Litter Training Your Rats Although you can litter train a rat to "go to the bathroom" in a specific area, you can not prevent a rat from marking their territory. They do this by leaving behind little droplets of urine. This is an engrained behavior which most, but not all rats will do. Territories include anything they walk on, including you. Males tend to urine mark more than females, however you can neuter a male and this will cause him to loose the desire to mark things. (See "Should I Spay/Neuter my Rat?" located in this Guidebook to learn more about this subject.) Their urine has little odor and is easy to clean up. You can spare certain areas from getting marked by covering them with old blankets, which can then be washed. If you have carpeting, simply rent a steam cleaner to get it cleaned once in awhile. Note: A rat will almost always urinate right after they wake up. Using Boxes... It can be a good idea to teach your rats to go in a litter box, because it's clean and it saves you from having to buy so much litter. Although be warned, you can usually get rats to poop in the box, but not always pee in the box. Very few rats will always pee in their litter box. First, you need to place a litter box on every level of your rats' cage that can fit a litter box. Rats can be lazy and are more likely to use a box if it is right there by them. If possible, place them in the corners of the cage as rats like to use the corners. You should also have one or two out in their play area. You can use the "small animal corner" litter pans which pet stores carry, small kitty litter boxes, or you can just use tupperware dishes of an appropriate size. The litter boxes should be the only places which hold your rats' litter. Leave the rest of the cage free of litter. Instead, leave the floors bare, or what we do to soak up any extra pee, is to cover the floors with fleece or washable rugs. For our Martin's cage we cover the wire floors first with linoleum cut to fit and then we lay fleece over that to soak up their pee. This cage only fit a litter box on the bottom level. We picked a larger box so the rats had plenty of space to do their business. We use Yesterday's News for litter. Throw some of your rats old poops and dirty litter into each box so that the rats get the right idea. Every time you catch your rats in the act of going outside of the litter box, tell them a firm "no", then place them into a litter box so that they get the right idea. Quickly and thoroughly remove any puddles found elsewhere in their cage. Place any found poops, not where they should be, into their litter boxes. Whenever you catch your rats in the act of using the litter box, praise them thoroughly, and give them a treat (once they have finished.) Through doing all this, your rats should put two and two together, and learn to use the boxes.