The Rat Fan Club
The Rat Lady’s Corner
To see pictures of Debbie’s rats click here.
I guess it’s long past time to make another entry. It has been very busy here. The morning
of July 3 I noticed
Buddy started getting bare patches on his side, along with the scabs and sores on his tail, and they have mostly kept getting worse despite trying a number of different treatments: amoxicillin, moxidectin, 2 different brands of anti-fungal cream, and the homeopathic remedy sulfur. So far the thing that seems to have helped the most is oral grapefruit seed extract, which is good for fungus and other infections. He’s still on that, and right now I’m trying the homeopathic remedy mercurius.
On July 9 I took in 3 wild Norway rat babies from a rat
person in
At the end of July Munchkin’s wheezing came back, even though he was on amoxicillin, so I switched him to doxy. That only worked for a while, so then I switched him to Baytril and amoxicillin. After 2 weeks I stopped the amoxicillin, but he got very lethargic so I had to put him back on the amoxi August 20. I guess he will need to be on amoxi and Baytril the rest of his life. I figure he is about 15 months old.
On July 19, RATS board member Lee Standlee emailed me a Craig’s List posting from someone who bought a hairless rat at a pet shop who turned out to be pregnant and had eleven babies. The mother rat then died when the babies were twelve days old, so they were partially hand-raised. I figured they would be especially well socialized, and might make good performing rats, and since I need new performers, I contacted her and told her I was interested in adopting two of them. She was about a 1½-hour drive north, but it just so happened Larry had been asked to drive to Yreka, three hours north, for a church meeting, so we could pick the rats up on the way back. Talk about God’s perfect timing! I knew member Carla Humbert had just lost a rat, and likes hairless rats, so I asked her if she might want two hairless boys, and she did. On August 1 when we arrived at the home to get the babies, there were five boys left, and I couldn’t stand to leave one behind, so I took all of them, and decided to keep three. They were almost seven weeks old, and had a very short coat of fuzz, so I could see they were black hooded rats. Because they all had a different number of spots on their backs, I started called them Zero, One, Two, Three and Four. I decided to keep One, Two and Three, because they seemed to bond to me the best, and Carla picked up Zero and Four on August 9.
Now the baby boys are 10 weeks and have already starting urine-marking me! The brats! Looks like I might be neutering some or all of them, but it’s still too soon to tell for sure. They are wild little boys and want to spend all their time roughhousing, so they haven’t been too receptive to the idea of learning tricks yet. I’ve tried introducing them to Munchkin and Puck. At first Munchkin was friendly and licky. Now that the babies are bigger and more boisterous, Munchkin thinks they are just too annoying! Puck was aggressive at first, but he is very slowly warming up to them. It was so cute a few nights ago when I took them all out on the couch. The night before, I had corrected Puck for attacking one of the babies, so this time it was clear he had decided to completely ignore them. He laid down on the couch and absolutely wouldn’t even look at the babies, even when they approached him. It was so funny! I praised Puck and told him what a good boy he was. Since then, he is back to acting aggressive toward them, although not as intensely.
On June 13 I agreed to adopt an older rat because her owner was having trouble managing the rat’s health problems. Lilly is about 2 ½ years old and has had labored breathing with some respiratory distress for 2-3 months. She also has 2 medium-sized mammary tumors, but because of her respiratory problems, is not a good candidate for surgery. Then, on June 9 she started having spastic behavior, which may be from a brain tumor. When she tries to move, her body, and more especially her head, flails around violently. With difficulty she can eventually steady herself so she can hold still to eat and drink, but it is distressing to watch. When she does calm down, she loves being petted. So far, I seem to have her respiratory symptoms controlled pretty well with medications, so she is doing okay for now.
I tried to introduce Lilly to September, who has been alone since Billie died the end of May. At first they were aggressive toward each other, and even when I thought they were getting along, an overnight stay together resulted in what appeared to be bite wounds on both of them. So, I only let them interact on the couch when I could supervise them. Sometimes they cuddled together and sometimes they didn’t.
Then September started going downhill. His breathing became labored and
increasing his heart medications only helped somewhat. Then his nose started
sounding constricted, so I tried prednisone, but that didn’t help. What
did help was aminophylline, but only for a few days.
Then he started refusing to take his oral medications. This morning he
didn’t want to eat the cooked cereal I offered, and then he had a
seizure, so I knew it was time to euthanize him. It turned out he had a very enlarged heart, so the medications obviously
couldn’t help any more. I
started him on the heart medications way back on
I’ve had a few more health problems in my rats. Buddy,
who is probably a little over 2years old, suddenly developed sores all over his
tail. Amoxicillin didn’t
help, and neither did an anti-fungal cream. I’m currently trying a daily
diluted-Betadine soak. I also moved him and Marshall
to a nicer cage. On May 3 I noticed
The attendance at the Rat-stravaganza was very low—only about 20 people came all day. So that was disappointing, but the people who did come had a good time. Rattie Ratz adopted out only 2 boy rats, but they had been at the rescue for 8 months, so they were pretty excited that they got a forever home.
The 2 female deer mice that had been raising did well, and on June 29 I released them in a nice spot at a rock wall under some trees near a stream. On June 22 some neighbor children found 2 more deer mice in a car and brought them to me. This time it was a boy and a girl who were 9 days old and fat and sassy. They are now 19 days old and are doing quite well. I will soon be moving them from their box to the recently vacated aquarium.
I have just lost two of my rats, one very unexpectedly, and
so my population is down to 16. On Thursday night I went out of town for a
Christian weekend experience called The Walk to Emmaus (which was amazing!),
and returned home Sunday night. My husband Larry took care of my rats while I
was gone. On Sunday morning he gave everyone their fruit as usual, and all the
rats seemed fine. But when he went
to give medications at
The next one to go was Billie. The morning of April 23 I was
shocked to see that the right side of her jaw was severely swollen. When I felt
it, it wasn’t just soft tissue swelling, I could feel some bone
involvement, so I suspected she had bone cancer of the jaw. I started her on prednisone and
amoxicillin but it didn’t seem to help. Five days later, as the mass
continued to grow, I also put her on ibuprofen twice a
day to help control any pain. Over the next couple of weeks, the tumor grew
more. She seemed to feel okay, and
continued to eat well, although she quickly lost the ability to eat hard food,
so I was giving her mostly baby formula and Ensure, along with fruit and baby
food. While I was out of town, the tumor opened up and bled. The night of May
17 the open wound had a terrible odor with what appeared to be thick pus. When
I wiped it away, I found it wasn’t pus but necrotic tissue, and the tumor
started bleeding again. After I cleaned Billie up and put her back into her
cage, she was not happy and frantically climbed the bars of the cage. I wasn’t sure if she was
experiencing respiratory distress or pain, but I decided to euthanize
her. The tumor was quite extensive
and had affected the entire lower right side of her jaw, basically destroying
the socket for the incisor there. I
was able to easily pull out the whole curved incisor, which was over an inch
long. Her upper incisors were overgrown and abnormally separated. She also
appeared to have some liver disease. I don’t know how old Billie was.
When I adopted her from the humane society
September is now alone, and his back legs have gotten so
weak I now have him in a small cage with a pad on the floor. I don’t know
exactly how old he is either. I adopted him on
I neutered Basil and was able to successfully introduce him
to
Munchkin did something really funny last week. You might remember that when I let his
group out to play in the playground I have to lock them in or Munchkin jumps
out. So, I put Munchkin, Puck and
On May 6 I was invited to give a lecture to a class of
veterinary technicians at
On May 10, someone brought me a female baby orphaned deer mouse that was brought in by her dachshund. The mouse’s eyes opened 2 days later. My friend Marg Smith cared for the baby while I was gone, and then I picked the mouse up on my way home Sunday night. On May 18, someone else brought me another female deer mouse whose eyes had just opened. She is much smaller than the first one, weighing only 6 g, while the first mouse weighed 8 g when she first arrived. This new mouse has an injured left hind foot. It appears to be missing a toe and is swollen, but other than that she seems healthy.
