Sensible rats

One of the pleasures of having pets, friends, and presumably children, is giving them things you know they will like and watching their enjoyment. Spotting the first cobnuts on sale at the market or ordering rat treats at the excellent ratwarehouse.co.uk gives me a thrill. But if I give my rats the wrong thing they know how to tell me; the offered item is neatly dropped and they give me a piercing stare. Come on, they seem to say, you can do better than that. Usually what they want is a yogurt drop or one of these 'treat-ums' (aka rat crack):
But they also seem to know what's good for them. When they were on antibiotics about two months ago they were initially unenthused, until after one or two days they seemed to have realised that the medicine was doing them good, and they would eagerly wait by the bars every evening for their dose. On Monday evening they were a bit out of sorts and wouldn't take any treats at all; they kept staring at me intensely, and I couldn't get rid of the feeling that they wanted medicine. Yesterday they were worse, and today they look quite bad. I got a repeat prescription, and although they didn't want any treats at all, they flung themselves at the medicine with glee. People might think that I'm anthropomorphising here but I really think they were asking for the medicine because they felt ill. If they hadn't asked I wouldn't have phoned to arrange the repeat prescription, and by the time I had thought of it for myself today it would have meant one more day they had to wait for it. They are amazing animals for training me; all the rats I've kept have been able to convey what they want to me and I'm never quite sure how the first link came in my brain. One of those now long dead used to sit on my hand and lean according to which way she wanted to be carried. If I took her to the right place she would hop off, and if I didn't she'd just keep leaning and gesturing where she wanted to go. In the previous cage I had they used to ask to come out by sitting by a cage door which was almost never used; the door I always opened to get them out was by their favourite relaxing post. So although the logical thing would have been for them to sit by the door through which I let them out, they seemed to realise that this might have confused me because I could have thought they were just relaxing there. Instead they would go to the door which was out of the way, where the message was unambiguous.