I finally managed to take a photo of one of my rats while he's yawning, which is the cutest thing ever. Though on photos slightly less so than in RL, because it's the whole motion that is cute.

So last night I saw Leo and Noah yawning (yawns catch among them too), but of course by the time I had my camera they were just plain snuggled up again. Which is also cute, so I photographed that, but then I thought, why not try yawning at them while I have my camera in hand? And this worked. I'm not entirely sure it was due to my yawn, or how well rats can see such things, but I yawned at them, and Leo yawned back, and I got it on photo.
( two pictures, one just Leo and Noah snuggling, one of the yawn )

I haven't drawn any Christmas cards this year, but it's been a month since I last posted photos of my rats looking adorable, so I thought I'd use them for cute and happy content. And that's what online journals are there for after all, inflicting photos of your pets on the world at large. :)

( rat pictures )

Why is it that rats themselves can smell so awesome, when their pee smells just like smelly pee? Seriously, rats themselves smell very nice: If you bury your nose in their fur it is a pleasant smell, much better than most other animals I've smelled up close (admittedly mostly cats and dogs so the comparison sample is small). And yet -- they pee in their sleeping spaces where they then lie down, and they pee on each other anyway, but while I smell like gross rat pee when they inevitably mark me or my clothes, they come out smelling like roses. Well not roses, but a nice non-pee smell. I just don't get it.

I still had some leftover squash from the butternut squash risotto I made this weekend and with all the US Thanksgiving talk on my f-list I decided to bake a small pumpkin pie. So this was what I had for dinner... Well, it's not like there isn't a tradition of sweet main dishes and this even has a vegetable in it.

I've also been reading a lot of Star Trek and SGA Bigbang stories, though because of the ST Bigbang I haven't yet read that many of the SGA stories. I've been wondering whether I shouldn't do an extra Bigbang recs post for the stories I enjoyed that weren't AUs (those will of course end up in the next AU recs post).

My rats continue to be adorable. Linus in particular always wants to groom me, climb into my clothes, and even likes to cuddle and to be petted. He actually sometimes stays still for that, which is a great feat for a young rat. I could do without his love for the inside of my clothes though. And I do not care at all for two or three rats to start roughhousing while inside my sweatshirt. Their flailing limbs have too many claws for that.

BTW I don't know whether I mentioned this, but Linus looks kind of funny because he lost the tip of his tail in an accident when he was really tiny. The breeder thinks his mother somehow dropped their house on his tail tip so a bit got cut off. Sometimes rats just aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer. But it healed really well and he learned climbing with a shorter tail so it doesn't bother him, and it's not like I got them as show rats, but his tail is a few centimeters shorter than normal. It's somehow more noticeable now that he gets more properly rat sized though, rather than being really tiny.

( some more rat photos )

It's not exactly that I had forgotten already how much energy and destructive initiative young rats have once they've gotten over their initial shyness, but there definitely was rose-tinted nostalgia blurring those memories. In any case I now remember why the free playtime outside I give younger rats has always been only an hour or two at most, whereas I let older ones out as much as they like as long as I'm home.

I also need to come up with more entertainment to occupy them now that they feel secure outside. Currently Noah in particular expends most of his not inconsiderable energy trying to get out of their play enclosure (simple wood panels held together with cable binders), that I put up for their safety while they are this young and reckless. Though even with the escape attempts, it still makes watching them easier. And the ferret climbing tree I bought for them has been a big hit, but clearly I now need to do some more landscaping to satisfy their exploratory drive.

They now all come up onto my hand when I put it in the cage, and climb onto me and sit on my shoulder. They now also let me pet them. They are not yet comfortable to be grabbed and picked up, and they haven't yet learned to come when I call either, so I won't let them run outside yet. But they are definitely interested in exploring outside the cage, so I have to be watchful now.

In preparation for future playtime I have made a simple enclosure from wooden panels connected with cable binders that I can put up to let them play outside while they are very little without guarding every tiny opening between, beneath or into my furniture, so that may happen soon. Previously I just let tiny ones play in the whole room like adults, but it is just extremely stressful to keep track of them when they are tiny. My last ones squeezed themselves beneath my mattress for example and in all sorts of places, even with me doing my best to block all gaps between walls and furniture and make the room safe. Obviously it's more interesting for them if they can explore the whole room, but they will have to make do for the sake of my nerves.