The last few weeks have been very busy. March 28 was the Wonderful World of Rats
Expo in
A few days before the event, Lee had seen a notice on
Craig’s list from someone in Oroville who had rescued some mice and rats
and needed cages and supplies. She
had dropped some stuff off at his house before leaving town, but hadn’t
had a chance to meet him. As we drove down to event, he called her cell phone
and reported that one of the rats had broken his leg, and it was a compound
fracture (where the broken bone sticks through the skin). I called him back and from his
description, the rat seemed to be doing okay. He was still moving around and eating
normally, and the wound did not look swollen or infected, so I told him we
would stop in Oroville on the way back on Monday to pick up the rat, which we
did. The rescuer was a 16-year-old
named
The next day, Tuesday, I did surgery, and was able to trim off the jagged edges of the bone and put the bone back in place. Two metal clips in the skin seemed to hold the bone in place securely, so I didn’t think any kind of a splint was necessary. In fact, I think splints can cause more problems than they solve, because rats will often work so hard to get them off that they can actually cause damage to the leg. The rat did well after the surgery, and in fact, just 2 days after the surgery, I saw him use that foot to gently scratch his face! By Saturday he was putting a little bit of weight on the foot! When I let the rat out on the couch on Sunday, I couldn’t believe what he did. He started vigorously marking the couch with his hands and sides! And when I say vigorously, I mean like a little speed demon! There is absolutely no way you would know he had a broken leg! So, obviously he is doing very well. I was surprised by the marking behavior in a rat who looks so young, because it is a sign of high testosterone levels. I will probably need to neuter him before I can introduce him to some of my other rats. He doesn’t seem to be too interested in being held or petted at this point. I have named him Basil.
On April 10, I ran a booth for RATS at the Love Your Pet
Expo in
On Feb. 24 I got a call from
the humane society. A week earlier,
animal control had picked up a stray rat in a parking lot and taken him to the
shelter. They said at first he
seemed friendly, but then he started biting people. I picked him up the next day. He is a half-grown Himalayan, maybe 5-6
months old, who is very touchy and puffy, so it seems clear the reason for his
aggression isn’t so much fear as too much testosterone. Once I got him home, he would barely let
me touch him. I neutered him on the
27th so it’s still too soon to expect to see much of a change
in his behavior. I named him
Puck is growing up.
He has gone from 265 g to 480 g (over a lb) and is no longer so hyper,
so Munchkin is relieved. (Munchkin
has gone from 387 g to 471 g in 4 months.) Munchkin doesn’t seem as
interested in doing tricks anymore, so it’s unlikely he will be a
performing rat. Puck has shown some
interest in tricks, but he seems a little too shy to perform in public. Still, that’s what I thought about
Caramel at first. Now, when I get
the 3 of them out on the couch, sometimes Munchkin wants to be petted, but most
of the time he hangs out on the stool by my feet under the afghan.
Hoppy, my little dwarf girl, now spends much of her time out on the couch on my lap under the afghan. She will even let me pet her some. This is a nice change from when she sat on the arm of the couch and just sort of zoned out. I am starting to teach Caramel how to push a bowling ball.
So my rat population is now
up to 17. I don’t know for
sure how old Billie and September are, but I’ve had September a year and
half and he was at least a year old when I got him, so he has to be at least 2
½, and could be much older.
I’ve had Billie almost a year, and she seemed older than a year when
I got her, so she is likely to be about the same. Buddy and Marshall are probably
26 months old. Jimmy and Schnozzle just turned 2 years old. Valentine is 17 months old, Mo’Blue is 15 months old, and Peanut is 14 months
old. Caramel, Cotton and Hoppy just turned 1
year old. Sparky is probably 15
months old.
I recently adopted a rat under very strange circumstances. On Saturday Jan. 23 I got a call from a young man, Tom, who works at my local CVS Pharmacy, which is open 24 hours a day. He said he works the graveyard shift, and early that morning a customer asked him if he knew they had a rat in the store. He found the rat sitting on a case of water bottles. It was a small agouti hooded rat, very friendly, and he took it home with him. He called to ask if I would take the rat, and I said yes. Amazingly, the prior Sunday another rat had been left in the store! This was a young albino rat who was left in a Petco box in a shopping cart near the pharmacy department. That rat was returned to Petco. It seems likely that the rats were left by the same person, although why someone would choose to leave rats in a pharmacy is a real mystery.
Tom called me to
ask if I would take the little agouti hooded rat. I asked if he knew the gender
of the rat, and he said he thought it was a girl. Because I thought I could
probably introduce her to Munchkin and Aurora, I said yes. He agreed to bring
the rat over, but I didn’t know he would be riding a bicycle. He put the
rat inside a little box and tucked it into his backpack, so the rat must have
had an interesting ride. When Tom took the rat out of the box he turned out to
be a boy. I named my new rat Puck, because is lively and charming, and I will
still be introducing him to Munchkin and Aurora. I plan to neuter Puck because
although I think Aurora is too old to get pregnant, Puck keeps trying to mount
her, even though she is not in heat. Puck is very playful and he and Munchkin
are already playing together well, although Puck is so lively that Munchkin
sometimes needs a break. I’ve
decided that Munchkin is probably close to 8 months old, so compared to him,
Puck is just a pip-squeak. Puck
brings my rat population up to sixteen.
When I put Munchkin in the playground to play now I have to lock him in, otherwise he keeps jumping on the floor. He is continuing to learn his tricks well, although it took him longer than I expected to really understand what I wanted him to do. Although he seemed to learn the tricks the first time, during later sessions we had to start all over again, so he didn’t seem to be remembering what he’d done before. He reminds me of a dog I used to have, a yellow lab named Ketti (her picture is in my rat care book) who was really hyper. She was also very smart, but took a while to learn things because she was a little scattered and had trouble concentrating. However, compared to Puck, Munchkin doesn’t seem that hyper any more!
Even though Munchkin is learning his tricks well, the performance at my church’s children’s group on Jan. 19 did not go well. I didn’t realize that they open each meeting with lots of singing, clapping, and even yelling and cheering. When I asked the rats to perform, no one would do their tricks, and Cotton didn’t even want to come out at all. However, I did get Caramel and Munchkin to pose in some costumes (not as many as usual) and Munchkin and Hoppy were pretty happy to sit in my lap while the children petted them one at a time. The kids enjoyed the show, and I plan to do it again next fall, but next time I will be sure the rats go first, before the all the ruckus.
I attempted surgery on Pinkus, but ended up letting him just go to his final rest because his bladder was so bad. Not only did it look cancerous, it was also filled with large stones. Poor little guy. (Pathology showed it was indeed bladder cancer.) I only had him for a week and he was only a little over a year old.
This last weekend I visited my friend Barbara in
September and Billie are now mostly getting along okay, although last night I had to yell at Billie because she was beating up poor Sept, who is about twice as big as she is. However, his weak back legs definitely put him at a disadvantage. Good news, though, Sept is now sleeping in the upper hammock with Billie all the time now, so his legs aren’t stopping him from doing what he wants to.
Munchkin and
Munchkin, my hairless Dumbo boy, is very smart. The huge cage I also use as the rat playground has a large plastic kids wading pool as the base, and the rats can walk around the rim of the pool and climb up to the top of the cage. If a particular rat doesn’t stay in the cage he gets locked inside the cage for playtime. A few days after I adopted Munchkin, and he had been in the playground about 3 times, he jumped off the rim off the pool onto the floor tiles by the front door. The tiles are higher than the wood floor and so a little closer to the rim of the pool. Larry saw him jump down and said, “Munchkin’s on the floor.” I sit on the couch, where my back is to the playground, so I stood up, turned around and said in a stern voice, “Munchkin?” He immediately jumped back up on the rim of the pool! I told him he was a good boy and he ran around the rim and got back into the cage. The next night he did it again, and once again, when I yelled at him, he jumped right back up onto the pool rim. Three days later the same thing happened again, and this time I walked over the cage and told him that rats who didn’t stay in the playground got locked inside where they couldn’t climb up on top of the cage. I thought that solved the problem because he didn’t jump out again…until a few days ago, about 2 months since the first time he did it. This time I noticed that he jumped out just a few minutes before it was time for him to come on the couch. During playtime, I try to give each group of my rats a half hour in the playground and then a half hour on the couch with me. After Munchkin jumped out and then jumped back into the cage, I realized he might have gotten impatient to switch places. I told him I’d take him out in a few minutes, but I didn’t want to do it right away, because I didn’t want to think I was rewarding him for jumping onto the floor. The next night he did it again, about 5 minutes before it was time to switch. I’m not sure what my next move will be!
