forthwritten

Last night I said goodbye to lovely, sweet Fergus.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

I was not expecting to lose Ash so soon.

Ash came to me in summer 2012 with her sisters, Hazel (whom I lost in February but was in no state to write about her) and Bramble (who feels frail and is chronically respy but bright-eyed and affectionate). They came to me because their owner had got bored of them and wanted a snake (of all things). Their breeder approved and they were introduced to Willow. They were actually a bit too boisterous for Willow and so she stayed with the babies (Fern and Meena) in my hospital/intro cage and the trio went into the main cage.

They were skinny with badly rusted coats when they came to me and I tried very hard to get them into decent condition. I think they all grew a bit - not just filled out, but actually became bigger all round. They were the first group I tried scatter feeding and I loved how it made them interact with their environment - rooting through the substrate, using their noses to plough through it, getting excited when they found something tasty. Ash was particularly fond of unshelled pumpkin seeds.

Ash was my big, beautiful, sleek girl. She was Russian Blue like Rowan, and like Ro, she became my PR rat. Because university is on the way to the vets, if I needed to take someone to the vets it was easier to take them in a carrier into the office and then go to vets rather than return home for them. I'd sometimes stick Ash on my shoulder if I needed to make myself tea or speak to someone. She rapidly acquired a fanclub to the extent that people would beckon me into their offices so they could fuss her - and, indeed, someone once stopped me in the corridor, looked disappointed when she noticed I didn't have Ash with me, asked after her then let me go on my way.

She had the biggest eyes of any rat I've kept. If I'd wanted to, I think she could have won shows. However, she also had a talent for pulling daft faces and as such, the photos I have of her all make her look a bit silly.

She liked being stroked firmly from head to tail, and would flatten herself and arch under my hand in obvious enjoyment. She and Fern squabbled but not in a serious way - if I heard squeaking and scuffling it was going to be those two.

She reached 30 months and didn't even look old until her final couple of days. It was pyometra - the only thing that could have saved her was an emergency spay and I wasn't going to put her through that. My mum looked after her in her final days and took her to the vet. She's buried in our garden.

There's a story on campus about security being called in to deal with a man who was acting suspiciously. Upon investigation by security, the man was a) found to be talking to a wall and b) a maths lecturer. If Tamar was a person, I think she could have been like that maths lecturer.

It was impossible to work out whether she was actually incredibly bright or really was a bit dim. It was also hard to work out whether rats could be dyspraxic. She was definitely the oddest rat I've known, but in such a good-humoured, sweet-natured way I - and a fair few others - couldn't help but be charmed.

Her moment of glory came when she was the first one to work out pea fishing. Rowan was dunking her face into the water and getting crosser and crosser with this water and what was it doing here and how dare it, Willow was ignoring the whole thing and staring at my nectarine in a pointed way, and Tamar worked out how to use her paw to snatch peas out of the water and was very pleased about the whole thing.

However, her greatest misses (sometimes in a very literal sense) included:

• When Rowan was having trouble moving around, I moved the water bottle so she didn't have to perch on a ledge to get to it. The rats had discovered that they didn't actually have to get up and could instead just lie on a hammock, stretch a little bit, and drink. Moving the water bottle broke Tamar. She lay on the hammock trying to get to a non-existent water bottle and looked utterly bewildered that it wasn't there. I picked her up and put her in front of the water bottle and she still looked bewildered. I had to touch the spout and hold it to her mouth to get her to realise she could still get water. I swore never to move the water bottle again as I didn't think either of us could cope.


• Getting so excited about food that, rather than use the multiple hammocks, ropes and hanging stuff in the cage to get to the bottom, she'd just launch herself off a shelf and face-plant into the food bowl. This didn't bother her as it meant she had first dibs on the prized weetabix bits.


• Getting her morning biscuit and leaping gracefully onto their pipe. I was impressed until, with her next bound, she crashed head-first into the side of the cage. But still had hold of her biscuit!


