forthwritten | Fergus, ?

Last night I said goodbye to lovely, sweet Fergus.

A mink hooded rat at the door of a cage: "HELLO HUMAN"

I adopted Fergus last August as a companion for Fern. The rescue thought he was about two, but I thought he was younger - maybe by as much as a year which is pretty significant in rat terms. I don't know much about his life before he was rescued - apparently he was kept in a cage in a bathroom, with no name and barely any attention. I imagine he was bought for a child who somehow failed to be captivated by Fergus' charm and sheer force of personality. That child was an idiot.

Fergus had been a bit grumpy and a bit unsure about being picked up and handled, but he was so willing to try. By the end of his life he actually preferred getting fussed by his human friends over eating - the only time he favoured food over attention was when my mum gave him some lamb. Otherwise he'd look at the food as you scattered it in his cage, then back at you and ask for more attention. He loved nestling his head in my hand so I could scratch his ears and above his eyes and his back. His fur smelt of fresh tortillas.

When I first got him he was very unsure about climbing and I had to rescue him when he genuinely got stuck on sticks. He would also get his balls stuck when he was hauling himself into a hammock. It was about as unfortunate as you can imagine.

There were things he never quite got over - he was very wary when it came to unfamiliar foods but enjoyed everything from mango to watermelon to lamb to turkey to strawberries. He disliked carrot, and once carefully licked all the pesto off a gnocchi before rejecting the dumpling. I suspect he'd never been exposed to lots of different foods before; Fern taught him a lot about what was good to eat, but rats are notoriously neophobic.

Fergus was Fern's last companion; when the rescue tried to introduce him to other male rats, he'd screamed in terror but was fine with an old lady rat. He was occasionally a bit boisterous for her but they'd snuggle up together in the rat house. He also had an endearing habit of stashing food in the litter tray - something Fern found very convenient.

Two rats lying on a hammock in a cage. The one at the back is a small, slightly balding Russian blue rex (Fern). The one at the front is a large mink hooded with bright eyes (Fergus).

After Fern died I was worried that Fergus wasn't getting enough mental stimulation so attempted behavioural enrichment. This did not go as planned. I made a ratty piñata by filling a toilet roll tube with dry mix and sealing both ends. My pack of super-smart girls would have got into it in minutes, if not seconds; Fergus, however, picked it up in his mouth and charged around the cage with it, alternating this with just throwing it about. The next day I had to rescue Fergus from the piñata.

Fergus battles a piñata. He has it in his mouth and was trying to shake it. On this occasion, Fern was around to help him out.

I tried to make it easier for him by hanging a chain across the width of the cage and hooking toilet rolls that were sealed at the bottom and open at the top to it. Maybe this would help him? Again, my pack of girls would have chewed the bottoms off in seconds. Fergus, however, preferred to hug the toilet rolls in a manner reminiscent of a small child attempting to wrestle a punching bag. He did manage to tip them enough for the food to fall out, but I've never seen anything quite like it.

Fergus also had a very special relationship with Penny, youngest and weirdest of the dogs. Penny loves eating rat bedding, and Fergus was very happy to push some out for her, watch her eat it with a very interested look on his face, then push some more out to see if she'd eat that too. Penny would oblige. I felt ganged up on.

A mink hooded rat pushes bedding out of his cage to a small brown and white spaniel waiting outside. Both participants look very interested in what's going on.

Earlier this week, Fergus got out of the cage I'd foolishly left open. H found him sitting in my slipper. No sitting very quietly and listening for the rustling of a rat who is enjoying their freedom immensely. It was like he'd found a thing that smelt of me and was waiting for someone to rescue him.

He died from a devastatingly fast respiratory infection; he'd been a bit under the weather for a couple of days and I decided to take him to the vet for a general checkup, but in the hours between me making the appointment and the appointment itself he went downhill very fast. He got antibiotics, steroids and subcutaneous fluids at the vet, but died just before midnight.

He was such a personality, so full of affection. He wasn't the brightest of rats and he was so hapless but did everything with such joy and enthusiasm - if he could talk, it would have been in capslock. My parents adored him. I'll miss his silly face greeting me ("HELLO HUMAN IS IT PLAYTIME HUMAN ARE WE HAVING SCRATCHES NOW HUMAN") and the satiny, shining fur on the top of his head that was the perfect size for my thumb to rest on.

H: Fergus was so ill-suited for the world, he was lucky to have you
Me: Imagine Fergus in the wild
H: I will not

A mink hooded rat sitting on a human's lap. The human is sitting at a wood desk.

Goodbye Fergus, Fergal, Fergie, Fergilicious, Fergalus. I hope the last nine months of your life were the happiest you knew and the best I could have given you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

<3 What a beautiful lad. You gave him a great life.

Thank you - I like to think he got at least a few months of love.

<3333 What a lovely tribute. I'm sorry he's gone.

Thank you - I'm sorry too.

This is very sweet, even if you did forget his favorite game, the wubbawubba game. He was such a loveable weirdo! xxxxx

I'm really sorry to hear this and sending lots of love to you in your grief. Fergus' antics always reminded me of Hampork and her equally hapless attempts to do rat things and solve problems.

Such big personalities.

Oh wow, imagine if Fergus and Hampork had ever met up. So much haplessness in one place!

I am mainly cheering myself up by thinking of all the deeply strange things he did, and trying not to think that I'll never see those again.

I feel like they would have had a lengthy chat about how hilariously difficult the world is and then plunge their face into food.

Always bittersweet when looking back on these little lives, hope you smile more than cry over those memories.

I would like Fergus, Hampork, Fern and Tamar to somehow have a lengthy chat about the trials of this cruel and difficult world. Tamar was the rat who would literally plunge off a shelf into a food bowl, and I never worked out if this was deliberate or her just getting overexcited. The collective haplessness would be awe-inspiring.