About a month ago I added a new house to the playground made of woven grass. When it was Munchkin’s turn to be in the playground he turned out to be quite the little nest builder. He spent his time pulling pieces of grass out of the house and carrying them up the tube to the house on the top of the cage. One night when it was time to take Munchkin from the playground to the couch, I caught him with a mouthful of grass. When he saw it was time to go to the couch, he had a dilemma. He couldn’t decide if he should continue to the house to drop off his mouthful of grass or get into the basket I was holding out to transport him to the couch. He just stood there for several moments looking from the basket, to the house and back again. Finally, because I didn’t want the shredded grass on the couch, I made up his mind for him and pushed him toward the house where he proceeded to drop his load of grass and then bound out and get in the basket. Now I wish I had been more patient and waited to see what he would have done on his own.
I have been working on teaching Munchkin some tricks. The first trick I tried to teach him was the basket trick, where they pull up a little basket on a string to get the treat in the basket. This is usually a pretty easy trick to teach rats, but Munchkin didn’t seem to be interested. He would eat the treat if I just handed it to him, but he wouldn’t put his nose into the basket to get the treat. Oh, well, I thought, some rats just don’t like to do tricks. A few weeks later I showed him another trick which is usually very easy to teach a rat: to get a treat out of a small picnic basket with a flip-up lid. Most rats learn how to push up the lid with their nose very quickly, but once again, Munchkin didn’t have any interest in getting the treat out of the basket. But that started me thinking. Maybe it’s not that he didn’t want to do tricks. Maybe he doesn’t like putting his head inside things. So I decided to try a different trick. I got out the little piano to see if he might like to learn to play it. Well, he was happy to sit in front of the piano and take treats, and it didn’t take him long to rest his hands on the keys. And within just a few minutes he was pressing hard enough on the keys to make the sound, and he got the idea very quickly. In just one training session, only about 5 minutes, he was playing the piano! Wow! I’ve never had a rat learn that trick so fast. The next trick I tried him on is pulling a string to ring a bell. I showed him the string, lifted it up and wiggled it and when he sniffed it, I said, “Good,” and gave him a treat. After repeating this just few times he got interested and started sniffing and putting his hand on the string. While he hasn’t learned the whole trick yet, in just a few minutes he definitely learned that I wanted him to do something with the string. Next I showed him a bowling game with a ball bearing sitting on a perch. All he has to do is give the ball a push and it will roll down toward the pins. Once again, he quickly learned that I wanted him to do something with the ball. Within a few minutes he actually picked the ball up with his hands! Wow! I’m going to have to try him on basketball next! I have a performance scheduled for a kid’s group at my church on the 19th, so I hope he’ll be willing to do his tricks there.
It’s been a busy month with several changes in my rat
population. On Nov. 1, Skittles was
lethargic so I added amoxicillin to the medications he was already on (doxy, enalapril and atenolol). The next
day he seemed a little better, but the following day he was worse again. That night I tried to put him in a small
cage on a heating pad, but he vigorously objected to that, so I just left him
on the couch with a heating pad under the couch cover. Although he didn’t
have any obvious problems breathing, in hindsight, his objection to the small
cage was probably a sign of claustrophobia, which often accompanies respiratory
distress. I woke up about
About the time Skittles died, his brother Chai started wheezing, so I tried him on different
medications. He was already on doxy, enalapril and atenolol, and seemed to be recovering well from the
coordination problems caused by his stroke. I tried aminophylline,
furosemide, and prednisone, but none of them seemed
to help his wheezing. I put him on Baytril, which he hated so much I had to force him to take
it, but that didn’t help him either.
After about 10 days his appetite started getting very picky. This is often a symptom of congestive
heart failure. I tried increasing
his heart medications, but that didn’t seem to help much. After about
another week, he started getting very congested. I gave him the decongestant psuedophedrine, which helped his congestion, but his appetite
continued to get worse. On the 19th, the only thing he would eat was
avocado. I finally had to euthanize him at
So that meant September was now alone. I thought maybe he would be more receptive of Billie, but he actually seemed to be more aggressive toward her again. They could still be on the couch together, because they weren’t really trying to hurt each other, but neither of them would back down and they just kept picking at each other. I finally just started putting Billie into September’s cage, which is quite large. Sept’s back legs are quite weak and he doesn’t climb the ramps much any more, but sleeps in a tent hammock on the floor. Billie is nearly half the size of Sept, but still quite mobile so I knew she could sleep in the upper hammock and get away from him if she needed to. She’s been living is his cage for 2 days so far, and although I have heard a little bit of squeaking, they seem to be mostly avoiding each other. Hopefully they will make up soon.
On Nov. 6 I got a call from the Butte Humane Society saying they had gotten in a hairless rat with a lump on his side, which they thought might be a tumor. I went down to look at him and discovered the lump was just a couple small abscesses. But I could hardly resist adopting a gorgeous friendly young male hairless Dumbo! The shelter also had 3 other rats at that time. A small white Dumbo male, a large black hooded male, and a black female. The large male was in a tiny hamster cage. They had put the hairless male, who had just come in, in with the small white male, and they were fighting. The Dumbo male had come in a few days earlier with the black female and another rat, who had already been adopted. The surrender form for the black female and white male said they had been used to breed snake food, and the female hadn’t been handled much. When I got the female out of her box to see how friendly she was, I found out she was wheezing. So I ended up adopted her as well as the hairless boy. I went home and gathered 3 cages, water bottles, nest boxes, and some blocks and rabbit food and took them back to the shelter as a donation. I transferred the large hooded boy into one of the cages I brought and he was very happy to be in a cage that was large enough for him to actually move around in! The shelter staff said they tried to handle the rats daily and felt that the 2 remaining males were friendly enough to be adopted. I suggested they see if they could introduce them together, and list them on Petfinder.com.
Shortly after I arrived home with my 2 new rats, my friend Marg (an animal communicator) called on the phone. When I
told her about the new rats, she said they were sending her the names they
wanted to be called. The boy wanted
the name Munchkin, and the girl Aurora.
I thought the names fit them well, so that is what they are. Munchkin is a typical young male, lively
and mostly interested in exploring and interacting with other rats, but he is
friendly and will come out of his cage onto my hands, and kiss me on the lips.
Things have been pretty quiet in my rat colony the last 6 weeks. Sparky is still reluctant to come out of his cage, but I can pick him up. He’s not happy about it and struggles a little, but once he is out he enjoys exploring the playground and visiting me on the couch. Now that it has been 8 weeks since his neuter I’ve started introducing him to my 3 young spayed girls. I only put them in the basket I use for transport together, and I was astonished to see that the one who was aggressive—very aggressive—wasn’t Sparky but Cotton! She is the boss of the girls and she almost instantly puffed up her fur and flew at Sparky. I quickly picked him up out of the way, so I don’t think he even knew what happened! Obviously the introductions will take a while.
I’ve been trying to introduce Billie (her roommate Bella died in late June) to my 3 oldest boys, September, Skittles and Chai. I figure they are closest to her age, although she’s probably a little younger. Skittles and Chai are 32 months old, and September is probably a little less. They all have weak back legs at this point. The boys have been pretty aggressive to her, and she has shown some aggression to them too, but after a few weeks they can all be on the couch together for about 15 minutes as long as I closely supervise them and separate them when they start to get too huffy. Maybe in another few weeks I can move Billie in with them. Now that she is alone, she has become more cuddly with me (she was not cuddly at all when she arrived with Bella), so I’m sure she would appreciate the company.
Just a few days ago, I suspect Chai had a stroke. All of a sudden one morning when I gave them their fruit, his coordination was very bad. He was shaky and had a tendency to fall over. However, there has been no change in his personality or desire or ability to eat. I suspect a stroke rather than a pituitary tumor because of the rapid onset of his neurological problems. He can no longer climb to their hammock, so I gave him a tee-pee-style hammock on the floor which he now uses. This morning September was sharing it with him, but Skittles was up in the regular hammock. September is the boss, so it’s good to see him taking care of Chai.
