Hello! My fiance and I have three wonderful dwarf rat boys who seem to hate cleanings.

We clean once a week, removing soiled and destroyed toys, washing fabric products, and changing out the bedding. Sometimes cleanings are fine, but when we have to do a deeper clean, the boys seem really wigged out and won't come out for play time or really interact with their environment as much.

When we clean, we will take a lot (but not all) of the previous bedding they were using and replace it with fresh. How much we take depends on how clean they've been. When they're good boys who regularly use their litter box, we do less. But on occassion they regularly tip their litter box throughout the week and just sorta soil wherever, so in those weeks we change out more. We always leave some familiar bedding to mix in with the new so it has their scent.

We try to mix up objects in the cage as well. We keep familiar and safe spots consistent (like their rat basket, as seen above, and their typical climbing paths), but we also like to change things up for them to explore. 

After the cleanings where we change a lot of bedding, they're always acting weird in the days afterwards. They're definitely still eating and drinking, but they're more skittish. They don't want to come out for playpen time like normal, and I see them running around the lower levels of the cage less. In these days, they stick to their "safe spots".

Is there anything we can do to help them after these bigger changes? I feel bad that they're so wigged out, and I don't think it's good for them to miss their play time, but even if I scoop them up to play, the second they're down they're running right back to a safe spot.

Thank you!

Rats weird after cleanings