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The Rat Lady’s Corner
To see pictures of Debbie’s rats click here.
I have been so busy lately I just didn’t feel I could take the time to write. One of the last things I did was complete the new 13th edition of my Rat Health Care booklet, and last week I got the first copies from the print shop and sent them out to the people waiting for orders. Now that that is done, I’m determined to take time to write an update.
I’m now down to 13 rats. At the beginning of the year I had 3 of
my old hairless boys left. I had to
euthanize Zeke Jan. 4 because of respiratory
distress. I had treated him for an
enlarged heart since October 2006—that was one year and three months of
successful treatment! His
autopsy showed his heart was not only enlarged but had developed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and he
also had a pituitary tumor. Then I
had to euthanize
Good thing I still have one hairless boy left, my Dumbo, Rascal, who is as much of a rascal as ever. He runs all over the living room during playtime, climbs onto my husband’s lap several times (Larry always puts him back on the couch but Rascal wants to get to Larry’s end table), usually visits Rhino, the hairless guinea pig, at least once and mildly harasses him for a bit, and tries to go everywhere and get into everything. Meanwhile, his roommate Grant stays on the couch with me, and Rascal usually comes onto the couch several times to play with both of us a little.
Beans and Ivan are getting old now. They are now 33 months old. Beans is doing quite well, despite his weak back legs. I have just started him on the heart medications with the assumption that pretty much all old rats have some heart disease, and he seems to have a bit more energy. I am treating Ivan for symptoms of a pituitary tumor, which started Feb. 29, and he responded well after a couple days and is now symptom free. Chances are he will have a few more months. Beans and Ivan lost their roommate and benign dictator, Stella, on Feb. 26. She had been doing well on treatment for lung and heart disease but suddenly had very severe labored breathing. Her autopsy showed that despite long-term treatment with doxycycline (over a year) her lungs were very bad. She also appeared to have some liver failure. Stella was 3 years old. When I adopted Stella I had to have her spayed because she was so aggressive she would not accept other rats. After her spay I was able to introduce her to Beans and Ivan, and some other rats, but she was still a very dominant aggressive girl!
My other current rats are Roscoe, who is 2 years old and who lives alone despite being neutered because of his aggression, Claire (20 mo.), Belle, her daughter (18 mo.), and Timothy (2 years) who live together, my 2 Siamese boys Chai, Algernon, and Skittles (1 year old) who live together, and Porthos and Aramis, who I adopted last Nov. and are probably about a year old.
I spent this morning trying to get the promo for a new TV show on the Fox channel off the air. In the promo clip, somehow a rat—presumable a wild rat—happens to wander into a microwave oven and somehow the door is closed and somehow the oven turned on. Then it shows a group of men supposedly watching the rat being cooked. At they end, one of them says, “That was the longest 9 minutes of my life,” and another one says something like, “It looked like he was enjoying it for the first few minutes.” This is supposed to be funny? They couldn’t do this with a bunny or a squirrel, but apparently a rat—being “vermin” —seems to be fair game. The new show, Unhitched, is supposed to air in March. Lots of people called and emailed with complaints and a few days later I heard from a representative of the Humane Society of the United States that Fox had agreed not to show the scene.
Today I also wrote a short Ode to the Rat for the Shanghai Star, a
I had to euthanize Nicky Sunday night because his breathing had been getting increasingly labored over the last couple of weeks and he was very restless; right on the edge of respiratory distress. When I shared part of my dinner with him on Sunday and he didn’t want to eat any of it, I knew he was ready to go. Nicky was never a cuddly rat, but he had let me pet him for a few minutes on Friday, and Sunday night when I asked him to let me pet him before euthanizing him, he did. It was very sweet to share that time with him.
Nicky was a black
Six months ago in June, I started Nicky on treatment for congestive heart failure and he did really well for 4 months. In October he started having more respiratory symptoms, and one at a time I added furosemide, aminophylline and prednisone, each of which helped his symptoms. When his symptoms got worse in December I increased some of the medications, but it just wasn’t enough. His autopsy showed that the upper part of his right lung was full of small abscesses, and the rest of his lungs had moderate emphysema. With Nicky’s passing I now have 17 rats.
Well, I finally feel like I have some time to write an
update. On November 1st
I flew to
I have several changes in my rat population to report. I had to euthanize
Nemo on
On October 26, my rex Dumbo boy Limpet started showing neurological symptoms indicative of a pituitary tumor. I started him on prednisone, but it didn’t help him, and his symptoms progressed rapidly. On the morning of Oct. 31 he was pretty unresponsive and not eating, so I euthanized him. His autopsy showed he did have a pituitary tumor. Limpet was one month short of 3 years old (35 months). He was the inspiration for the invention of my snuggle scarf, although for most of his life he was too active to spend any time in one. His last few months, though, he had gotten very cuddly and I miss his affection.