October 3 was our 4th Annual Rat-stravaganza at the Sacramento SPCA. The turnout was low (less than 50 people), but most everyone who came was serious about rats and seemed to really enjoy the presentations. The Rattie Ratz Rescue Rattery adopted out 13 rats at the event, which made it a very good day.
In the last month I lost one rat and adopted a new one. I
finally had to euthanize Jewel on August 2. She hadn’t been eating much on her
own during the night, but had always been eager to eat in the morning when I
offered her soft food. That morning, however, she didn’t want to eat
much, and then when she tried to settle in her favorite spot on the couch, she
was very restless and just couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Her cancer
had progressed so much and she had lost so much weight I had just been waiting
for some sign from her that she wasn’t feeling well to euthanize her. Up until then, she had seemed to be happy
and comfortable. What a trooper she was. She was with me for 2 weeks short of a
year, and already had the mammary cancer when she arrived, which I treated with
tamoxifen. Shortly after she arrived she also
developed neurological symptoms, which I suspected were caused by a pituitary
tumor. She still had some neurological problems most of the time she was here,
but they gradually got better. Her autopsy showed she had a small pituitary
tumor, so maybe the tamoxifen kept it from growing
too. (A rat owner in
It wasn’t long after Jewel’s death that I filled
her empty cage. On August 5 I got a call from the Butte Humane Society here in
I started trust training using baby food. Sparky really liked the ground turkey, and was soon willing to come to the door of the cage to eat the baby food off a spoon. Most of the time when I approached his cage he would run to the back to hide, but sometimes, especially after I closed the door of his cage, he would stand at the front of the cage, puff up his fur and make puffing noises at me, telling me that he would like to bite and dominate me. It was very interesting. On August 13 he started wheezing, so I started him on amoxicillin, and I was very glad when his wheezing went away quickly, as I planned to neuter him on the 16th. After his neuter, I continued with the trust training. It has now been 2 ½ weeks since his neuter, and he is making good progress. He no longer puffs at me, and will let me pet him while he eats. He is also willing to put his hands on my knee and lick the baby food from my finger with no desire to bite me. He will also now cautiously climb into the basket that I use for rat transport, and last night I brought him out on the couch with me for the first time. After exploring for about 15 minutes, I was amazed that he climbed onto my chest, gave me a few licks, and allowed me to pet him for 10 minutes! Most of my other rats won’t do that. I assume that he was hungry for contact and attention. He still won’t let me pick him up, but hopefully it won’t be long.
Now, some of you might be wondering why I would be doing a booth at a reptile show. As president of the non-profit Rat Assistance & Teaching Society (RATS), I was hoping that we could educate a large number of snake owners about the benefits of buying frozen rodents for snake food instead of live rodents. Unfortunately, we only gave out about 30 handouts, but we discovered that most of the snake breeders who had booths there were not only willing to give our handouts to their customers, they were excited about it. So that will give us one more way to educate snake owners. For more information about RATS and this campaign go to www.petrats.org.
I have another good story about my chiropractor helping a
rat. On Monday I got a call from
Cindy who lives in Magalia, a town about a half hour drive northeast of here,
who said her daughter Kevina’s rat, Coco, had
been screaming in pain at random intervals for the last few days. The rat did
not have any visible signs of injury so they didn’t know what was causing
her pain. It just so happened I had an appointment with my chiropractor the
next day (I missed one the previous Friday because I wasn’t feeling well,
so it seemed the new appointment was meant to be!). I suggested that
Since my last entry, I have lost 3 more rats, so I am now down to 16. The first to go was Bella. When I adopted her and Billie from the humane society, Bella was extremely thin and had severe labored breathing. After trying all the medications I could for a month, her breathing continued to get worse so I had to euthanize her on June 29. Her autopsy showed she had severe emphysema. I also forgot to mention another symptom she had when I adopted her. Her incisors were white. Normal rat incisors are yellow, so white incisors indicate a serious chronic illness.
The next one to go was Grant, quite unexpectedly. On the
morning of July 4 he had apparently fallen and gotten wedged in a spot in his
cage (his back legs had gotten quite weak). He appeared to have hurt his back so I
treated him with Metacam. (By the way, the dog dose for Metacam is way too small to be of any benefit to rats. Dogs are very sensitive to NSAIDs so their doses are very small. Rats however need doses even higher than
humans. The dose for Metacam for rats should be at least 0.7 ml to 1 ml/lb twice
a day.) That made him more
comfortable, but then I realized he had some severe neurological deficits. He pretty much just layed on his side. I thought he must have had a stroke, but
I didn’t rule out a pituitary tumor (which can hemorrhage and cause
sudden stroke-like symptoms) so I also started him on prednisone. He appeared to get a little better over
the next day or two, and could still eat soft food out of a dish on his own.
Then he gradually got worse and worse and I had to hand feed him. Finally on
the morning of the 10th he did not want to eat and was agitated, so
I decided to euthanize him. He did not have a
pituitary tumor, so I’m pretty sure he had a stroke. Grant was probably about 8 months old when
I rescued him from the local animal shelter
Grant’s roommate, Rascal, was quite upset about losing his friend. He went from being very independent to very clingy. I spent extra time with him and also introduced him to Jewel, who had been alone since losing her roommate May 24. She was a little testy at first, but then accepted him. I was letting them spend most of the day on the couch, and one day I saw him scoot over to her (his back legs were quite weak) and lay his head on her side. It was so sweet. She did lean over and lick him on the head. Rascal’s nose had been getting snuffly, and his breathing more labored. I had started him on enalapril and atenolol for his heart the end of May, because he seemed less active, and that had helped perk him up. He was also on amoxicillin long-term. I would have rather given him doxycycline, but he hated it. However, now I started forcing him to take doxycycline, and the morning of July 21 I also started forcing him to take Baytril, but it was too late. That night he went into respiratory distress. An injection of aminophylline brought him out of it, but about an hour later it happened again. This time I put him in an oxygen chamber, and at first it made him more comfortable. But about a half hour later he was again in distress, so I euthanized him. Turns out he had pretty severe emphysema and abscesses in his lungs. I guess maybe I should have forced him to take doxycycline earlier, but I hated to do that. As it was, he lived a good long life, 33 months. Rascal was a real character and I miss him a lot.
Since Billie was alone I started introducing her to Jumpy,
but it did not go well at first. He
kept attacking her. (Although he hadn’t been aggressive to Jewel at
first, he did then start attacking her.) After about a week,
I took a trip to
Last week I adopted another rat, increasing my rat
population to 19. His name is Jumpy
and he is a black hooded. He is
over 2 years old, and because he has cancer his owners didn’t want to
deal with it any more. Four months
ago Jumpy had surgery to remove 2 tumors, one of which looked cancerous. Sure enough, the cancer grew back, but
fairly slowly. When Jumpy’s owners brought him by on
When I picked up Bella and Billie from the humane society last month, Billie had scabs and a benign mammary tumor on her chest and Bella had severe labored breathing and was bone thin (100 g [¼ lb] less than Billie, who is the same size), and they both had lice! I treated them with Revolution, which quickly cleared up Billie’s scabs, and I removed Billie’s mammary tumor on May 30th. I started Bella on doxycycline, and gradually added aminophylline, heart medications (enalapril and atenolol) and prednisone, which resulted in slow but steady improvements in her breathing. Then I noticed that both girls had blood in their urine, so I added amoxicillin to their treatment. When that didn’t seem to be helping Bella, I added Baytril to her mix. That means she is on 7 different medications! Many people worry that this would be too much, but through my 23 years of experience, I have found that most rats tolerate medications quite well, and when they need a medication, they need it. More recently, Bella was having problems with blue toes, so I have doubled the doses of her heart medications and she is doing better. She still doesn’t eat very much, but she has gained 30 g since I adopted her, and she obviously feels better than when she arrived. Neither of the girls is very cuddly, but Bella likes to hang out with me. Bella is no longer licky the way she was her first day here. She must have been thanking me!
