Pig update

Hi all,

Well, just to let people know how Piggy's doing. He seems fine really. His tilt hasn't improved at all and he's started spinning again, which he hasn't done in an awfully long time, so obviously that's no good. But he certainly hasn't gotten any worse and he still seems rather chipper and cuddly, having a good old brux when he comes out for a cuddle. The only really notable change in him is that he is even more mischevious than ever! When the boys come out to play, we try to confine them largely to the sofas (rented flat, you know) and we protect the sofas with the rats' blankies (and much good may that do us!) Piglet now thinks this is the best game ever and has made it his life's aim to tunnel underneath them - going under the sofa cushions themselves if he needs too! Little sod.

New cause for concern

A little concerned about Pig today. He had a fight with Mumble a few days ago, and fell off the top shelf (although that was an accident). He's been fine since, but I noticed today that he is leaning quite heavily - more heavily than usual - on his tilty side. He also appeared to be a little grumpier - I caught him having stern words with Pocket. Hopefully he's just feeling a little tender and will be back to tricks in no time at all but, as it was a fall after a fight that seemed to 'cause' his head tilt in the first place I am a little concerned. OK, so I don't know that the original fall had anything to do with his subsequent tilt, I can't help but fret... Other than this, Piggy has been acting like any other rat. OK, he's still a little slow in some ways, but very smart in others. He has his quirks, but has turned into a very friendly and affectionate boy. I hope this new injury won't impede hime though - Pig is an absolute joy to have around!

all change

I've just realised it's been such a long time since I pdated Piggy's blog. Well, that's partly because Piggy has been acting so normally I felt there was nothing to report. Then today I reminded myself that the purpose of this blog was to reassure people that tilted rats can live normal lives, so really that's a poor excuse.
Sometimes it feels Piggy's head-tilt isn't as bad as it once was. It is. His head is still tilted, he is still a spaz, but he copes with it so well now you could argue that it's normal.
Before the horrible virus that killed Riff, Cobway and Toga, Piggy was making a claer bid for top-rat. Cobway was his main contender in this, and they regularly scrapped. Now he only shares the cage with Dobby, Pocket and Mumble, I think it would be fair to say that he is top-rat. Dobby just isn't interested in the politics, Pocket is too lazy and Mumble is too nervy. But if he wants to be top-rat he needs to smarten himself up a little - Riff was his main grooming buddy, and Piglet has been looking a right tramp lately.

Devious little Pig'...

Despite his special needs, Piglet can startle me with dazzling displays of intellect from time to time. Yesterday, for example, I had just fed that rats. Mumble, being right at the bottom of the pecking order, isn't allowed to eat at the same time as the big boys, so he waited in his tube. Feeling sorry for him a started feeding him tidbits through the bars. Mumble is so gentle you can actually place the food into his mouth - he never bites. While I was doing this I turned to have a chat with Pocket who, quite frankly, was exaggerating in his tales of derring-do. For the next 5 minutes I was constantly aware of a little black head makeing the distinctive weaving motions that Mumble does when he eats, as I fed him distractedly. Only, when I turned back to the tube the little black head started weaving itself out again to reveal itself as - Piggy! Mumble was sitting next to the tube looking furious - clearly Piglet (who had been watching) had outsted Mumble the moment my head was turned and was mimicking him in the hope I wouldn't notice that he wasn't Mumble.

That's smart thinking!

Piggy loves his petpets

I've mentioned before that Piglet loves the mice, so I thought I'd share this picture of him watching them. You can just about see Timorous in the cage. Piggy was like this for about 2 minutes, watching them in his tilted way. Bless. He's just a little boy really.

Tilted rats will climb!

Seconds later I had to drop the camera as Piglet started shifting it up the cage and I wanted to make sure he didn't fall!

Piggy helps himself

For some inexplicable reason, Piggy loves bin-bags. Maybe it has something to do with the noise they make - we've caught him several times in the past trampling up and down a bin bag carelessly left on the floor, laughing himself silly. I think he likes the rustle it makes.

We've started to keep the food in a bucket (as we make up a week's worth of Shunamite at a time) and we keep the food free from buckety germs by lining the bucket with a bin-liner. Piglet heaven! Now he can combine the two things he loves the most - food and noise!