• Getting stuck under a water bottle and knocking her head when she tried to get out. So she went back to being stuck, then tried to get out in exactly the same way, then knocked her head a second time.


• Trying to cram as much food as possible into her mouth, threading her way through the pipe, over a tunnel, into a box, stashing it, hopping over a tunnel, through the pipe, cramming as much food as possible into her mouth, and doing this until she was satisfied she had enough stored away. Her earnestness and sense of purpose made my mum and I almost weep with laughter. Stashing food is important you guys!


• Epic nest building. Last week she was running around collecting bedding in her mouth and hurrying to stash it in their blue house which was all fine and normal. But then she decided she was going to drag their winebox over, possibly with the aim of getting that into their blue house despite minor issues like the winebox being far too big to get through the door. Oh, and that Willow was still inside it.


• Wagging her tail. I was under the impression that rats did it when they were very angry. Tamar appeared to do it when she had Feelings that she didn't know quite what to do with.


• She liked being down my shirt and by my left armpit. I'm not totally sure why.

I was at at a conference and Willow and Tamar were being looked after by sasha_lilyrat, who adored Tamar and the only person I'd trust to nurse her. Tamar went downhill alarmingly fast and I ended up leaving the conference early and going straight to the vets from the train station. I'd kind of accepted that I'd have to make this decision but that doesn't make it any easier.

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Goodbye Tamar, Tarm, Tarmy, Tarmface, Babyrat, Little Bear. You were a puzzle, but a very lovely one.

I realised what I was taking on when I picked Rowan and her sister, Asha, up from their breeder. Asha was quite happy to investigate the interior of their small travelling cage. Rowan, on the other hand, wanted to be OUT and EXPLORING and was doing her very best impression of a Jack-in-a-box.

"You," I muttered, "are going to be trouble."

At a tender age, Rowan taught me the importance of always keeping the toilet lid down when free-ranging rats in a bathroom. I heard a splash, eliminated the impossible, and checked the toilet bowl. Rowan stood on her hind legs glaring up at me, looking sodden, indignant and personally betrayed.

If Asha was my sweet, gentle, bottom-of-the-hierarchy girl, Rowan was my bossy so-and-so alpha. Part of the reason Willow and Tamar joined the group was to give Rowan some other rats to pin except poor Asha all the time. Rowan was curious and fearless. I once saw one of my then-housemate's cats shoot backwards because he'd failed to take note of 600g of fluffed-up, tail-lashing, foofing rat, had got too close to the cage bars and was duly nipped on the nose.

At some point Rowan decided that she was going to be a people rat and, during free-range, she'd climb on my lap, snuggle into the crook of my left elbow and go to sleep. Just to let me know who was in charge, she'd tell me off if I tried to move her. This started off as brief naps then her dashing off again, but grew into extended snuggling where she'd brux and boggle away. I don't know where she learnt it, but she developed a thing for licking my teeth and would prise my lips open if I wouldn't co-operate.

She was the rat I'd introduce to strangers - her confidence and charm won lots of people over and she had a fanclub of small, adoring children. It helped that she was stunning - every time I saw her I'd wonder again at this gorgeous creature in my care. She had silly crinkly ears which was why she came to live with me rather than stay with her breeder.

She had a special way of drinking from the water bottle - instead of licking water off the ball bearing, she'd nudge the ball bearing and catch the water droplets in her paws to drink. She liked sharing a mug of (usually herbal) tea with me. This started with her lapping tea from my mug which was cute, but one day she decided that she was going to scoop pawfuls of tea out and drink from her paws. I wondered whether I wanted to drink the tea after she'd basically been paddling in it, but she kindly solved my dilemma by just knocking the mug over.

I try very hard not to have favourites, but Rowan was special. She was a mixture of bolshiness and affection, she didn't seem fazed by anything, and she approached everything with curiosity. I didn't even bother with a travelling cage for her - when I lived closer to the pet shop I'd pop out with her on my shoulder and more recently, she went on most of the bus trips back and forth to the vet down my shirt and covered up by a hoodie.

