New mother rat

Question
QUESTION: my rat, Salena, gave birth last night. From what i can see theres a healthy litter of at least six. However, she has covered all openings to her box with paper towel so i can't see anything. I hear lots of squeeking and can catch the occasional glimpse of a pinky through the bedding every now and then. She isn't as protective this morning as yesterday but still doesn't like me too near the nest.

How long till i can hold the pups? How long till i can clean the cage without disturbing Salena and her litter too much? Should i leave the nest alone or move the bedding to check on the litter? Im just so afraid of disturbing Salena because iv waited a long time for this litter and im already in love with the kits (even tho iv hardly seen them) and i dont want anything to go wrong. Whenever i try to move the bedding aside, Salena just covers up the hole with even more bedding than before.

ANSWER: Wait until Salena is ready for you to handle the pups. You need to be insistent and begin demanding to handle them by the time they open their eyes (two weeks), but usually mamas are okay allowing you to handle them by about a week in. It won't hurt the babies to be handled, so mostly the only reason you're waiting is to avoid stressing out Mama and to keep your fingers intact (a mama rat will usually bite REALLY severely when shes threatened). With my does who are comfortable with me handling the litter from day one, I usually clean their cage about 2 days after the litter is born and then continue my usual cage cleaning cycle, once a week.

Congratulations!

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thankyou for all your help. I cleaned the cage and she was fine. She's a great mom so far. Turns out she had THIRTEEN kits! And shes kept them all alive and well fed. They are 5 days old now. I have a site with their picturees on it.
http://www.freewebs.com/lilbenger/apps/photos/
Can you tell what they're going to look like? Im thinking they will be mostly black capped.

Answer
I'm seeing capped, bareback, broken hooded, and you've got agouti and black there. Denali is a cutie! Congratulations on a beautiful litter!

Bareback is a hooded rat without the stripe down the back.

Broken hooded is a hooded rat with a break between the 'hood' and the stripe down the back.

Capped is black "caps" that don't extend to the front shoulders.