In Memory Of My Rats

[sonnyvincent]

The hardest part of having rats is losing them. I think we all have probably learned that or will. We've owned rat for 2 years and 2 months now and we have lost so many. I think because they were almost all from the same pet store, and perhaps they don't live as long as some rats. I want to post a memory for each of them, starting with the most recent. It's been bad this year. We have lost one rat each month since May. Trying to get my sickest rat Dijon through Congestive Heart Failure. Only have two older boys left. Anyway here is my tribute if anyone care to read about my babies. One post for each.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Raphael was one of the two rats we impulsively bought from the Petco adoption table. He and his brother Croix were full grown and very sweet/friendly. They were huge - over 800 grams. We got them in March of 2014. Croix and Raphael were the first rats we let free roam at night in my sister's safe bedroom, but they basically stayed right next to her. In August 2014 Croix unexpectedly got very sick, he was in respiratory distress. In the right photo you see him on the bottom and Raphael trying to comfort him, lying on him.

Croix didn't make it and I'll go into details on his post.

After that, Raphael changed. I knew he could be integrated with other rats, he was very aggressive just at the sight of other rats. So I wanted to give him a lot of time out of the cage. Unfortunately, 4 times during free roam out of nowhere he came up and would bit our faces. I got it twice on the chin and once on the ear, and my sister got it on the ear. We started letting him out alone for free time but he would always end up right back in his cage. Sadly he led a lonely life after that. I could pet him and he wouldn't bite, so I tried to give him as much attention as I could.

In later 2014 he had a long bout of myco and at that time I stopped using bedding in his cage. I used fabrics and that really improved his breathing. He did have periods of time where he made loud breathing sounds but a couple weeks of antibiotics would always do the trick. Normally they stay on for 6 weeks but he never need it. He was so easy to give medicine to, he took it right with his food. He was a little piggy.

In late September he started getting buck grease which I was told on groups was normal for older male rats and also to check for penis plugs which I did often. But I sort of wondered if this meant he was going downhill. He seemed fine- eating, drinking, active. I combed him twice daily because I couldn't imagine the buck grease made him feel comfortable.

Then last month I went in for his nightly treat of baby food. He was just sitting there by the cage door. I opened the cage door he wasn't sitting next to and put down the baby food. I notced he didn't finish his afternoon snack. And he didn't move for the new baby food. And that's when I knew. He didn't at all look dead. But he was. It was a shock to me as he hadn't been having breathing issues at all. At that point I was mad, as we'd lost so many rats and he was NOT one I expected to lose anytime soon. And I felt so sad that he had died alone. I really didn't see any indications when I gave him his earlier snack that there was a problem. And I don't know why he passed. Given that he was off the Petco adoption table, we have no idea how old he was only that he was full grown when we got him. So he might have been 2 1/2 or 3 years old. But I was sad to see him go. He lived 14 months without his brother.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Bradford was a hooded rat and my sister's heart rat. He was one of the most loving rats we've ever had. She let him give her kisses, which basically entailed him licking the inside of her lip lol. He often free roamed and slept next to her under the covers.

In September he contracted an upper respiratory infection or myco. He'd had one myco flair up in August 2014 which was treated with no complications. Other than that he had always been very healthy. He was over 650 grams and very active.

He seemed to be doing better on meds then suddenly took a turn for the worse. He had a runny nose and was chirping. It was a steady and quick decline from there. Took him to vet and she dx'd pneumonia. When his conditioned worsened she prescribed a nebulizer treatment. I feel it hastened his death but that he was not going to make it anyway.

On September 28, he passed. I tried holding him during his last couple days but on that last day he just wanted to be in his cage. I put him back and checked on him after 45 minutes and he was gone. He looked very "normal", just as Raphael did. You wouldn't have known he was gone except that he didn't move. My sister is still devastated. Bradford was a great boy.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Dallas was hairless/naked rat. She was the only rat we didn't get from Petco or Petsmart, but instead a small family owned petstore. They sold their rats as either pets or snake food, sadly. Anyway, we found her in late 2014. She was probably about 10 weeks old at the time.

Dallas had personality. The only person she really liked was my sister. She did not like me. When I'd feed the girls, she would always come up and nip me. Never hurt but was like, why? Why do you hate me? I was intimidated by her really. But she was quirky, She was kind of a bully with the other rats at first but she settled in after a couple months.

She too was always healthy. Thank goodness I never had to try to give her meds.

She was our last girl rat. In late August I found her completely unresponsive in her cage. She was alive but she didn't seem able to move. Her fists were clenched. I frantically asked for help online and the consensus was Pituitary Tumor. I couldn't get her in over the weekend, so I gave her prednisolone. Her condition improved for two days - she started moving and mostly eating on her own. I still fed her every 4-6 hours to make sure she was eating enough.