Hairy, the 6-month-old hairless Dumbo I was ratsitting, ended up having to be euthanized. Although at times he seemed to be getting better, he kept getting generally worse. Not only did his seizures become more frequent, but the muscles on the right side of his face appeared to be atrophying and his teeth were wearing unevenly. When he got to the point of having a seizure nearly every 10 minutes, his owner and I decided he had to be euthanized. I didn’t see anything on his autopsy, but I sent his brain in for pathology, and it turned out he had meningitis, which is inflammation of the membranes of the brain. In humans, meningitis can be caused by bacteria, a virus, or even fungus. The pathologist couldn’t tell what caused Hairy’s meningitis. Although Hairy was initially treated with amoxicillin and Baytril, they didn’t seem to help him. In humans, early treatment of bacterial meningitis is necessary to prevent severe permanent brain damage. Perhaps if Hairy had been treated with a different antibiotic early in his disease, it might have helped. Hairy was one of the sweetest rats I have ever met and it was very difficult to say to good-bye to him.
Things here have been quite busy, and there have also been
some big changes in my rat population recently. I ended up adopting 3 girls on April
11. I didn’t write about them
last time because I wasn’t planning on keeping them. I was hoping to adopt them out to
someone else, but that didn’t happen and I finally decided to keep them.
They were from 2 litters born in the
Today I went to our local humane society and picked up 2
girls who were surrendered by someone who got them off Craig’s List and
said they are 3 years old. It is
more likely that they are closer to 2 years old. I took them because one has severe
labored breathing. She is a black
I had to euthanize Timothy on May
24 due to 2 severe nose bleeds. He had had some minor nose bleeds a few months ago.
I have been treating him with amoxicillin for a nasal infection and he had been
doing pretty well. But the last
several weeks he had been eating less and less and losing weight, so when he
had 2 massive nose bleeds only a half hour apart I decided it was time to let
him go. He was at least 3 years old, as I had adopted him as an adult from the
humane society on
Timothy’s roommate Jewel is now alone, but she currently has pretty severe neurological symptoms, probably from a brain tumor, and she doesn’t seem to miss him. I’ve been treating her with prednisone for neurological symptoms ever since I got her 10 months ago, and I’ve also been treating her with tamoxifen for a cancerous mammary tumor. She will be 3 years old in June.
I was successful in introducing September to Skittles and Chai and they now live happily together. September is now much more friendly and relaxed now that he has friends but doesn’t have to protect August any more. My current rat population is now back up to 18, even though I have been wanting to get it down to 10-12.
I have also been rat-sitting a very friendly 5-month-old hairless Dumbo boy named Hairy for a local student. Hairy has been having seizures which are different than any I’ve seen before. Instead of jumping and thrashing around, as with most convulsions, he rolls. This actually makes it less likely that he will hurt himself, but I’m housing him in a cage with only cloth accessories. So far we are trying supplements of magnesium and a homeopathic remedy to see if they can help him.
Since writing my last entry, I lost 2 rats only 2 days apart! It was a sad couple of days. August, an albino rex I rescued 9/27/08, had been losing weight for several weeks and his appetite was getting worse and worse. He would refuse many foods, and only eat a little of others and then push them away. This can be a symptom of congestive heart failure, for which I had been treating him since I got him. On the 14th I went grocery shopping and bought him 4 flavors of yogurt, 3 flavors of pudding and 8 flavors of baby food. August just picked at a few, so I decided to euthanize him. When I did his autopsy I was glad I made that decision, because not only did he have disease of his heart and lungs, he also had liver disease. No wonder he didn’t feel like eating, the poor guy. North Start Rescue, from which I adopted August, thought he was over 2 years old, which would have made him at least 2 ½ years old at this point.
That night, Porthos, my obese boy
who I rescued
With August gone, his roommate September is now alone. I have been working on introducing him to Skittles and Chai (Algernon’s brothers). I thought Skittles was the dominant rat of the pair because he can push Chai away from food, but it turns out that Chai is the one who fights with September! I knew that different rats can be dominant in different situations, but this was one of the more obvious examples that I have seen. Skittles is obviously dominant over food, but Chai is the territorial protector. Hopefully it won’t take more than a couple of weeks to integrate September with Chai and Skittles.
It’s been a busy few weeks since I last wrote. The 4th annual spring RATS eBay auction ran from March 30-April 5 and it took most of my time the 2 weeks prior to get everything ready. Then I spent most of last week sending out the items that people bought. The auction went very well, thank you to everyone who bid! The 5th Annual Wonderful World of Rats event in San Mateo, CA, happened on April 5 and I drove down with a couple of friends/volunteers to run a booth for both The Rat Fan Club and RATS. The turnout for the event was very good and everyone seemed to have a good time. I gave 2 talks on how to teach your rats tricks, and I was very disappointed that Peanut, who was doing tricks at home, didn’t want to appear “on stage” at all. He seemed to like meeting people and looking at the various booths at the event, but he seemed to have severe stage fright. Fortunately I had also brought Schnozzle and although he didn’t do his tricks very well, he was very happy to pose in costumes as long as I gave him treats. I had taken Valentine as well, and although she hadn’t really learned any tricks, she seemed fairly happy to run around on the table and take a few treats. Hopefully she will know some tricks by the next event.
On April 4 RATS had a booth in
I ended up euthanizing Algernon on March 29 because he really didn’t want to eat any more. Although I had suspected the cause of his neurological problems was a brain tumor, I did not see any abnormalities during his autopsy, but I wasn’t really surprised. Brain tumors are not always obvious to the naked eye. I didn’t feel it was necessary to have pathology done.
I’ve been introducing Peanut and Mo to Jimmy and Schnozzle on the couch, and it has been going quite well. The older boys have been a little aggressive to the younger boys, but not too bad. Peanut is totally irrepressible and refuses to be intimidated. At one point there was a pretty good scuffle going on between him and Schnozzle in the exercise ball that I keep on the couch for them to get in. Schnozzle had his hair slightly puffed up (a sign of aggression). I yelled at them to break it up, and told Schnozz to be nice. Peanut came out of the ball, but then he plunged right back in again. I said to him, “Peanut, what are you doing, you crazy boy? You might get hurt.” Remember, Peanut is hairless, so he doesn’t have any protection against claws. I was amazed to see that Peanut was holding Schnozz down in the ball and grooming his face! It’s like he was saying, “I don’t care if you don’t like me, I like you and we’re going to be friends whether you like it or not!”
I’ve been forgetting to write about a health problem of Algernon, one of my Siamese rex boys. He has had neurological problems for about a month. At first he held his hands strangely when I was giving him his B vitamins from a syringe. Then it gradually got worse and he starting having problems sitting up. I assume he has a brain tumor. His symptoms are progressing much more slowly that they usually do for a pituitary tumor. I started him on prednisone and amoxicillin, but it’s hard to tell if they are helping. He can still eat hard foods, but it takes him more time than normal. He actually has more problems eating soft food—he makes a big mess—although he still manages. I’m letting him spend most of his day on the couch now so I can give him special foods. (His brothers are both overweight and real gluttons.) In the past I had a rat with similar symptoms who lasted 8 months on prednisone, so I’m not sure how much longer Algernon will be with me. Algernon and his brothers are 25 months old.
Another of my older rats has a new health problem now. August, who I adopted last September, and who could be 2 ½ years old, had a small lump under his right ear on March 3. I pushed on it and nasty-smelling liquid pus came out of his ear. This seemed to cause him some pain, but by the next day he was feeling well again, and the lump was gone. I started him on amoxicillin and have been cleaning pus out of that ear twice a day since then, and it seems to be getting better. It could just be an abscess, but in my experience there is a high chance that there is a cancer growing under the ear that has caused the abscess. Only time will tell. For now he is doing okay.
As long as I’m on the topic of health problems, Schnozzle had a bit of a respiratory crisis the first week of February, mostly caused by my laziness. On Jan 18 he started wheezing, so I put him on amoxicillin. That seemed to be doing the trick at first, but on the 24th he was wheezing again, so I switched him to doxycycline. That seemed to work at first, but he was wheezing again by the 31st so I switched him back to amoxicillin. (I should have put him on Baytril, but I was lazy. My rats quickly and eagerly lick either amoxi or doxy from a syringe, but to get them to take Baytril requires separating them from their roommates so they can lick the mixture out of a little dish.) He was worse again on Feb. 4, so I tried doxy again. The next day I came to my senses and said to myself, “What are you doing? This isn’t working,” and I put him on Baytril and amoxicillin. By now he was losing weight and his fur had lost its sheen. After 2 days he still wasn’t a lot better, so I stopped the amoxicillin and put him back on the doxy along with the Baytril. That was finally the right treatment and his wheezing had stopped 3 days later. I plan to keep him on the doxy and Baytril for at least 6 weeks.
