Once that was done, I got to work on the wires. Here's the kit I bought at the fish store:
It was absolutely perfect! Be it baby/kitten/puppy or vermin proofing, or just organizing. I highly recommend this kit. Cost me $15 Cdn.
First, the most common place the girls hang out. Behind their cage. These wires I often pull up and rest on the night table. A couple times though I heard/caught Blaze pulling them down. And tonight I DID find chew marks on one of them. gonk
(rat cage has been pulled out so you can see the wall)
The kit comes with 4 of these adhesive clips, which stick quite nicely to the wall.
So here is the after photo.
Since this is a high traffic area, and Blaze can scale walls. I'm gona buy an extra tube and cover them as well as having them up off the ground.
Next I covered the TV, even though they never hang out back there. I forgot to take a before pic. But basically I took all the wires from the bottom hole out, and fed everything through the top hole so that nothing was within ratty reach.
This is when I realized my TV has it's own clips. So I clipped the only loose wire to it.
Then, it was time to tackle the messy affair that was my desk! (where the accident happened)
Now these wires were neatly tucked out of sight, but, they were still on ground level and as you can see there's quite a few. Being out of sight was worse cause I never would have noticed the damage.
What I did was unplug everything! I just started fresh. My comp screen and comp, I allot the furthest left spots of the power bar. So they are hidden behind the left cabinet. The rest of the power bar is for everything to do with the tank, since the bar is upside down and elevated, it allows for drip loops. The extention is for lamp, picture fram and cam charger.
The left cords, were easily pulled way out of reach with another adhesive clip.
The lower extention cord, I realized, I could pass through the hole in the right cabinet. Originally designed for my tv and ps2 it was meant to hide wires.
This shelf is pretty inaccesible to rats. But I might try to do something about these all the same. Maybe cover them with a tube.
I took that photo from a very low angle. If you are more than 3 feet tall you don't see any of that messyness.
Next up was the tank.
The kit comes with a "router" That adheres to a corner of the tank. So I had to put all wiring on one side. I chose the side at the edge of the desk, so it would be easy to access. Though I'm not sure the light wire will reach when it is fixed. Worst case I'll switch it.
So, with the tank wires neatly tucked in this router, I then tucked all those wires in this lovely tubing. It's a nice tight seal too, I really had to shove them in there one by one.
As for that little spot where they are somewhat exposed. I'm going to o fix that when I trim the router to fit my tank. Since it's a bit big.
Kit also came with these lovely stickers. No more wondering which one is which lol. Cause I was getting frustrated with that.
So now for the before and afters!!!
Desk
Before:
After:
(keep in mind this is under the desk, you normally only notice the bottom two.
Before:
After:
Tank
Before:
After:
(The black in the background is the tube, the clear is the air. Yes they could damage it, but at least they wouldn't hurt themselves. Oh, and the white thing is a cardboard holding the filter at an appropriate angle.)
I have these lil jailbird faces. But it's quite late now, and I still want to wash the floor etc and do a last once over of the place. Then I will begin letting them out again under a**l supervision.
Wow, this thread took longer than expected. Comp was being annoyingly slow, ugh, waking up for class is gona suuucckk. Well I documented all this cause I plan to make a write up about safety and baby proofing and what not. So let me know what you think.
