I do not bath my rats. I will put some water in the bottom of our tub though and let them swim to cool of when it gets to hot for them. When they walk in the water they walk on their tiptoe so they don't get their tummies wet. LOL. It’s a lot of fun. My mice used to love to swim. I would put all of them in the tub and to see them fight over which one got to be under the spout was so much fun. It was pretty crowded having the 25 of them in there but they enjoy each other’s company.