Shortly after that I had another crisis with my old boy Timothy, who was on doxycyline and treatment for congestive heart failure. He started refusing to take his medications, and didn’t want to eat. Timothy was an adult when I adopted him from the humane society on Jan.23, 2007, so he is at least 33 months old and could be over 3 years old. He looks very old as he is thin and his back legs are very weak. When he started refusing to eat, I was scared that he was dying. But I decided he might just have a secondary infection, so I switched him from doxy to amoxicillin, and within 2 days he started eating with gusto again! So the moral of the story is, remember to try amoxicillin for any new symptoms of lethargy or poor appetite no matter how young or old your rat is.
Since losing Lazarus and realizing that Jimmy and Schnozzle
don’t like to perform their tricks in public, I decide to start looking
for one or two new performers. It
just so happened that a friend, Becka, who came to
visit me from San Jose on the 12th, brought along four 6-week-old
baby boys that she had gotten from someone near her who had 3 accidental
litters. Becka
was keeping 2 of the babies, a hairless and a black rex
Dumbo, and was going to find a home for the other 2 boys. One of them was an adorable dark-skinned
hairless rat and I couldn’t pass him up. He has chosen the name Peanut (through a
friend who is an animal communicator) and he is a sweet, playful, outgoing
boy. I thought about keeping the 4th
boy too, who was a black hooded rex, but I had heard from another family in
They came over that Saturday and I chose a blue hooded boy
who picked the name
A couple weeks ago I offered to babysit
Sue’s 3 boys (see entry for
I have some very sad news to report. My sweet boy Lazarus died on
His autopsy showed what the abnormal lump was: a large blood clot inside the small intestine just before it enters the cecum (the rat equivalent of the appendix) that had totally blocked the intestine. This obvious was the cause of his pain and lack of appetite. I assume the bleeding in the intestine was a result of the repeated squeezing that was necessary to help Lazarus eliminate feces. The small intestine just got in the way.
Poor Lazarus was only 9 months old. But I’m glad that he is now in heaven beyond any pain. Although he enjoyed the life he had, it wasn’t uncommon for him to have some pain or discomfort from time to time, so I guess it’s just as well that he has gone on to a better life. But I do miss him terribly.
The biggest news lately was my trip to
The Expo organizers also let me have a booth to sell rat items, and I am very grateful to volunteers Danielle Stanley and Julie Dumps for all their help! Danielle took me to and from the airport and helped all 3 days at the booth. Julie helped on Friday and Sunday and part of the day on Sat. A little problem occurred with my books. I had sent them ahead of time using Media Mail, and apparently the box must have broken open on route. They didn’t arrive until Sat, and then the box contained only the care books and training books—all 25 booklets I had shipped were missing! So unfortunately, I did not have any booklets to sell there. A few people have purchased them by mail order after seeing the sample. Other than that, I had a great time in MD. The organizers have already invited me back for next year, and I will be looking forward to it!
In other news, I lost my rat Aramis
to a pituitary tumor. On Dec. 26,
just before leaving on a trip to
I haven’t had any changes in my rat population since I last wrote, but I did lose my hairless guinea pig Rhino pretty suddenly on Oct. 24. He was 4 ½ years old, which is kind of young for a guinea pig, but it seems that the hairless ones don’t live as long. It appeared that he died from kidney failure. His departure has left a big hole in my heart, but my rats are doing their best to fill it up.
On Dec. 11 I was invited to speak to a class in animal
behavior at the
The weekend after Christmas I visited my friend Barbara
Henderson in
I adopted 2 new boys from Northstar
Rescue, a group based in
Both these boys were adults when they arrived at the rescue in May, and had previously been at 2 other rescues for several months, so we think they are at least 1 ½ to 2 years old. When August came to my house he had been on amoxicillin and Baytril for about 3 days and had come down with diarrhea. His wheezing seemed to be getting worse rather than better, and he was quite thin, so I stopped the amoxicillin and added doxycycline. There still wasn’t much improvement after 3 more days, so I dropped the Baytril and added enalapril and atenolol. After 3 more days there was some improvement, so I continued them and then tried, in turn, aminophylline and Lasix, but neither of them helped at all. So then I tried prednisone and that resulted in more improvement. It took a few more days, but his wheezing has now stopped altogether and he seems to be feeling better (thus the playfulness.) So, he is on doxy, enalapril, atenolol and prednisone.
When September arrived at Northstar Rescue he whimpered for several nights after they turned out the lights, so they assumed he was afraid of the dark and called him Crybaby. I renamed him September, Sep for short. A few days after I adopted him Sep also began to wheeze, and I discovered his chest was hard. This can be caused by a number of different things: lung abscesses, emphysema, or high blood pressure. I started him on Baytril as well as enalapril and atenolol and his wheezing quickly cleared up and his chest is not so hard now.
The addition of these 2 boys puts my rat population back up to 16. It was hard enough to give attention to all my other rats, and I didn’t need 2 more, but I really like August and Sep and I’m happy to give them a good home.
I have been very busy for the last month. Larry and spent the first week of
September in northern
Lazarus is finally growing a lot and is doing quite well, especially considering that he had to have surgery in August. It was all my fault again, of course. On the advice of my friend Marg, in July we started giving him a homeopathic remedy for megacolon which seemed to be helping him a lot. In fact, he was having a lot of diarrhea, so I decided to reduce the amount of cisapride I was giving him. (Cisapride is the medication that increases the peristalsis of the colon.) That reduced the diarrhea, and he still was doing so well, on July 23 we decided to try stopping the cisapride altogether. In hindsight this was a very bad idea. He continued to do well for almost a month. Then, he stopped pooping. I tried everything we could think of—I put him back on the cisapride, gave him mineral oil, a laxative, a stool softener, an enema, put him on a liquid diet—but nothing helped and no amount of squeezing got anything to come out. At first his abdomen stayed soft and I wasn’t too worried, but after 5 days the feces in his colon started to get hard and I got really scared. I knew that if I didn’t do something he would die. I decided the only way to save him was to do surgery. On August 25 I opened him up and tried squeezing his colon directly to get things moving. At first it wasn’t working. Eventually I found that by working my fingers down as far inside his pelvic canal as I could and squeezing hard, I was able to push out a hard fecal pellet that was lodged beneath his pelvic arch and blocking everything from coming out. What a relief! The pellet was almost 1 cm wide and over 2 cm long. The location of this blockage was why squeezing from the outside wasn’t successful. After that I was able to easily squeeze out the rest of his colon and close him back up. After the surgery he pulled out one of his surgical staples three times as I kept replacing it (I finally left it out and he healed up fine), but otherwise his recovery was uneventful.
After the surgery I continued Lazarus on the cisapride. I also continued him on the laxative (Senekot) and the stool softener (docusate sodium), but he hated them so bad I tried to find alternatives. I tried another natural laxative called Swiss Kriss that is composed of dried herbs, but he wouldn’t voluntarily eat enough of it to work. I finally found that if I mixed one tablet of Senekot with 6 cc of strawberry liquid adult supplement drink that he would take it voluntarily. For some reason he seems to like it now where before he didn’t. I give him 0.4 cc twice a day. The stool softener was more of a problem. The docusate sodium is the only one that is readily available and it tastes absolutely awful—worse than Baytril! It’s okay for humans since you can take it in a gel cap and don’t have to taste it. The only way I could get Lazarus to take it was to force the liquid down his throat, and I hated to do that. Finally I asked at the health food store and they said that magnesium acted as a stool softener. After buying a preparation that they sold, which was effervescent and extremely sour and which obviously wouldn’t work, I decided the best thing to do was to buy tablets and grind them up and mix them in the strawberry drink. He won’t take this on his own, but if I put it in his mouth he will swallow it without too much protest. I’m giving him 0.25 cc twice a day which is 10 mg of magnesium (I had to guess on the dose). So far this seems to be working pretty well, although I’m still playing with the amounts I’m giving him, and of course I will need to increase them as he grows. He still needs help squeezing out a hard poop every few days, but he is able to poop on his own most of the time. All of these problems and the time I’ve spent out of town has interfered with his training, but we’re getting back on track. The birthday party we were going to do has been canceled, but we’re doing a presentation at a school this Friday instead.