But Sunday night it was clear the prednisolone was losing it's effect. I took her to a vet first thing Monday morning. It was not my first choice in vets but she actually ended up trying very hard to figure out a way to help Dallas. She called the veterinary school and talked to an instructor. He told her based on Dallas's symptoms she probably would not recover much from PT treatment (which can add a few months to their lives). Had she had earlier symptoms perhaps her fate would have been different.

I took her to the vet hoping to get meds and see improvement, but made the tough decision to have her euthanized. And I found a vet that let me be with her. They gave her anesthesia through a mask until she was unaware, and then the shot. She did not flinch.

I don't have a car so I had to ride the bus home with her remains. I covered her up. By then I guess I've become a bit immune to how I used to be when rats would die (panicked about handling the body). When I got her home I gave her a bath because she was covered in orange something. Then I laid her in her hammock for a half hour before putting her remains away.

For some reason losing Dallas hit me really hard. Mostly I guess that she lost her dignity. She literally hated me but she had to depend on me completely during her last few days. I can't imagine what she was thinking but I suppose the tumor changed her personality some. Or she just didn't have the energy to bite.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Marseille was an albino rat and she was a stinker. When she was a few months old, we had her out in the living room and she escaped. No sign of her for three days until I literally put the love seat on it's back and found her hiding in the corner up above the lining.

She also taught us that rats can jump, and that the toilet seat needs to be down when they're out an about. For the longest time we called her toilet rat. My sister panicked when she found her, but I dried her as well as possible and put her on my chest so she would be warm until she was dry. She ended up just fine.

Marseille was a sweet, enthuastic girl. She loved attention. On July 4, I found her breathing heavily. I was trying to make arrangements to get her to the Emergency Vet because I knew she wouldn't make it and I didn't want to see her suffer. But within 40 minutes of finding her, she passed on my chest. She had a seizure and flipped on her back. I cried and held her awhile. I can get used to them dying on me but I pet her for awhile.

She was just a nice girl. She never fought with the other rats and was easy going and friendly.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Plymouth was from Marseille's litter and was a hooded rat. She was healthy the first 9 months we had her. Never had a myco bout or anything.

But then the poor girl got an ear infection in November 2014 and ended up with a permanent prominent head tilt even though I gave her a 6 week round of antibiotics. In the spring of 2014 she started losing weight. I finally realized that we had an outbreak of mites, although I don't know if that contributed to her health issues. It probably made her very uncomfortable though. This was when I stopped using bedding for all my rats. Treated them all with Revolution and that cleared up the mites, but Plymouth got another ear infection and fought tooth and nail taking her meds. I knew she was about to pass the day it happened. Whenever I gave her her medicine she would have almost a seizure like episode. I put her in a hammock with a warm bottle of water because she was so cold. I left the room for an hour then found her on the bottom of the cage passed away. I felt incredibly guilty. I don't know if she died from the fall or not. I should not have had her in a hammock but that's where she loved to be, and it was the only way I knew to try to keep her warm with the bottled water.

Plymouth was a lot like Marseille- easy going, friendly, enthusiastic. She was a wild girl though, although had to do a lot of coaxing to get her back in the cage after roaming time. But she was nice.

 

[sonnyvincent]

London was one of our first rats. She was hooded and a very nice young lady. When we first got her we didn't know much about rats at all. We started out with an aquarium which the petstore lady said would suffice. But did some research online and within a week got a larger wire rat cage. However it had a plastic bottom and she promptly chewed through it. Finally then found a decent cage.

About a month after we got her London lost a finger, probably got stuck in the cage. At the time we didn't know rats could even see a vet or be treated. Her hand swelled and she had breathing issues for a couple days then she quickly recovered.

She too was always healthy, like most of my girls, in terms of having myco outbreaks. But in November 2014 I found a tumor on the side of her neck, sort of back a little. She is our only girl of all them to get a mammary tumor (I think that's what it's called) even though I've read they're common in female rats.

I called around and the best estimate was $800. Which I could not do at the time. The tumor grew and she was still very active and happy and eating and drinking and playing. But in May of this year the tumor started bleeding and again I called around and still couldn't find an estimate that I could afford. So made the decision that because the tumor was at risk for infection and she was having trouble getting around that I would have her euthanized.

I took her to my favorite vet at the time. She gave London a shot in the leg and made sure she was fully sedated, then took her to give her the final shot. I would have preferred to be with her but that was not an option at that vet and as far as I knew at any other vet (until the situation with Dallas).