On November 6, Ammo, Nemo’s roommate, also started showing neurological symptoms. He didn’t respond to the prednisone either, and I had to euthanize him on Nov. 9. His autopsy revealed a pituitary tumor. Ammo made it to 3 ½ years of age (42 months), only the second of my rats to reach this advanced age.
So obviously, God knew that I would have an empty cage, and when I got back from MA there was a call from the local humane society on my answering machine about 2 rescue boys. The day before I euthanized Ammo I picked them up, a black hooded and an albino. They had been found in a field as strays, and they were lucky that the people who found them weren’t scared of rats, as the 2 boys came right up to them and asked for food. They are big boys, and it was obvious they had both been well fed. With the help of my friend Marg, who is an animal communicator, the black hooded boy picked the name Porthos, and the albino picked Aramis. Porthos weighed 1 lb 9 ½ oz, and Aramis weighed 1 lb 8 oz. Although Porthos is a little pudgy, they aren’t that fat, they are just big boys! They are both still adjusting to their new home, but they are both friendly. At first Porthos was more trusting than his brother, but Aramis is really coming along.
By the way, Rascal has jumped into Rhino’s habitat several more times, but he doesn’t seem to want to interact with Rhino much. He mostly wants to explore and usually jumps out of the pool pretty quickly to roam the rest of the room.
A Bat Detector
A while back I ordered a Belfry Bat Detector from the website at www.econvergence.net. At first I was very disappointed in it as it didn’t seem to be working right. It would frequently emit a sound like a machine gun, which I know is not was rat laughter sounds like. I emailed the guy who makes the detectors, and he told me that experimentation has shown that in order for the detector to detect rat ultrasounds, you must hold the detector within 8-10 inches of the rat. Also, he said the rapid noise was most likely caused by interference from electrical equipment. The bat detector, after all, is not designed for use indoors, nor for rats. So it has some real limitations. I thought I’d be able to place it somewhere in the room, turn it on and hear everything my rats were saying in ultrasound, but no such luck. However, if you hold it pointed at your rats while you are wrestling with them, you will hear clicks from the detector caused by the rats laughing.
Rascal meets Rhino
Rascal, my hairless Dumbo boy, loves to jump and is an active boy. This evening while out to play on the couch, he jumped from the footstool to the rim of the kid’s wading pool that is the habitat for Rhino, my hairless guinea pig. He stood there for a little while and then jumped down into the pool. I stood by to separate them in case of aggression, but Rascal just seemed to be curious about Rhino. They spent some time “sparring” nose to nose, and then Rascal decided to explore the pool. Rhino followed Rascal as he wandered about. When Rascal jumped up on Rhino’s log tunnel, Rhino actually grabbed Rascal’s tail in his mouth and gave it a playful tug! I really laughed. It looked like Rhino really wanted to play with Rascal, but Rascal really just wanted to explore. Eventually, Rascal got a little more interested in Rhino again and started chasing him around. Rhino didn’t seem to like that so I decided to take Rascal out of the pool. It will be interesting to see if Rascal goes to visit Rhino again in the future.
8/3/07
Beans’ Adventure
This morning when gave breakfast to everybody (grapes this morning), I could not find Beans in his cage. Beans lives with Stella, Limpet, Nicky and Ivan in my giant round cage, which I leave open so they can climb to the top. Normally they do not leave the cage, so I knew that Beans must have lost his balance and fallen out.
I started calling him and looking around on the floor in the living room. No luck. I told Larry that Beans was missing and he came to help look. While I moved on to look in other adjoining rooms, Larry looked under the cages next to the giant cage (which I had already done). However, when he called Beans, he heard a rustling noise nearby where the bags of rat blocks stood (I buy the 40-lb bags, and there were 2, 14% protein and 18% protein). He moved one of the bags that was almost empty to see if Beans was behind it, but he wasn’t. Then Larry looked into the bag and saw Beans standing at the bottom asking to come out!
The bags are about 3 feet tall, so how did Beans get into the bag? Well, an empty cage was standing next to the bag, so he must have climbed up the cage and then fallen into the bag. When I was looking for Beans I had noticed that the top of the bag was folded in on one side, but didn’t realize what it meant. Beans was very glad to be found and happy to get his grape (which I gave to him on the couch so the other rats wouldn’t steal it from him). When I put him near the water bottle in the cage he drank a little but not too much, so he probably wasn’t in the bag that long.
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