She made it to her 2nd birthday despite two seizures (that I am aware of) in September. She lost the ability to use her tail as a counter-balance which made it harder to get around the cage, then over the last week she declined. She had trouble breathing and found it harder to move around, and there was only so much I could put her through. She was brave and fearless, but I couldn't let her existence be joyless and watch her spark fade. She spent most of her last week on my lap and slept (in a travelling cage) beside me in bed. Last night I thought it was time; this morning she woke me early and I dozed with her snuggled against my neck with her nose poking out from under the duvet.

She went peacefully at the vets this afternoon, falling asleep in her usual place in the crook of my left elbow.

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Goodbye Rowan, Ro, Woe, Wowan, Wosie, Stinker. It was a joy knowing you.

Possibly the sweetest and gentlest rat I've ever known. She was laid-back and calm, the bottom of the ratten's hierarchy but content being there. Willow and Tamar pinned her even when they were tiny, and I've seen her sleep on her back with Willow and Tamar either side of her using her belly as a pillow.

She adored food, and when I gave the rats a bowl of leftovers from my dinner the others would cram as much as possible into their mouths and scurry away to eat it in peace. Not Asha. She'd station herself by the bowl and eat with enthusiasm and stamina. Sometimes I'd take her out so the others could have a share and she'd complain at me with plaintive little peeps. I think the only food she refused was sundried tomatoes but apart from that...well, she tried to eat a contact lens once.

She put up with all my poking and prodding over the last month and charmed the vet and the vet nurses. She'd let herself be flipped on her back and be tickled and massaged, she'd make friends with people in the waiting room and the bus. At home, she'd sit on my lap and brux and boggle away, occasionally licking my fingers or arm.

She had the most gorgeous fur - Russian Blue agouti is a dilution of regular agouti, so instead of her fur being black and shades of brown it was steel blue with shades of light brown and fawn and occasional bits of bright copper. Subtly beautiful.

Last night she seemed to have difficulty climbing around the cage, and when I picked her up she felt cold. So she spent nearly all of the evening on me, then in a small cage next to my bed, then, when I woke at 5am, on me again. I took her to the vets this morning and the vet said that it was probably some sort of liver damage. It was the sort of thing that they could only confirm with invasive and expensive tests, it was probably not something they could do anything about, and she was so weak already. She couldn't move herself around and I had to syringe-feed her water and hold her food for her. She wasn't even that interested in food, not even cherry yoghurt, and for a rat for whom food is one of the chief pleasures in life this seemed rather sad. While I don't think she was in pain, she did seem pretty miserable - and the kindest thing seemed to be to let her go gently.

Goodbye Asha, Ash, Ash-smash, Smasher, Smashcakes, Smash-rat, Thinker: you were a most excellent rat.

It's three_weeks_for_dw and I've been seeing loads of awesome stuff come up on my reading list.

dingsi started a Frequently (Or Not So Frequently) Asked Questions project and has compiled a masterlist at his journal. Today I read an awesome post by marshtide on how archaeologists determine the sex of a skeleton, pinesandmaple's analysis of a painting called A Lady In Her Bath and pippin's post on definitions and differences in asexuality.

You can see the latest things tagged with "three weeks for dreamwidth" or "three weeks" on the Latest Things page.

Me, I am ridiculously busy in these three weeks, but I did make a couple of themes the other evening while procrastinating.

While I did contemplate doing a FONSAQ project about rats, I really am too busy. However, if there's anything you want to ask me or want me to write about, here's your chance to ask. Not just about rats either.

The rats, incidentally, have been cheerfully destroying some applewood sticks. Usually at night, and usually when I'm trying to sleep. Thanks, rats.

All the rats fell asleep on me today for over 20 minutes today! This has never happened before - Rowan has occasionally had a two minute nap on me, but they've never zonked out like this. I was sitting cross-legged while they free-ranged, then noticed they'd gone suspiciously quiet and there was at least one rat on the back of my neck. It turned out that Asha and top-ear baby were behind my neck, dumbo baby was asleep inside my hoodie and Rowan was asleep next to me, then decided my arm looked much more comfortable and shifted to there.

