Please welcome Oleksii and Norm

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SqueakingJellybean

Mission Control -- All is ratness
Joined
Apr 12, 2013
Messages
276
Location
Ontario, Canada
Our sweet boy Arthur passed not long ago. His friend, James Bean, has been lonely. We managed to find some friends via the Guelph Humane Society, which is also where Arthur and James Bean came from.

The new boys were listed as being a year old, which we figured was perfect. Imagine my surprise when they turned out to be 6-8 months old! In an odd quirk of the universe, they had been found by the roomie of the vet tech who was helping with James Bean's recheck (it's just a fatty deposit, so he should be okay). Apparently the roomie had been walking in the woods, when she found six very obviously domestic rats in a hole. At the vet tech's direction, she bundled them up and got them to the Humane Society. I suspect what happened, just because of the timing, is that a student finished their year, had to move, and couldn't take the ratties along, opting instead to do a stupid thing and abandon them in the woods.

The shelter tends to give names based on TV shows or movies, so the four boys and two girls were named Carla and Diane, Sam Malone and Dr. Crane, and Norm and Cliff. We chose Norm and Cliff.

We picked them up and took them straight to our vet (Dr. Makkapati at Waterloo West Animal Hospital is pretty fantastic, by the way). They got a dose of Revolution each. While the vet was examining Cliff, he was putting some serious effort in getting back to his brother. "Oh, he is very strong!" she commented. He also has about 70g on his brother. Norm, meanwhile, lost about 20g between the time the shelter vet checked him and when our vet checked him.

Strong, smart, fast, brave, and friendly-- Cliff has had his name changed to Oleksii, after Oleksii Novikov, a Ukrainian professional strongman who displays all of those qualities, and is one of the youngest men in the sport. Norm just started answering to Norm, so we kept his name.

Please welcome Norm (PEW) and Oleksii (black and white, testing his strength against the litterbox.

Edited to add a picture of Norm in the space pod so you can get a better idea of just how tiny they are.
 

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  • Norm in the space pod May 2022.JPG
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Oleksii went through his Trouble-puff Banishing Ritual yesterday. Once he's all healed up and there's no longer a possibility of accidental future rats, he can live with Dolly and Lynda. Everything went smoothly; I was told that his vital signs were strong and stable through the whole procedure. He's recovering nicely, even opting to come out for a few minutes of playtime. He got tired pretty quickly, though-- anesthesia can take a bit to recover from, and it's hard running around when you've just had your trousers altered. He's napping in his favourite soft hide at the moment.

(In case you haven't seen the other threads, Norm passed due to heart failure. Not long after, James Bean passed due to aggressive cancer. A rat alone is a sad creature, so we've adopted ladies and had Oleksii neutered so they can all be together.)
 
We had a bit of an unexpected setback with Oleksii.

Most rats we've had have enjoyed it when we change up their cage items and layout. Apparently, Oleksii is not one of those rats! We just moved two things-- his space pod and igloo-- switching their positions in his house. I washed his favourite hide, just to keep down the chance of infection (he's still healing from his neuter last week). He had no time for the substitute hide that was in his house for all of fifteen minutes. Once his favourite was put back in, and once he realized his stuff had been moved, he protested mightily. Oleksii flung his floor- fabric around, pushed his hide all over the place, then went inside and refused to speak to us.

I put his pod and igloo back where they belong, but he's still grumpy. He's at least taking treats from me, but he's reluctant to come out; when he does, it's just for a minute or two before running back to make sure everything is where he left it.

He also doesn't like the sound of a feather pillow hitting the floor. (It was sitting on a platform he wanted to explore, so I chucked it on the floor for a couple minutes. I've done that before, but it must have hit in just the wrong way to make a sound he didn't like.) That freaked him out a lot, and he's been very nervous around me for a couple of days now. He would barely even speak to me until I showed him the pillow and let him make sure nobody was inside it. We don't throw folks around here.

He's coming around a little, but I think he's going to take a lot of work. More and more, I just want to find whoever treated him and his siblings so badly and push them in front of a rampaging T. rex.

I suspect he's maybe a little grouchy that we got him neutered-- and on top of that, devastated that we did not immediately hand him over to his ladyfriends. It's hard to explain "just wait, happening soon" to pets in a way they understand.

Four more nights, and he can meet the ladies face to face.
 
Oleksii is doing much better today. There were a lot of Cheerios given, and a lot of quiet talking. Also, a LOT of poo! He might have had some intestinal discomfort, despite normal defecation for the first few days post-op.

He still doesn’t like his stuff moved. He is such a teenager that way.
 
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