DawntheSnipe
Well-Known Member
Good evening all,
I'm hoping the more experienced rat caregivers here can help me decide on a good course of action...
Up until last Sunday, I had two girls from the same litter, who were not quite eleven months old. Casey is a normal, healthy, athletic young lady, but sadly, her sister Ellie was not. Ellie was a runt, and had always had poor motor control, particularly of her hind feet. Despite that, she had a bubbly, friendly personality and was very active. I used to say Ellie loved everyone and everything. She was truly a sweetheart.
Over the past couple of months, I'd noticed she would sit in a corner and stare when she was out for playtime. I took her in to the vet, and we concluded that she was having minor seizures. The vet wanted to adopt a wait-and-see approach, and asked me to bring her back in if there were any changes. That was at the end of July.
Ellie did not have any noticeable changes to her behavior until last Sunday evening. My husband and I were out walking when my son called us to say that the rats had been fighting and now Ellie was acting strange. We came straight home and found that Ellie was rushing around the bottom of the cage with sort of a staring look. I took her to the couch to check her over for injuries where she continued to run back and forth. It took me several minutes to determine that she didn't have any physical injuries, but her behavior worried me so much that I took her upstairs to ask my husband what he thought. We were only upstairs for a couple of minutes when she began having violent seizures.
When they did not abate after a few minutes, we put her in the carrier and headed down to the emergency vet. Poor little Ellie. She was gasping when we got there, so they took her back right away, but her poor little heart stopped as the vet was examining her.
Losing Ellie like that has been hard on our human family members. I can only imagine what it's been like for her sister, who is all alone now. The first two nights, I put her in a smaller cage in our bedroom, so she could at least hear our breathing. She has seemed to prefer her own cage, though. We have been spending extra time with her, but I know there are many hours in the day that she is all alone. I'm concerned about her getting sick from loneliness and grief. She has been the alpha in our mischief for several months; being alone seems to bother her.
One of my first priorities this week has been to find some young rats so Casey will have the company of her own kind soon. I found a breeder with six-week-old girls and brought three of them home Thursday night.
Here's my quandary. Casey lives on our first floor, in my home office, where I have a HEPA filter. However, our first floor is an open-plan design, so the HEPA filter is probably not operating at maximum efficiency.
The baby girls are upstairs in our spare bedroom with another HEPA filter, with the door closed. I know the ideal situation is to have them quarantined in another building, and preferably to have someone else take care of them, but that's really not possible for us. Our house is not very big from an atmospheric standpoint--only 1800 square feet.
My question is, is this an effective situation for a quarantine, or am I wasting my time? Would it be more risky to Casey's health to keep her all alone for another two weeks, or to take the chance of these babies getting her sick by putting their cage next to hers (I'm probably going to take intros very slow in either case, since the babies are so young)?
I'm trying very hard to make the right decision for Casey's sake. Every night I've put her in her cage at bedtime, it's torn at my heart to know she will have to face hours by herself. I don't think she had ever been alone for more than an hour at a time in all of her life, before last Sunday...
Thank you all in advance.
I'm hoping the more experienced rat caregivers here can help me decide on a good course of action...
Up until last Sunday, I had two girls from the same litter, who were not quite eleven months old. Casey is a normal, healthy, athletic young lady, but sadly, her sister Ellie was not. Ellie was a runt, and had always had poor motor control, particularly of her hind feet. Despite that, she had a bubbly, friendly personality and was very active. I used to say Ellie loved everyone and everything. She was truly a sweetheart.
Over the past couple of months, I'd noticed she would sit in a corner and stare when she was out for playtime. I took her in to the vet, and we concluded that she was having minor seizures. The vet wanted to adopt a wait-and-see approach, and asked me to bring her back in if there were any changes. That was at the end of July.
Ellie did not have any noticeable changes to her behavior until last Sunday evening. My husband and I were out walking when my son called us to say that the rats had been fighting and now Ellie was acting strange. We came straight home and found that Ellie was rushing around the bottom of the cage with sort of a staring look. I took her to the couch to check her over for injuries where she continued to run back and forth. It took me several minutes to determine that she didn't have any physical injuries, but her behavior worried me so much that I took her upstairs to ask my husband what he thought. We were only upstairs for a couple of minutes when she began having violent seizures.
When they did not abate after a few minutes, we put her in the carrier and headed down to the emergency vet. Poor little Ellie. She was gasping when we got there, so they took her back right away, but her poor little heart stopped as the vet was examining her.
Losing Ellie like that has been hard on our human family members. I can only imagine what it's been like for her sister, who is all alone now. The first two nights, I put her in a smaller cage in our bedroom, so she could at least hear our breathing. She has seemed to prefer her own cage, though. We have been spending extra time with her, but I know there are many hours in the day that she is all alone. I'm concerned about her getting sick from loneliness and grief. She has been the alpha in our mischief for several months; being alone seems to bother her.
One of my first priorities this week has been to find some young rats so Casey will have the company of her own kind soon. I found a breeder with six-week-old girls and brought three of them home Thursday night.
Here's my quandary. Casey lives on our first floor, in my home office, where I have a HEPA filter. However, our first floor is an open-plan design, so the HEPA filter is probably not operating at maximum efficiency.
The baby girls are upstairs in our spare bedroom with another HEPA filter, with the door closed. I know the ideal situation is to have them quarantined in another building, and preferably to have someone else take care of them, but that's really not possible for us. Our house is not very big from an atmospheric standpoint--only 1800 square feet.
My question is, is this an effective situation for a quarantine, or am I wasting my time? Would it be more risky to Casey's health to keep her all alone for another two weeks, or to take the chance of these babies getting her sick by putting their cage next to hers (I'm probably going to take intros very slow in either case, since the babies are so young)?
I'm trying very hard to make the right decision for Casey's sake. Every night I've put her in her cage at bedtime, it's torn at my heart to know she will have to face hours by herself. I don't think she had ever been alone for more than an hour at a time in all of her life, before last Sunday...
Thank you all in advance.