Piglet is also the cheekiest when it comes to being fed. Whilst the other 6 boys all pounce on the food as soon as it hits the cage, Piggy tends to climb up onto the door and take it directly from our hands. I don't know if he thinks it's giving him the edge over the other rats, or whether he thinks he is far to special to have to pick out his own food, but he insists that we hold the food up to him at eye level so he can pick out the good stuff. At first, because his tilt meant that his mouth would often miss its target, we indulged him in this. Now he won't have it any other way! He's properly spoiled.


If we're not quick enough in hand feeding him, however, he decides to just help himself, and hops into the bucket for an all-you-can-eat blow-out. None of our other boys have ever done this.

The way he gets out, however, has led us to believe that any remaining 'balance' issues the Pig has are purely put on for our benefit.

Once he has his mouth brimming with food (and he even uses his little paws to stuff it as far into his mouth as he can, before trying to cram another eight pieces in) he bounds to the back of the cage, 'hides it' (yeah right Pig - once he decided that the best hiding place would be in the food-bowl. Riff thought he was just filling it up for him) then legs it back over to us for extra helpings.

Piggy by name, and all that...

Piggy's favourite cage spot

Lavish me with attention!

Piglet has been unhappy with me lately. Being the most people-friendly of our boys, he adores human attention and is often hanging from the bars of the cage trying to will some towards him. Last night I was attempting to use the laptop while nursing a migraine and sat on the floor near the cage. Piggy was desperate for some love and shimmied up the bars, tilting is head at me in a most mournful way. In the end I gave in and we wrestled at the foot of his cage (as I think I've mentioned before, Piggy's favourite playing-place is just inside the cage, by the door. Note - I was wrestling him with my hand :) ) That cheered Mr Pig enormously and he gleefully rolled onto him back and licked the palm of my hand while I tickled his belly. Later he rolled over hopefully in front of Toga, but Toga just slapped him.

A manic Pig

When we came home from our Christmas break the other day Pig was the most excited to see us. He was jumping up and down with glee - I've never seen such a happy rat. But then, Piggy is a very people-friendly rat and he does enjoy our company very much. He's very relaxed with Si and me - as seen in the pictures i posted of him as a baby, passing out between us on the sofa.
Tonight Piglet has been just as eager for some human play time, but he seems to be a little more manic than usual. We wrestled a bit and Piglet was bruxing his head off. He stole my glasses (again) and let me tickle his tummy but after only 7 minutes of play time he machine gun pooped everywhere. This is still a problem with him - he's the only one of my rats who still poops outside of his cage. Even baby Pocket is better toilet-trained than he is. He does have some very strange bathroom habits too - aside from when he's out of his cage he will only poop when he has climbed to the very top of the bars. There he hangs and...er... lets it all fall out. He's done that since he developed his tilt - it's quite gross. And I mean he does this every time. We think he's trying to get Toga. We always know when he needs the loo because he's just hanging from the top of the cage, concentrating.

Who said I can't balance!

Dear Mr Pig has a fascination with our other pets - 3 male mice. These denizins of the night - Timorous, Pedlar and Wu - live on the table. The table is behind the sofa. The sofa is Piglet's stomping ground.

Piglet is very much like a small boy and small boys as a general rule like to have pet mice (although this may be some sort of Edwardian misconception based on the way mice frighten small girls in frilly dresses). Well, Piglet has decided he would very much like the mice to be his pets and, frustrated that we won't let him play with them he has taken to climbing over dodgy surfaces in order to watch them. Proof once more that head-tilt rats DO get their balance back even if their head is still wonky. It scares the life out of me and Si, but Piggy is quite good at scaring us.

"Going to see the mice mum - I'll be back soon."

"Hello little mouses, will you be my friends?"

Licky rat

Piglet, being a rather obsessive little character, dislikes being ignored. While he'll quite happily play "unsupervised" he gets quite annoyed if he thinks he doesn't have your full undivided attention. So he's developed something which can only be called the 'dash and lick' - basically, he runs past your hand at breakneck speed, licking it once and once only, then carries on with what he was doing before. Only, this time he's giggling...

Pig wants to play!!!!