I mean, the size of the enclosure will be all of the center of the room so they can run further than in the cage if they like, and obviously I will put in something for them to climb, and hide, and such for entertainment. I have a large branch now, but I'm looking into whether there are maybe cat scratching tree combos that would maybe work for rats as a more varied playground. I've also seen a kind of ferret play tree in a pet store that looked real nice and good for rats (probably because they are closer in size than cats), but it was quite expensive unfortunately (the ones for cats were too). So I'm still looking for something like that.

Finally, I have decided to go with Linus and Leo for the new names I wasn't decided on yet.

I've just come back from getting my three baby rats, who are tiny and adorable. They are still a bit shy, mostly hiding in one of their tubes, but they've already found the food and water and are coming out to grab bits of food only to hide again to eat it. So they are not easy to photograph yet, but starting to settle in.

Emil
8.3.2007 - 11.9.2009

I had Emil put down this afternoon. The vet said that with this rapid a decline it was most likely a tumor inside, and that there was no sense to try antibiotics further in the bad condition he was in. And he had been suffering the last few days. (I even thought for a moment earlier today that he had died on his own because his body was so cold when I checked on him and he didn't react anymore, but after a moment I saw and heard that he was still breathing.)

Anyway, I cuddled with him for a while at home to say goodbye, hoping that even though he didn't seem very aware anymore he maybe still enjoyed being with me and lying on a warm body when his own wasn't even maintaining body temperature anymore, and then I brought him to vet to end his misery.

I hope I helped make the two and a half years he had a good life for him. He was only sick for a short time, barely two weeks, and he had never any health problems before, so he was luckier than many of my other rats. Though of course today it doesn't feel lucky.

( some photos of Emil )

For the first time in years I am without rats. It feels very lonely.

I called the vet this morning to ask whether there would be any sense in bringing Emil in, but they don't have any results yet on the cultures from the nasal swap, and they would not be able to do anything to help. Meanwhile Emil has been awful. If I wasn't clinging to the small chance that an antibiotic might help yet (though the vet thinks with his rapid decline and his apathy there might be an internal tumor as well), I would have taken him to be put down today.

Instead I'm trying my best to provide sick care, ( cut for bodily fluids, sickness details. )

Emil is much worse. The second antibiotic hasn't been doing anything, except maybe have side effects, because he's been getting more and more lethargic and eating less in a much more rapid decline than I'm used to seeing with such a lung problem. Today was an especially bad decline. He hasn't eaten anything or come out of his house at all that I have seen. :( :( :(

Meanwhile I had brought him to the vet yesterday (then he wasn't quite as bad) because the antibiotic wasn't working, and the vet did a nasal swap to grow cultures and test antibiotics on them to see which might still work (if any). But of course the results aren't in yet. And the vet told me to give the previous antibiotic until then so that's what I have been doing, though with the rapid decline I'm now suspecting that side effects may have made him worse (Ignatz had a similar decline due to an antibiotic once though that was a different one). But of course I don't know for sure.

I still hope there'll be an antibiotic, and that he'll hold on until then, but he's been awful today. He has not even groomed himself, so his nose and eyes are crusted over with snot and the red stuff that comes from rats immune systems when they are sick.

My elderly rat Emil (now two and a half) who had a remarkably robust health until now, has started to develop the usual awful breathing problems of older rats. He's now on the second antibiotic, after the first did nothing, and we've been playing out a daily drama with me trying to get the disgusting stuff into him.

The first antibiotic was at least only a small amount (0.2ml) but with the second I have to give 1ml. Supposedly this one is designed to be given orally to pets and tastes okay, but it smells disgusting. I have never given this before, and I got a drop on my t-shirt that Emil spit out in his struggling, and the mere smell is horrible. Sort of like a fake not-vanilla, only chalkier. It's really hard to describe. As this is a rat who notices fruit starting to go off way before me, it's not wonder he's resisting. Yesterday the vet got it into him, but that was with two people, i.e. the assistant immobilized Emil, and the vet squeezed the antibiotic into his mouth. Living alone I don't have that advantage, and Emil is also much less intimidated with me. On the bright side he didn't pee on me like he did with the vet's assistant either, so in that sense less terror is good.

