to Fezziwig and Pickwick. Pickwick was eventually dismissed based on the fact that it was too close to both Pocket (Fezzi's brother) and Wicket (our black rat who we lost last year). For a few days I swithered on whether or not I'd picked the right name for him but now I can't imagine him being anything else.

Fezziwig has the most nicknames of all of the boys. He gets called Fezzi a lot of the time (because it allows you to rattle off all four names in a nice singsong cadence), he is also called Fez. He's Big Boss Rat and one half of the Terrible Twosome (the other half being Jingle); since he loves to spend time in the hammock he's also called Hammock Rat.

As you can see, where Jingle goes, Fez is usually not far behind:

To start off with it seemed like Jingle was the braver of the two but Fezziwig came into his own once we moved him into the big cage with his brothers. Now I suspect that he's the alpha.He and Pocket often have little squabbles, nothing nasty but enough to put Pocky in his place.

Fez has always liked his food since day one. Whenever we have something to eat, he's the one who'll be at the bars of the cage begging for some. And when you put something into the cage, he's usually the one who goes for the first taste. He can be kind of lazy with it as well, sometimes he'd rather you'd hold something for him (especially if it might make his paws messy) and then he'll just nibble it while you get gunky.

I knew from day one he was going to be a big squish and, as you can see, he's shaping up nicely.

Fezziwig is the rat who comes to greet you when you walk in the room. In the small cage he used to follow you round the cage depending on where in the room you were. In the big cage he hangs out at the top, going from one side to the other, clinging onto the bars of the cage and back again. Just yesterday I opened the door while I was seated on the floor in front of it and he quite boldly walked up my arm then sat on my lap chattering.

I've loved watching him grow this last three weeks and I can't wait to see what the next few weeks bring from him!