We think Piggy might have suffered a little brain-damage as a result of his ear-infection. It's more of a gut feeling that a certainty, but all head-tilt owners should be aware that brain-damage can be a side effect. Think more 'Learning disabilities' than severe mental corruption. Anyhow, when Pig wants to play - it's playtime! We are all his willing slaves in this. He especially likes playing with humans at the door of his cage, and his enthusiasm is so infections he actually tries to get us to come into the cage to play with him. He often grabs hold of our hands with his paws and teeth (gently - he never hurts us) and tries to pull us through the cage door. It's heart-melting to think that he is so excited about playing with us that he wants us to come into his home so we can play together. The picture i've posted shows Piglet balancing on the edge of the cage door and trying to pull me in by my hair - weirdo :)

Piglet displays his ability to not freak out

A quarter of Pig, anyone?




Yeah - bored of this now: Piglet decides to move on as Toga wonders exactly what he's up to.



Of course, sometimes a lack of balance does get the better of him...

The Pig Freaks Out.

OK, so imagine you're a little baby animal. You've been living quite happily for six weeks with your brothers and sisters. Then you move house - maybe twice. You have new sights and sounds and smells to get used too - new routes to learn, new people to trust. You're very little - they're very big. Eep!
You're on your own for a week or maybe two, then you're moved in to a bigger cage. With other rats. BIG rats! Some leave you alone, but some rush at you, over-eager to say hello. Maybe they knock you off your feet. It's all a bit much. One or two might decide they don't like you, so you have to be quick on your toes, always looking over your shoulder until you get used to each other. Snatch your sleep here and there, just in case they come to get you once you doze off. Then, all of a sudden, somebody takes a hold of this daunting new world and turns it on its side. Suddenly, everything looks wonky!

Piglet coped with it all very well to start with. He was very obviously at an angle, but he didn't seem to have suffered in terms of his behaviour. He was still very playful, still seemed very happy and was still winding up Toga. Only when, a few days after starting his treatment, we held him we realised he was very off-kilter. He would spin in our hands. Really spin. No matter how securely we held him, the very act of holding him freaked him out big-time. We'd hold him in our hands and he'd spin in our palms, for as long as we kept holding him. It was obvious that as soon as we picked him up his equilibrium went off on one - maybe it was the subtle motion, a feeling of insecurity/lack of control or whether the angle we were holding him at was making his vision even wobblier, but it really freaked him out. We resigned ourselves to the fact we might never be able to hold him again if it made him so panicked.
But it didn't work out that way. It wasn't a fast process, but after about 6 weeks, we noticed that Piggy wasn't really spinning as much while we held him. Again, I don't know if it was that he had adapted to his head being at an angle or whether I knew how to hold him to give him the most security, but we could hold him for lengths of time without him spinning. It is all about adjustment. One of the things that concerned me most about his head tilt was the thought that he would always freak out, or that he would feel sick. Imagine you've drunk too much and all you want to do it just put your head down and sleep, but the room keeps spinning. What if Piggy always felt like that? Would his life just be too miserable to carry on?
Well, they do adapt. In my heart I hoped for this, but I never believed it until I realised he already had got used to his tilt and was having a great time with his life. I can now, as I've said, hold him and he'll brux with happiness. And does he keep deathly still, disorientated and dizzy? Does he heck as much! If he wants to explore, he'll be off. If he thinks he'll be happier running up and down my arm, that's what he'll do. The thing is - Piggy doesn't know he's disabled. And we're not going to tell him.

The Treatment

Piggy pre-tilt - as he was, and will never be again.