We lost her just before or right around when she turned 2.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Paris was also one of our first rats. She was an albino rat. Very nice and friendly, very active. She was the epitomy of health or so we thought. With no indication of trouble, I found her passed away in her cage in December 2014. She was a year and a half old. She looked contorted like she suffered which broke my heart. I was very sorry to lose her, and still wonder to this day what happened to her.

 

[sonnyvincent]

In August 2014 we lost three rats. Olivia was one of them. I got Olivia in early July and was so excited to add her to our large cage of girls. I did not do my research. I had no idea that after 6-8 months you have to be very careful about introducing new rats to a group. Within 45 minutes, Olivia was attacked. Without thinking I put my hand in the cage, grabbed her, and ran to he bathtub. She was bleeding profusely. I felt so terrible about what happened to her; it was fully my responsibility.

At the time I had just received a settlement and I spared no expense in trying to save her. She had a wound on her neck and jaw. Unfortunately I did not find a competent vet to deal with her injuries early enough. And no vet put her on antibiotics long enough. The last vet I took her to acted like she had a chance but her wounds started leaking. She was still energetic and eating, so I was in major denial thinking she might make it. She lost so much weight and looked so raggedy. Someone on the groups thought she was a mouse, she was so small.

On August 17 I noticed she was not moving much and her breathing was labored. I held her on my chest and within an hour she had a seizure, took one last deep breath, and flipped on her back and was gone. It was pretty traumatic for me. And I still feel terribly guilty for my incompetence. She was a beautiful girl. She was always so active even though she was sick. She did let me hold her in my hair a lot, for some reason she liked my hair. I wish I could have saved her. I tried.

One picture was just being she was injured and the other was a few weeks before she passed.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Just days before we lost Olivia, Raphael's cagemate and brother Croix became suddenly ill. He could not breathe well. I tried several suggestions from people online but he was in bad shape. I decided to see if he would improve overnight but when he didn't, and when I knew he was clearly suffering, I took him to the emergency vet for help. The vet there had actually treated rats a lot when he was in veterinarian school, and he told me the truth: Croix had very little chance of making it. We could try, but it probably wouldn't have made a difference. I sadly had to agree to have him euthanized. It wa s Sunday and no other vets were open. The ER vet won't allow you to be with the rat at all, I don't know why-- because they let you be with cats and dogs.

Croix was a really awesome. My sister just loved him.He also gave kisses and was super super friendly. It was heartbreaking to lose him so quickly. Still don't know what happened to him, but judging from how sensitive his brother Raphael was to bedding I think the bedding just aggravated whatever lung issues Croix might have had in the past. (We got him off the Petco adoption table when he was full grown- over 800 grams).

He was the first rat I had to have PTS so it was very very hard for me. I felt maybe I didn't fight for him enough and responsible. But I know he wouldn't have made it. He was in awful shape.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Brooklyn was hooded rat but she also has speckles on her back. She was a darling rat, pretty much my favorite. Everytime I came to the cage she wanted out and for me to hold her and love on her. She would climb around the cage following me. She was a true sweetheart.

She was found one morning, passed away. She had some blood coming out of her mouth. It was completely unexpected and broke my heart. She was the first rat we had cremated. I loved that little doll.

 

[sonnyvincent]

Finally we have Sydney. She passed very early on, in November or December 2013. Again, at that time we were fairly new rat owners and I had no clue vets saw rats. She probably could have been treated and recovered. She was a brown rat with a white tummy. She developed Upper Respiratory symptoms and we did EVERYTHING wrong. We separated her from the other girls worried she would get them sick. Not realizing how stressful that would be for her and that the girls would be already exposed. She was the only rat we got from Petsmart and I still think around here the Petsmart rats are the least healthy- I'm not sure they even sell them anymore. But she ended up dying a few days after coming down with symptoms. We were definitely inept at the time, but after she died I did extensive research and was able to find out ways to treat rats with respiratory problems and also called around and found out several vets actually do see rats. We failed Sydney. She was the third rat we ever had. We got her, London, and Paris all within a week of each other.

 

[sonnyvincent]

We now have two rats from our original 2013-early 2014 group. Dijon is battle Congestive Heart Failure. I'm doing everything I can to keep him alive. I don't want to lose another rat this month, that would make one rat a month since May. And I just want him to feel better. He has his cagemate Thayer who is plump but not overweight, who seems to be doing well although he's been fighting an upper respiratory infection. He's on antibiotics and does well. He refuses to take in food and syringing him is always an interesting task. We also have three younger boys born this summer: Gideon, Malachi, and Samson. They're very sweet. We've decided to stick with boys because we've found once they matured they are the most friendly and chill.