On August 16 I adopted two 2-year-old girls, Tiger, a black hooded Dumbo, and Jewel, a mocha, from a family who didn’t want them any more. They had neglected them and allowed them to grow huge mammary tumors. Jewel’s tumor was 8 cm X 6 cm X 4 cm and weighed 100 g, while Jewel herself only weighed 309 g. She also appeared to have a cancerous mammary tumor growing next to the huge benign tumor. I was able to successfully remove both the girls’ huge benign mammary tumors. A few days after the surgery I started Jewel on tamoxifen to treat her cancerous mammary tumor, as well as amoxicillin to control infection in the tumor. I also started her on prednisone, because she had some neurological symptoms (poor coordination mostly) that suggested she might have a pituitary tumor.
I lost 3 rats in September. The night before we left for
Claire’s death left Timothy alone, while Tiger’s death left Jewel alone, so Barbara was able to put these 2 elderly rats together. (Timothy is neutered, but even if he wasn’t, since Jewel is over 2 year old she is not likely to get pregnant anyway.) These changes in my rat population means I now have 14 rats, the lowest my population has been in a very long time.
I have some really bad news to report. I have been reluctant to write about it, but I believe in honesty in the hope that all my mistakes might someday prevent something similar.
Sweet little Miriam died because of me. She died from a ruptured colon. Even though she was on the cisapride, her poops were unusually large and hard, and I had to squeeze her abdomen really hard to get them out. I should have thought to give her a stool softener, but by the time I did, it was too late. The amazing thing was how tolerant Miriam was to all the squeezing. She squeaked a little, but not enough to make me think it was really hurting her. I feel so guilty, and I miss her so much. This world is really less bright without her here.
On a happy note, Lazarus is doing really well and is quickly learning more tricks. He can now tip up a tape roll and go through it, “jump” through a hoop, pull a string to ring a bell, and he can almost play the piano. The trouble is he is still quite small and has trouble pushing the piano keys hard enough to make a sound. We are also working on getting a treat out of a small picnic basket, jumping into and out of a large picnic basket, and bowling. He is really smart and learned to ring the bell within 5 minutes, using clicker training!
I have been taking the 3 boys, Lazarus, Jimmy and Schnozzle, to friends’ homes to get them to practice performing in new locations. I have also been making new costumes, and now have a collection of 18. We are already booked to perform at a birthday party on Sept 26. It should be a great show.
I just got back yesterday from
The star of the day, however, was my new boy Lazarus. He happily performed the pull-up the basket trick over and over, and over and over…. I hadn’t even taught him the trick; he learned it watching Jimmy and Schnozzle do it, and badly, I might add. But while Jimmy and Schnozz really didn’t want to do any tricks at the event, Lazarus was enthusiastic. Jimmy and Schnozz did pose quite well in the costumes.
I also have news about another new addition to my rat
family. On June 22, the woman who
brought me Lazarus brought me another tiny baby who turned out to have
megacolon. She is a dalmation rat, white with just 4 spots of black, which is
the other color in which megacolon occurs most commonly. So I offered to adopt her as well. She wasn’t in quite as bad shape
as Lazarus had been, and I was able to start her on the cisapride
immediately, but she needs more help to get the feces out, poor little thing. She is also very sweet, and I have named
her Miriam. She came with us to
There have been more changes in my rat population in the last week. Late on the afternoon of Tuesday June 3 a rat owner asked me to take a look at a baby rat from an accidental litter who had something wrong with his “bum.” It turns out he had megacolon, a genetic defect that prevents the large intestines from emptying normally (poor peristalsis). This results in the contents backing up and causing bloating and constipation alternating with diarrhea. It usually appears at the age of 4 weeks, and if it isn’t treated it is usually fatal within a few weeks. This little guy had a bulging rectum, because he was not able to push out stool on his own. Plus he was bloated. Megacolon occurs most commonly in rats with one of two color patterns. Most rats with this defect have the restricted spotting gene, which means they are mostly white with a few spots of black around their head, and black eyes. This baby was the other color pattern, a blaze-face, and he also happened to be black.
I offered to adopt the baby, because rats with megacolon require lifelong treatment with both medication and physical help to poop. The owner agreed. The first thing I did was help the baby squeeze out a bunch of poop from his rectum. Then I sedated him and worked on squeezing feces out from further up in the colon. I also gave him some fluids under the skin to prevent him from becoming dehydrated. The next day I called my vet’s office and asked them to order the medication that increases peristalsis, which is called cisapride and must be compounded by a pharmacist. I also purchased a laxative called Senecot and gave him a tiny dose. He only weighed 55 grams! He didn’t seem to be feeling well and his intestines felt impacted so I gave him a little bit of mineral oil to help the contents of his intestines to pass, and some Nutri-cal, which contains nutrients and mineral oil. I sedated him again so I could squeeze him out again.
Thursday my friend Marg came for lunch and “talked” to him (she is an animal communicator) and he told her he wanted his name to be Lazarus. We decided I should try giving him a homeopathic remedy called Nux vomica, which tends to be good for digestive problems, including poor peristalsis. The cisapride arrived late that afternoon and I gave him his first dose. By that night he didn’t want to eat much, and the next morning he didn’t want to eat anything. I consulted Marg and she said he was bad enough that he might die. Then I noticed that he was breathing heavily and realized he had developed a secondary respiratory infection. I started him on amoxicillin. I also prayed that he wouldn’t die.
It all worked and Lazarus didn’t die! He is now doing quite well. He is mostly able to poop on his own, although it is still quite soft, but he isn’t bloated any more. He has a great appetite and loves all kinds of greens. I was afraid he would hate me after all the needles I stuck into him and all the nasty medicine I forced in his mouth. But he seems to have forgiven me and is very cuddly and affectionate. The day he arrived I did not want another rat. In fact, just a day or two before Lazarus came, I had prayed, “God, please don’t send me any more rats…unless they’re real special.” Well, Lazarus is obviously real special and now I am in love with him.
On June 5 Marg and I successfully released the 2 deer mice I raised from babies.
Then on June 7 my rat population went back down to 15 when I lost Belle. I had been treating Belle for congestive heart failure for 5 months and I knew there was something very wrong going on in her chest, which was very round and hard. I suspected lung abscesses. She had been losing weight for the last several weeks and I knew she probably wasn’t going to last much longer. On the 7th she did not eat all her treats, and she seemed uncomfortable, her breathing more labored than usual so I euthanized her. Her autopsy revealed something quite amazing. One huge abscess—nearly 2 inches across!—from her left lung filled her chest and had actually engulfed her heart. I had never seen anything like it. There also seemed to be a hard tumor at the bottom of the abscess. It is truly amazing how long rats can live even with massively compromised organs.
My friend Barbara Henderson, who house sat for us when we went on vacation, told me about something Belle did while we were gone. Barbara was giving out pieces of banana to the rats for breakfast, and Timothy, one of Belle’s roommates, wasn’t coming out of their house. The house is on the top floor of the cage, which does not have a door, so Barbara did not have easy access to hand the banana to Timothy. Belle took her piece of banana from Barbara on the second floor, set it down and ran up to the top floor to look at Timothy, who was just peeking out of the house. Belle then looked at Barbara and looked back at Timothy, and then ran downstairs to Barbara, who gave her another piece of banana. Belle took this piece upstairs to Timothy and set it down in front of him. Then she went back and ate her own piece. I had never seen Belle do anything like this before, and I found it quite amazing! When I adopted Belle and her mother Claire in January 2007 they had not been well-socialized, and had a tendency to bite. Even after a year and half they still didn’t like to be picked up, although Belle really didn’t bite any more. But Barbara said she felt a special bond with Belle, and that Belle fed Timothy to help her out. Belle, an albino Dumbo, was probably just under 2 years old.
About a week after I neutered Jimmy and Schnozzle I was able to reintroduce them to each other and they now sleep and play together. They are making some progress learning tricks.