I must confess, at first I didn't feel too worried about Piglet's head tilt. Having seen he'd had a fall he seemed to be fine otherwise, and I thought he'd probably just pulled a muscle. The next day, however, the tilt was more pronounced. Off to the vets it was then! I actually had to go home to my Devon village straight after work that evening, so I decided to mad-dash my way back to my flat, pick up Piglet and mad-dash back to Paddington station! I nearly didn't make it. Piggy did not enjoy the journey, but that's fair enough - the rocking and the dizziness together made him feel pretty miserable and he was very still for the journey. He perked up later, but I couldn't get him to the vets. Luckily one of my neighbours is a vet so he had a look, confirmed what I thought and said it would right itself in a day or two. However, by the time I came back to London on the Sunday evening Piggy was still very tilted, so it was off to the vets on Monday.
The good thing was that, other than the tilt, Piglet didn't have any of the traditional symptons of an ear infection. There was no bad smell coming from his ears, no marked changes in behaviour or eating pattern. He was very well behaved at the vets, letting me tickle him behind his ears until he fell asleep. When the vet examined him he was charming and playful. She made him walk along the table and he complied. Unfortunately, he walked along the table in a relatively loose circle and promptly walked off the edge and was caught by a very startled vet. She said it was difficult to determine whether he had an ear infection or not as his ears were so small (????) but gave him a steriod injection which he took LIKE A MAN!!! This was to help losen the muscles in his neck and hopefully allow his head to straighten. This, unfortunately, didn't work and admittedly I've only ever heard of one instance where it has. He was also prescribed a course of baytril to take for a month, and we were sent on our way. I was to monitor him for changes in his behaviour and the next two weeks would be critical. After the two weeks we returned to the vet for a follow up and she felt that if it was an ear infection it was now certainly gone. We carried on with his meds for another two weeks - just to be sure - and then, once we were sure he was going to live, it was a question of helping him get through the changes that had gone through with him.
I'm not going to go through the details of his medication in great detail. Bare in mind this happened 3 months ago and many crucial details I have forgotten, so wouldn't like to repeat. I will, soon hopefully, post some links to some good sites that if you want to read about the more medical side of head-tilts you can read it from someone with more knowledge than me! What I will tell you is how the actual head-tilt has affected Piggy, and how we've all dealt with it, as well as how much of a quality of life he had.
In retrospect now it seems that at first Piglet didn't change much, or freak out. I the first two weeks of his treatment he had a head-tilt, but he was no different than before. As soon as he went for his first check-up, however, it was like he suddenly noticed that he was seeing things at a different angle, and thats when things really started to change.

Young Piggy

This is Piggy the day we got him. He was a very sweet little chap from the word go - happy to pose, inquisitive for the most part but occasionally a little shy. He was six weeks old at this point and, for a pet-shop rat, a very friendly little guy (although most rats from pet shops do tend to be nervous for longer than rats bought from a reputable breeder).

Of course, being a naughty little chap he would frequently run around causing havoc. Like all eepers (the unofficial word for young rat), Piglet would run around like a mad thing, then drop like a stone as soon as he felt tired - no matter where he was. His trust in us was quite remarkable, as rats usually don't like to sleep exposed, particularly when they are still very new in their household. Piggy, on the other hand, was immediately trusting of myself and Simon, my fiance, so that one evening soon after he came to live with us he'd been clambouring all over us as we lay on the sofa, then promptly passed out with baby-exhaustion between us both.

He joined (at that time) five other rats - Riff, Mallow, Cobway, Toga and Dobby (and, since then, Pocket) and was a little uncertain of himself at first. Mallow adored him straight away, and Cobway and Dobby didn't mind him. Toga never did take to him very well, even now, but there were no really problems. Riff, on the other hand, did not like this new little upstart and bullied him quite considerably. Despite this, Piggy found his feet quite quickly and soon showed off his exceptionally cheeky nature, as seen here as he tries to push Cobway off the sofa...

Unfortunately, when we'd only had Piggy for about 10 days he got into a fight with Riff. Riff pushed Piggy from the top shelf of their cage and Piggy fell, hitting the plastic fort at the bottom of the cage. Though he seemed ok at first, we noticed a few hours later that he appeared to be holding his head at a funny angle...

Who, or what, is the 'Tilted Pig'?

Well, the Tilted Pig isn't a pig. He's a rat. But he's a rat called Piglet aka Piggy aka Mr Pig (it depends on how naughty he's been), so that should clear things up for you.
Now, some of you might wonder why I have pet rats. Well, I don't have a pet rat. I have seven pet rats. If you hate rats then I suggest you move on. If you're compelled to question why someone would want pet rats then you should probably grab yourself by the arse and pull yourself into the 21st Century - pet rats are increasingly common, due to their intelligence, cleanliness (yes, cleanliness!!), loving natures and extreme loyalty. Think of them as low-maintenance dogs. They form very close bonds with their owners, have very strong personalities, as a general rule are very loving, very very rarely bite (I've been keeping rats for 8 years and I've never been bitten) and are extremely fun pets. who love to be played with. You should get some rats (some - not one. Rats hate living on their own and keeping a single rat is tantamount to animal cruelty).
We got Piglet on a bit of a whim. There are many schools of thought that say buying rats from Pet-shops is a terrible thing. Now, whilst I have seen my fair share of extremists with this opinion, they have a point. Pet shops rats, more often than not, are prone to extremely painful, frequent and debilitating diseases.

Just like Piggy.