Still, I got a reasonable amount of the stuff into his mouth and held him upright a bit afterwards so he had to swallow instead of being able to spit it out or wipe it off, and I hope it'll be enough, and that it works.

Ignatz
8.3.2007 - 16.7.2009

I had Ignatz put down this afternoon. I posted a lot about his sickness before, and there was nothing to be done. The spider venom didn't slow the cancer down, and at the end the bulge on his throat from the tumor and the wound bleeding had gotten so large that he could not even groom his face with his paws any longer or walk without struggle, and the myco didn't respond anymore to antibiotics and his breathing was getting very labored. I tried to give him as much time as possible, and he fought hard to hold on, but of course we all loose to death in the end.

Still, two years and a little over four months is not such a bad age for a rat, and I hope he enjoyed what time he had. I'm sorry that Emil will be alone for the end of his life though, but he's just far too old that I'd risk baby rats with him for very little time of potential company.

I'll remember Ignatz as a good rat and companion to me: good natured and affectionate, playful and sometimes cuddly, and never aggressive (not even to the vet).

( some photos of Ignatz )

I brought Ignatz to the vet this morning and it turns out the huge, fast growing bulge was both from bleeding into the wound and beneath that the tumor also had returned. I probably didn't notice that earlier, because I thought the smaller, remaining bulge was still the previous internal bleeding slowly returning to normal and that made the tumor less obvious. The vet only noticed the more solid core after he drained quite a bit of blood from the poor guy.

The vet offered to put Ignatz down right away, or to inject him with spider venom which sometimes can slow down tumor growth and put him on antibiotics again for the myco, to try to push the breathing problems back and buy him a little more time.

Because I can't bear to put my pets down unless they are not just old and/or incurably sick but also seriously suffering from that sickness, I decided to wait for now and try the antibiotics and the venom. He's still eating after all, and the breathing problems are not so bad yet that they are distressing him, and when I asked the vet whether the tumor itself was hurting him, I was told that the bulge of the tumor may be uncomfortable if it chafes on the ground and such, but not painful itself.

I want Ignatz to have as much time as possible -- to sleep, eat, cuddle and all the things he still does even sick as he is -- and also have a little more time myself to say goodbye and let him go. :(

The last two weeks Ignatz wound swelling went slowly down like expected, and it seemed all was okay, though he wasn't very active. Then yesterday evening I noticed that it looked more swollen again and seemed come back (why always on weekends, why?). He's still eating and doesn't seem to be in pain, so I decided against bringing him to the vet during the weekend emergency hours, because from my previous experience with this I don't think there can be done much. I mean, either the bleeding is back even after two weeks of healing and they certainly couldn't do any heroic interventions for that the last two times I brought him for this beyond hoping for the best, or the tumor itself is somehow back and growing fast or something, and then nothing could be done either.

So considering that Ignatz doesn't seem to be suffering right now, I decided to wait until Monday for my vet's regular opening hours -- which admittedly is also more convenient, less crowded, and much cheaper because of the lack of the weekend emergency fee. I had already planned to bring him Monday anyway, because the rattling breathing sounds from his chronic myco lung infection are also back, and though it by now has been already treated with four different antibiotic courses in the past, I thought that maybe there could be still some other they can try this time. Though I don't know how that will be with his wound now being worse on top of everything.

So anyway, it doesn't look good for the little guy, but I'm sort of resigned and numb about this by now.

Today Ignatz got the stitches taken out. The wound is still very swollen from the previous bleeding, but I just hope he's healing beneath as well. The vet said the blood should be reabsorbed over the next two or three weeks, so I guess it'll look awful for a while yet.

I've also taken the divider out of the cage so he's together with Emil again. That thankfully went without any scuffling that might have happened because he still smells of the vet or the separation of the last ten days. Emil just climbed over Ignatz a few times, peed on him and then there was some grooming, so all things considered a fairly friendly welcome back so far. Which is good because of course Ignatz is still recovering. I mean, they haven't fought much since they were out of their rowdy young adult days, and even then never so serious that there were any bleeding wounds or anything, but still, you never know.

