July

Kali reminded me last night how much she’s changed since we first got her. Last night I was getting her toys and food ready so she could come out for her playtime and, as usual, I opened her house door to let her know it was playtime so she had a chance to wake up before being picked up. She was ready before I was and she stood by her open door waiting to be picked up for a few minutes and then, because she got fed up with waiting for me, she marched back to her nest making very angry scalding noises at me. This time last year she was hiding in fear and fighting me when I tried to pick her up. Now she’s telling me off for not picking her up quickly enough!

I had to pick her up again during her playtime because she was destroying the landing carpet. Usually I just have to say ‘no’ loudly and firmly for her to stop whatever she’s doing but last night she was determined to pull the carpet up so I scooped her up and held her. She was a bit surprised but she sat in my arms calmly enough and let me stroke her for a few minutues before climbing down my leg and onto the floor again.
 

Reinforcing Kali’s house has helped to keep the noise down a bit but she still manages to make plenty of noise gnawing the bars and rattling her ladder.

A couple of days ago we visited Blackbrook zoological park because we’d found out that they had a pair of pouched rats in their pets corner. We had hoped that their rats were very tame and that we could handle them but, unfortunately, the keepers don’t handle them much at all. The rats are a slightly different species to Kali. Kali is a Cricetomys gambianus and the Blackbrook rats are Cricetomys Emini. (For a description of the differences between the two species download the Bush Meat document from the links page.) They were leaner than Kali and the markings were a bit different. The male especially was different. He was a rusty brown colour with darker spots over his hind quarters and up his flanks. The rats weren’t doing much except sleeping under their heat lamp but it was very good to see them.
 

Kali is waking us up at night again. Nearly every night for the past four or five days we've been woken up two or three times by Kali gnawing her bars and the edge of her house. She can't break out but the noise is very loud and very difficult to sleep through.

When she woke us up for the third time last night I resorted to leaving the light in her room. She seemed to think it was morning and went back to her nest so we were able to get some sleep.

I'll have to reinforce parts of her house so there's nothing for her to get her teeth into.
 

Kali really does now wait for me to pick her up when its time for her evening playtimes. She's still very tense when I'm holding her and she gets down as soon as she can but I really hope that the days of chasing her round her house to pick her up are over.

I've tried to make her playtime more interesting by making some high level walkways out of large cardboard tubes (the tubes from the middle of rolls of carpet are ideal). She can now climb through the banisters at about waist height and crawl through a tube over to the radiator on the opposite wall. There another tube goes down onto a chair seat and from their she can climb down onto the floor. She found the tubes and took the treats I'd hidden in them but she lost interest once she'd found all the food.

Last night, when she was out playing, Kali was taking a piece of walnut from me when she noticed a scratch on my arm. She sniffed it and then a licked my arm a few times before wandering off. That's the first time she's licked me and I was a bit worried that she'd bite. She caused the scratch in the first place with her back claws as she was jumping off me so perhaps she was saying sorry!