Lap Rat?

Two little events to write about today, both about the rats. The first is that the moon aligned with Earth, Mars and all of Jupiter's moons, and when I went to put all the rats back into their cage after their daily time out, they were all already in the cage. This is probably not as unlikely an occurence as the moon alignment mentioned above (which could very well be impossible), but it's certainly the first time I've ever seen it. Usually at most one or two will be in the cage when they are allowed to run around, but this time I saw three in the cage when I went to put them back, and it turned out that I was just not seeing the other two in there (Scotty was in the wheel, and Blue was blending in).

The other interesting thing is that we may finally have one of those fabled rats who like to just sit around in one's lap. The so-called lap rat we've long thought was a myth - we've always been told that the male rats are a lot calmer than female rats, and are usually much better lap rats, but up to this point none of our rats have liked sitting still long enough for us to actually call them a lap rat before they have left the vicinity of said lap. Today, however, it appeared that Lu Bu may be the first of our rats to actually qualify. He's already very social and likes to be near L and I, and today he hopped into my lap while I was using the computer, and sat there for a while. I even petted him a bit, which is usually cause for the quick evacuation of wherever they may be sitting, but he took that in stride as an opportunity to help give my fingers a manicure. This was quite ticklish, but appreciated on my part, even though I really needed both hands to type at the time. He eventually got bored of the lap and ran off, but it's definately the longest I've seen, and I suspect as he gets older he'll be calmer and sit still longer.