Want to get small pet to help cope

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I would get a snake if I were you. I'd get a boa or a python though. We have a python.

You don't need to get prekilled mice, you can just get regular white mice. Some snakes won't eat them if they don't kill them, so you could end up with one that you have to buy the live mice for anyway. It's not messy when they kill them and you don't even have to watch if you don't want to. It's pretty quick. You put them in a separate cage for feeding and then drop the mouse in. The snaked strikes and bites it then wraps around it and squeezes it until it's dead. Then he slithers around and opens his mouth wide and swallows it whole. That's all there is to it. The mouse does pee when the snake is killing it and sometimes poops, so you have to clean the feeding cage after you are done. Otherwise it's really not a big deal at all. Our python is a few years old and eats three mice a week now. He probably won't get big enough to move up to rats or gerbils though, so it's mice only for him.

We also have a bunny, if you are interested in getting one of those. They are easy to take care of too.

I was just thinking about something and thought I should add to my previous post. You said you wanted something to help you cope, so I'm assuming you want something to interact with and something you can feel comfort from. Snakes or any reptiles just don't seem very comforting to me, and while I do interact with our snake, it's not the kind of play or petting that I can do with a dog or cat. On the other hand, the way he wraps himself around my wrist or slithers over me can be very soothing if you like that kind of thing. They don't really show affection though, although my daughter likes to pretend that he's showing affection when he does certain things.

Rats may very well be more affectionate, but I don't know. I only knew one person with an actual rat and this was about 30 years ago. She had him trained to sit on her shoulder and she took him all over the place with her. This was back in the 80s when this one group of folks would hang out at Triangle Park and at Little Italy pizza across the street from it. We would all sit on the wall around the park and listen to music and talk and hang out and make plans for the evening and drink, etc. We would have our cars parked at the curb with the trunks open and the radio playing with the sound turned up. I'm giving you all this detail so you can understand the amount of noise, activity and downright commotion that was going on while her rat just calmly sat on her shoulder or in her hand, etc. She would make kissey noises and he would stick his nose over near her mouth, but that's the only affection I ever saw him show, although he did let her (and anyone else who wanted to) pet him. He felt kind of nice except for his tail which was hairless so that was freaky. He felt warm and solid and had more weight than a kitten although he was only the size of one. A rat may be your best bet from all the ones you named.

I wouldn't let the breeders scare you. You don't have to keep in touch with them after you get your rat and frankly it's none of their business what happens after you get it. I'd certainly hope that nobody got one to be mean to or neglect but even if somebody did, the breeders wouldn't have any legal recourse except to report the person if what they were doing was illegal. Reporting you to some animal rights group isn't anything to worry about. The worst you would have is somebody annoying you or shoving PETA pamphlets under your door, etc. As long as you take reasonable care of it, you have nothing to worry about.

I would seriously consider a bunny though. We have a giant Flemish rabbit and he's pretty cool. He's easy to take care of and you can hold and pet him. He shows affection too. They can stay in a cage most of the time but they need to be let out at least a couple hours a day. Their poop isn't a worry either, it looks like cocoa puff cereal, but ours hops back in his cage when he has to poo. They are cheap to feed as well, rabbit food is about $4 at Wal Mart and that lasts a week and then a thing of hay is about $4 too and it lasts a couple weeks. You put paper on the bottom of the cage, give them a water bottle, give them carrots, some greens, some grass from outside, etc. They also don't make any noise except they do thump when they get mad.

Giant Flemish bunnies can be huge! I would love to have one.

We got ours two years ago this August. It was my younger daughters birthday present. The pet store that we buy our feeder mice from doesn't carry bunnies and the lady there said they are too fragile to be shipped to a store so it's best to find a local breeder. We looked in this little local classified ad magazine called The Mule Trader and found three or four kinds of bunnies for sale. She Googled them and decided on the Flemish Giant. We got him from a guy about 15 miles outside of town who breeds and sells them, usually for food but sometimes for pets. If you want a pet it costs more, but there was no way we would have been able to fool him into thinking that we wanted to eat it with my daughter along, looking at all the ones for sale and picking hers out. He only cost $25 though, so that's not bad.

The man sells only the males, never the females. I don't know what he does with the other females, maybe he eats them himself or sells them to people he knows eat them or maybe even for fur, but my daughter asked him about getting a female later on so she could have rabbit babies and he said he doesn't sell them. I guess he doesn't want anybody else breeding them and taking his business. I'm sure you could find one locally. This one is fairly big, and I've read that they aren't fully grown until they are about two years old. He's a good pet, but he does bite everybody except for my daughter.

You should look around and see if you can find one near you. They are easy to take care of, don't make any noise or much of a mess and are cheap to feed. They also feel really, really nice to pet.

I think I will. I imagine he must have a huge cage.

I need to get him a new cage, the one I have is one I got off of Freecycle that somebody built. It's about two feet high and six feet long. It's got wire around all four sides, a wood bottom and no top. I had to get an old door to lay over the top of it, so it's not very nice to look at and the only place we had that it would fit is in the diningroom on the other side of the table, against the wall.

My husband saw some at the pet store for $80, which is a whole lot for a cage but it's huge he said. It had a couple of levels some way or other. He can hop up on stuff so getting to different levels wouldn't be a problem for him. Yeah, I didn't mention that. He can jump up on the furniture. He can get on the kitchen and diningroom table if there is a chair nearby. He likes to sit on the hearth though and sometimes he gets in that huge cast iron cauldron I have on the hearth that we put towels in on rainy days to dry the dogs off because it's right by the back door.

Maybe no point in a cage then. Especially if his poops are easy to scoop up. My cats and my dog would be fascinated by a large bunny.

Oh, there is a point to the cage. Rabbits chew things. Like furniture, shoes, electric cords. You will want to keep him in his cage when you aren't around to supervise him and at night. Ours tries to eat the wicker chair every time he gets out.

Right . . . they probably like to have a "nest" too.

It's not that I want something to cuddle it, it's more that I want to make my apartment feel more home-ish. When I come home, it feels dead and empty, but I want to bring in a pet so that there is another living creature here.

I have since then began to reconsider fish. Began doing more research of fish keeping and my fears were because of ignorance. I was a little shocked to find a goldfish requires a 70 liter tank on it's own. I'm considering getting a school of small fish in a tank that is a little bigger than a snake cage I was considering. Good thing too is that fish can reduce stress by one observing them while they swim. Either that or a single goldfish for the 10 year lifespan.