Anyway, they now have each other for company and cuddling again, and Emil the full run of the cage, so I hope he'll be less frustrated, and both happier than isolated from each other.

I'm sorry that this journal is all rat health minutiae all the time lately, but it's what's on my mind the last days. I guess at least I'm doing my part to dispel any illusions anyone might still have harbored that small rodents were uncomplicated, low maintenance pets, or not regularly causing you hundreds of Euro in accumulating vet costs.

Previously in this journal: Monday afternoon I last brought Ignatz to the vet and what I thought was some kind of swelling turned out to have been bleeding inside the wound. The vet thought the bleeding must have stopped (or Ignatz would have been dead) and drained off a disturbing amount of blood. I hoped all would be well.

Unfortunately the swelling returned, though at first I wasn't sure (there was still some after the vet removed blood from the wound), but I wasn't home much of yesterday and with a few hours difference it was clear that he had been bleeding again. I didn't manage to get him to the vet yesterday, but it really alarmed me. Such a small animal can only afford to loose so much blood after all, keeping in mind that this is like a plum-sized protrusion, much larger than the original tumor.

So of course this morning I brought him to the vet yet again, and well, the vet confirmed that it had been bleeding again, but also thought that the pressure from the blood against the skin would actually stop the bleeding inside, and it could heal, whereas if he were to drain blood again to relieve the pressure, it would just bleed again, causing Ignatz to loose yet more blood. So the vet didn't actually do anything.

On the one hand this is somewhat reassuring, in that the wound still might heal and the vet doesn't think my rat is slowly bleeding to death, on the other hand it is really kind of awful that there isn't some sort of heroic intervention or anything that could just fix this. But I guess you can't really help small animals as much as even cats or dogs, who at least can get IVs and stuff. And I guess fixing anything inside the wound would require an operation as bad and taxing as the first one, with him just bleeding out more.

On the hopeful side Ignatz is still eating, and today he does seem a bit more lively and attentive than yesterday, I hope because the blood loss slowed or stopped. It's a good thing of course that he sleeps and rests as he's supposed to, with "lively" I mean more things like whether or not he perks up when I'm near the cage and looks for contact rather than being lethargic.

At least he still seems determined to hang in there and to get better, which I hope will count for something. In any case I got a tube with high calorie nutrition paste at the vet's that is intended to help cats and dogs recover after surgery and such, but rats also like the foul smelling stuff (it's some kind of disgusting fatty fish oil mixed with sugary corn syrup and some other stuff and enriched with vitamins and minerals).

It's not like I can do anything else for him, besides offering him the most tasty foods and crossing my fingers.

Because the wound area has been really swollen over the weekend I brought Ignatz in to the vet again this afternoon. I didn't think it was an emergency because he was eating and behaving mostly okay. Turns out it wasn't swelling but the wound had bled internally. So the vet drew a disturbingly huge amount of blood from the wound in a syringe. (It was at least a full human size syringe, and that from a rat!) The vet said however that the bleeding itself must have stopped already, otherwise Ignatz wouldn't still be alive. I hope he's right about the bleeding, and that Ignatz will now heal okay. In any case I suspect Ignatz is now more comfortable without all that blood in the wound pressing on things, though once we got home he just hid in his house. But then I suppose I would feel really crappy with such blood loss too. If you have any good health vibes to spare, Ignatz could certainly use them.

Ignatz is doing better. He's started to venture out of his house more often, picked different sleeping spots sometimes and has been coming out to greet me when I'm near the cage doors, so he's not that lethargic anymore. He's really annoyed with the antibiotics though, and unfortunately spit some of the medicine out. I had a bit more than needed in the needle-less syringe I shoved into his mouth (the vet said I shouldn't give it mixed into food), so I hope I got something like a dose into him.

Meanwhile Emil is not pleased at all with the current state of affairs either, because parts of his cage are closed to him, and things are much more boring too, what with no brother to snuggle and scuffle with.

I tried to take photos of Ignatz' throat, but I he didn't really cooperate with me, so I only have a picture that shows one side of his shaved throat and the fetching silver glitter stuff they covered him in (some sort of disinfectant I assume), and a blurry one taken through the cage door as he was drinking.

( post surgery photos of Ignatz )