Chewing

Question
I have two great little girls, Cobalt and Lily.  Cobalt is about 7-8 months and Lily is about 3-4 months.  Both girls get out of the cage about an hour a day to run around, play, cuddle me, and such.  Lately they have been chewing on everything!  I give them tons of chew toys, none of which they use.  I try and keep a close eye on them, but they like to hide under the couch.  I usually call them out or look under every 5-10 min.  Well last night they both, at the same time but on separate pieces, put big holes in my furniture.  My husband wanted to kill them and I wasn't real happy.  Is there anything you can suggest?  My husband doesn't want them out of the cage now, our furniture is expensive and we have a lot of electronics they could chew the wires on.  I don't want to leave them in the cage all the time, though it is big.  They want out all the time and don't like any toys I've tried to give them.  They do like socks though.  I love having them out, I love playing with them and they crawl all over me quite a bit of the time.  I know it is their nature to chew, but I can't think of even a way to put them in something like a playpen they wouldn't climb out of?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

Answer

I have the perfect solution for you.  I am totally against allowing rats to run free in your home unless it is totally and absolutely 110% rat proofed, for our sake and the rats safety.  If you check my website you will find a story about a sweet rat that was almost killed when she bit into a lamp cord that the owner was sure had been put out of reach from her.  After recovering from burns inside her mouth etc...she did recover, but this is rare and usually rats are electrocuted when this occurs.  

I can go on and on but you get the idea I am sure.  What I do is, for starters, I have a spare room in our house that I devote to my critters. My rats (right now I am ratless, sadly, I lost my last rat to heart disease 2 weeks ago and am waiting for the three new boys I am adopting to grow up as they are just 2.5 weeks old) I also have my bunny in this critter room and four aquariums with my elderly hermit crabs in them, one per tank, as they are 5 and 8 years old and need their space.  Not everyone has a spare room for their critters and actually my room isnt rat safe anyhow.  
What I use is a wall made out of cardboard. You can make it any size and as long as its too tall for them to jump, they should not be able to climb it, they will slide down it. You should use this only with you being there with them just to be sure they dont escape, though.   Check out my webpage on my Critter city site called GETTING STARTED, scroll down to find the section on play time and there are instructions on how to construct this fabulous cardboard corral to contain the critters! The idea comes from THE DAPPER RAT, respectively.

This should make you, hubby and the rats happy when they finally have an area for only them that they can get into anything they want, explore anything they want and even may get lucky and you can make them some added fun by giving them a shoe box with old socks in it that they can climb in the box and play with the socks all they want. You can even hide some cheerios in the box of socks and watch they dig for them.  LOL  
The ideas are endless as to what you can do to amuse the rats when they are  out of the cage.

Here is the URL, let me know what you think, if this is what you had in mind:


http://www.freewebs.com/crittercity/gettingstarted.htm


Glad you wrote!