Did any of you watch the recent TV movie The Andromeda Strain? About 1 hour 45 minutes into the movie, they show a supposed wild rat running over to a snake who has died of the disease in the desert. A close-up then shows the rat supposedly eating the snake. I was puzzled that the rat, who was a light cocoa-brown and looked like a fancy rat, had what looked like mutilated ears. They looked like the ears of a rat who had recovered from a bad case of mange mites (which are very rare). Or, sometimes in lab rats they punch holes at the edges of their ears to mark them, but the ear looked like it had been punched all the way around. It was very strange! In the next scene the rat is supposedly snatched by an eagle and then dropped with a bloody splat in the middle of some soldiers, who immediately catch the disease and die. So much for the rat’s big scene.
I forgot to write a story about Porthos that happened a few weeks ago. Porthos, whom I adopted in November 2007 along with Aramis, is a very big boy. Not to pull any punches, he is fat. He weighs nearly 2 ¼ lbs and has fat rolls. With his fur, he measures about 11 inches around his chest. In my own defense, he came this way. Porthos and Aramis were found as strays in a field and taken to the humane society, which called me.
Okay, so one of the tricks I try to teach my rats is to walk through a cardboard hoop after they tip it up with their hands. For smaller rats the hoop I use is the cardboard roll inside packing tape. I had been working on teaching Rascal to do this trick that day, and the hoop was still on the couch when I brought Porthos and Aramis out on the couch to play. The hoop is about 10 inches around. Well, silly Porthos tried to crawl through the hoop and got stuck midway! The first I knew about it was that Porthos absolutely freaked out and started bouncing around the couch. When I finally saw what had happened, I was afraid that his breathing was restricted, but when I got him calmed down I saw that he could still breathe, but he was just scared. After trying for just a few seconds to get the hoop off I realized I’d have to cut it off. I ran and got scissors and inserted them under the hoop carefully to make sure I didn’t injure him. Fortunately, Porthos trusted me and held very still. It didn’t take long to cut the hoop apart, and Porthos was very glad to be released from his “straight jacket.” Porthos has probably learned his lesson, but I will make sure from now on there are no empty tape rolls on the couch when Porthos is out.
I have been super busy the last 2 months, since I last wrote. On March 29 I drove down to the Bay Area to run a booth for both The Rat Fan Club and RATS at The Wonderful World of Rats 2008, an annual rat expo sponsored by Rattie Ratz and held at the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo, CA. RATS board member Sarah Jolly helped me run the combined booths. Attendance at the event was good and we all had a great time.
The following Saturday, April 5, I drove up to Anderson, CA (just south of Redding) and had a booth at the second annual Love Your Pet Expo. I was assisted by Robyn Appleton, a new volunteer, and member Sheila MacGregor, who lives in Redding. Attendance was better than last year, but most of the attendees are dog and cat people, so we didn’t sell much. However, I did convince a snake owner to consider buying only frozen rodents for her snakes.
April 1-7 was the spring eBay auction fundraiser for RATS. I was able to get some of the items sent off to the winners before my next trip, but some of them had to wait until I came back.
That Thursday, April 11, I flew down to Orange County, CA to
run a booth at the America’s Family Pet Expo at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa
Mesa, CA. This is the first time we
have had a booth at this event, which is huge with a large attendance. There were booths by two other rodent
clubs there, so we concentrated mostly on trying to educate people about our
RATS campaign: live well-socialized rodents only for pets and frozen rodents
for snake food. There didn’t
seem to be very many reptile owners in attendance, although the most popular
booth at the show seemed to be the reptile booth across from ours, where people
could see, pet and get their pictures taken with large snakes and lizards. Fortunately, I have a niece who lives in
Costa Mesa whom I was able to stay with, and who drove me back and forth, so we
didn’t have any expenses for a hotel or rental car, but even with that,
the small impact we had on attendees and the amount of money we made
didn’t really make the trip worth while, so I don’t think we will
be going back.
After that, I spent a couple weeks doing the final edit on my new book,
which will be called The Complete Guide
to Rat Training, and will be coming out in August or September.
I then had a little breathing space to try to get caught up on things,
and then on May 13 Larry and I went to Florida for a week’s
vacation. One of the places we
visited was Epcot Center at Disney World, and I was pleased to see several rats
at the China Pavilion. No, not live
rats, but rat figurines for sale in the shop. In addition, outside there was a display
of Chinese Zodiac sculptures, and since this is the
Year of the Rat the featured sculpture was a beautiful rat, about 2 feet long,
covered with what looked like pistachio shells, dried beans and seeds. Isn’t it cool!
I’ve had
quite a few changes in my rat population in the last 2 months. I lost Ivan first, on March 31 from a
pituitary tumor. Beans
was alone for another month before I had to euthanize
him due to respiratory distress. I
had started him on heart medications, and then on April 15 took him in for
x-rays and discovered he had an enlarged heart, so was able to also put him on digoxin, and he seemed to be doing quite well. Then on the
20th he starting having bouts of distress that became more frequent
and severe and I euthanized him on the 22nd. It turned out he had what looked like a
huge lymphoma tumor in his lungs that did not show up on the x-ray. I was very sad to lose Beans, who was a
great performer and one of my favorite rats of all time. He was the main model for most of the
pictures in my upcoming book. I
don’t think I’ve had another rat who was
so calm and understanding who could have posed the way he did for all the
photos. But he did have a good
life, and was one month short of 3 years old.
Since my book is
coming out this fall, and I hope to get on The Tonight Show again, I decided I
better get a few more performing rats.
Right now my only performing rat is Rascal, but he will only do jumping
tricks in public, and refuses to do other tricks or wear costumes. So when I learned that a volunteer with
Rattie Ratz, MC, was raising a litter in the
While we were on
vacation, my good friend Barbara
I have also rescued 2 albino boys in the last month. On April 20 I got a call from our local humane society who had gotten one of them in. The story they told me is that the woman who found him on the street posted a notice on Craig’s list, and another woman replied, yes, it was her rat but she didn’t want him. So the shelter treated it as an owner surrender rather than as a stray, which means they didn’t require a waiting period, so I was able to go and pick him the same day. He seemed about 3-4 months old and I decided to name him Buddy.
Then on May 9 I got an email from Tessa, a rat owner in
Sacramento whose dad lives in Chico.
She said her dad had seen an albino rat living in his woodpile, and then
the rat moved under his neighbor’s house. The neighbor was leaving her back door
open for her dog, so the rat decided to move into her house! I said I would take him, so her dad caught
him and brought him over. He is
missing about the last quarter of his tail, probably from being grabbed by
someone. I decided to name him
It turned out all 4 of my new boys have excessive testosterone aggression, so I have just neutered them all. As soon as their aggression diminishes I will work on introducing them all to each other. I currently have 15 domestic rats now, as well as an orphaned wild roof rat and 2 deer mice that I am raising.
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.
Here is a later addition posted on the internet. I was in the Bay Area and did not watch the show:
Posted by: "psychofilly" psychofilly@yahoo.com psychofilly
Sun
Mar 30, 2008 7:09 pm (PDT)
Just watched last episode of Unhitched and yes it does
still show the rat scene. It is a brown rat mistaken for a wild rat. The men in
the show try to sweep it out the window but it lands on the friend’s
shirt, then jumps into the microwave. The men freak and shut the door. It does
not show them starting the microwave. But we hear the timer go off later and
they mention the longest 9 min. of their lives and how he enjoyed spinning on
the turn table at first. They only find out later that it was a new
neighbor’s pet. The whole show turns out to be about animal rights. The
beginning sucked but the animal rights part of the show was not too bad. They
do say at the beginning that no rats where harmed but it was still hard to see.
Susan
Today I also wrote a short Ode to the Rat for the Shanghai Star, a Shanghai newspaper in English, for a feature they are doing next week on the Year of the Rat.
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.
11/19/07
Well, I finally feel like I have some time to write an
update. On November 1st
I flew to Massachusetts to run a booth and give talks at the World of Pets Expo
in W. Springfield, MA. This was the
first time they have held this show, and Friday was very slow, but Saturday was
busier, and on Sunday I had about 15-18 people at each of my talks about how to
teach your rats tricks and dress them in costume. The booth next to me was a gerbil
society, and it was very interesting for me to see the gerbils, as they are
illegal in
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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