..of course, when Rowan woke up she promptly pissed on me, so I thought I'd better return them to the cage.

They're normally really active and hardly sit still when free-ranging so them even being asleep was unusual. I'm weirdly touched that they went to sleep on me, even if I got a crick in my neck because I couldn't move it without disturbing them.

Kind of a quietly faily week for reasons that are tedious to go into. On the bright side there's a sniff of a job, which is part-time, university related and looks easy enough to work around (good) but which isn't actually teaching/research (sigh). On the other hand, money.
Anyway, today I saw the lovely madjackal and her girlfriend for dinner and I'm now being admonished by my housemate (M, not the Citizen or B) for giggling during Titanic's tragic death scene. Look, the "Jack, Jack, oh fsck he's dead" bit amused me when I was 13, it amuses me now, I am totally mature. However, as a love song for the ship it really, really works for me, and the bit guaranteed to make me a bit quiet and thoughtful is the final swoop through the corroded, crusted deck of the ship and its slow transformation into the gleaming, cared-for, elegant ship it once was, sloughing off the salt water and years to reveal something young and sleek. It's kind of what a drowned ship might dream about.

The rats are being especially cute. I've rat-proofed my stairwell and they're enjoying having more free-range time. The other day I foolishly attempted to do German homework there with them, and instead of running around and exploring they thought it was far more entertaining to dive down the sleeve of my writing arm, try to nibble the pen as I was attempting to write, try to chew the paper and generally harass me instead of entertaining themselves. I'm not cross though; in fact, I'm rather flattered that they'd rather play with me instead of investigate the boxes and tunnels they have there.

So, recently I have been getting drunk. I stopped-slash-minimised drinking for a while - pretty much since last May - but this week I've felt inclined towards some physiological fuckery. I am somewhat bored, and it's basically a toss up between drinking and giving awkwardly shaped dog biscuits to the rats and watching them attempt to carry them. The marrowbone rolls have been the most amusing so far.

Am still quite ferociously bored, not helped by the fact that I woke up at 8am and no one else in the house is awake so I can't pester them. Not even the rats are awake, sigh.

I am having a serious case of Get Some Rats (like Get More Rats, but I don't have any). I had rats as a teenager - Rani, Ruby, Charlie and Rat. I did a lot of things wrong (converted aquarium, pine shavings until I switched to shredded paper) but they were also delightful, engaging, intelligent little creatures and I would very much like to have some in my life again. The thing is, I am a person who has had pets of some description since I was 2, and grew up with fish, dogs, rabbits, rats, gerbils and guineapigs. I looked after other people's pets while they were on holiday, I worked in a stables/boarding kennel/cattery run by our vet, I rode for a while. We have two dogs - Holly and Charlie - but they live with my parents. I haven't had a pet living with me permanently since I left for university in 2003 and I really, really miss it. It feels wrong to me in a way I can't express. It still seems weird that I don't spend my weekends cleaning cages or hutches, or that I have no one to give the cool toys and treats I see in pet shops, or that I don't have a rabbit on my lap or dog on my bed or rat in my jumper.

I keep hanging around the Fancy Rats community, I keep looking at cages (currently considering an Abode), I keep looking at the awesome toys and hammocks you can now get, I find myself reading bedding reviews, I scope out nearby vets.

I'm not really sure if it's fair to own a pet as a student. It's not really a settled life and I like having the freedom to visit friends or family if I want to. I worry about whether it would be fair to get rats now when I'm not sure where I'll be in two or three years time (although I'd be happy to rescue some slightly older rats).
I often stay with my parents for two weeks or so over Christmas and Easter, or sometimes spend a long weekend with them. I think I'd either have to get a secondary cage to keep in Winchester or beg for a lift/finally get the driving sorted so I can take the cage down. I don't think these problems are insurmountable, I just worry that they make for an environment that isn't really ideal.

On the other hand...eeeee, ratties.