Basil - 9/09 - 12/11

I've been holding off on writing this memorial for Basil.  I have been expecting his death for several months, so it was hardly a surprise.  It still doesn't feel real, though, especially not on the heels of Socrates.  After several months of brave struggle against his failing heart, Basil finally passed quietly on Christmas day. 

Basil came to me as an 8-week-old baby, one of 16 little ones born to an escapee at Petco who had gone feral.  The babies were hand-raised and fostered on a surrogate mom.  He and his tilty brother Wesley were my first "official" rescues. 

Basil was a rat's rat.  He put up with people.  Sometimes, if you caught him in the right mood, he would let you roll him onto his back and tickle his belly and kiss the minky spot on his tummy.  But most of the time he just weathered human attention with quiet dignity so he could get back to tending to his rats. 

He was a natural-born alpha.  He gently tended to Token in his final hours.  He taught the hoarding boys how to behave like real rats.  He kept Einstein in his place. He was the glue that held the colony together and while he was tough, he was also fair.  He saw the death of so many of his friends:  Ripper, Sweeney, Token, Splinter, Locke, Stock, Beryl, Wesley, Socrates.  In the end, he was very tired, and I think very ready to see his friends again. 

So long, big guy.  I miss you a lot, and the colony isn't the same without you.

Master Splinter

Splinter was rescued from the air force base in Alamogordo.  

The people who had him were snake owners who were trying to breed their own food.  They quickly realized that they didn't enjoy the snakes nearly as much as they thought, and were in over their heads in rats.  I was unable to take the two pregnant females, although I very much wanted to.  I was able to rescue this guy, though, and can only hope the girls found a good home.  

Splinter was a rex, beige hooded rat.  In his old age he started to go a little bald, the way rexes do, and he had a permanently disgruntled expression thanks to the curl of hair between his eyes.  We used to call him Mr. Grumpy-face.  

He fell into place as Basil's right-paw man, becoming the beta rat of the colony.  The two of them were very close, and Basil took his loss hard.  Splinter passed away of some sort of neurological issue that caused slow, creeping paralysis -- a stroke, perhaps, or a brain tumor. 

Wesley

Wesley and his brother Basil came to me as 9-week-old babies.  Their pregnant mother had escaped from her cage at Petco and had her litter loose in the store.  The babies were discovered -- I believe the mother had been killed in a trap -- and raised on a surrogate mom.  Someone called me begging to take some so they wouldn't all end up as snake food.  

Wesley had a head tilt from an inner ear infection.  I treated him for the infection and he never had any balance issues as a result of it, but he always tilted throughout his whole life.  

He was always an outgoing, exuberant youngster.  Always curious, always on the go.  He mellowed out a little in his old age, but he never liked to be held or snuggled -- he was always much more eager to explore.  He got along with every rat he met and was always making friends.  

He ended up with a pituitary tumor.  It caused deteriorating weight loss and poor coordination, but he did alright with it for a few weeks before finally going severely downhill.  His last day, he ran out of the cage to give me a kiss; when I came home from work that evening, he had passed quietly in his sleep. 

Locke, Stock, and Beryl

These three boys were my rescues from the hoarding situation.  For rats that were essentially feral and had never been socialized, they were all incredibly sweet.  They had some issues, to be sure, but they were definitely not "bad" rats by any means and I was lucky to have them in my life.

Beryl was my boyfriend's favorite, his "heart rat" as they call them.  He used to keep him out on the desk when he was playing videogames, and share snacks with him.  We even brought Beryl to a family get-together once, in his carrier, and everyone slipped him table scraps.  Stock was always more of a rugged loner, always causing trouble with the rats he lived with, but he was very sweet with people and loved to give kisses.

Locke passed away suddenly and unexpectedly from heart issues just a few weeks after he came to live with me.  The shock of it still hits me, sometimes.

Stock stayed with me for over a year.  He was about 18 months when he had a debilitating stroke; he recovered well from the first stroke and continued to be a sweet, lovely squish for another week before a second stroke claimed his life.

Beryl lived to be 22 months old and finally passed away from congestive heart failure.  We were treating it aggressively, but it just wasn't enough to sustain him.

Token

Token was a big guy who came to live with us when an acquaintance could no longer keep him.  He had lived alone all of his life due to animal-aggression, but I was able to successfully integrate him with my colony when he moved in, so he got to have some friends in the end.  Token was a big, chubby sweetheart of a rat who was always very licky: He loved to give kisses.  He did need some help grooming as he was so large, but he was quite patient about it and never had any complaints.  He was best friends with the then-infant Basil, and totally adored piling up into the hammock with his new friends.  

He came around September '09 and passed away in February 2010 from a sudden stroke. 

Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd was my first "rescue" in the sense that someone gave him to me when they could no longer care for him properly.  A coworker friend at Petsmart found out that I loved rats, and asked if I would take this lone boy she had saved from the shelter.  Not much is known about Sweeney's past before the shelter, but he had lived for several months all by himself.  You would have expected him to be neurotic or antisocial from that ordeal, but he was the sweetest, gentlest rat I've ever known.  

Everybody loved Sweeney, even people who didn't like rats.  And he loved everyone back.  He was devoted to his friend Ripper, and when newbies came into the group he welcomed them lovingly.  He was the alpha of the cage, although you'd never know it looking at him -- he ruled gently and lovingly, and everyone was obedient to him just from sheer devotion. 

In his middle age, Sweeney suffered from an inner ear infection that gave him a permanent head tilt and balance problems.  He ended up needing to have his teeth trimmed regularly and had to eat a liquid diet in the end, but he never complained about anything.  He passed away quietly in his sleep on Christmas Eve of '09.

Mr. Ripper

Mr. Ripper came from the Petsmart store where I worked during graduate school.  I had recently adopted another fellow, Sweeney Todd, and wanted to get him a friend.  This sweet himi boy had been returned to the store after the people who bought him decided he wouldn't get along with their existing rats (they didn't bother with intros, just dumped them into a cage together) and I felt bad for him because he was so much older and bigger than the other rats at the store.

Ripper was a sweetheart.  He had an affinity for boxes.  He was always climbing inside of them, and I have very few pictures of him without him burrowing into something or another.  He was also a consummate food stasher, he always kept piles of lab blocks hidden away.

In his old age, he experienced hind-end degeneration and lived out his last months as a bit of a slug.  He finally succumbed to pneumonia when he was around 27 months old.

Echo

Echo was Lily's sister, another of the Nicodemus/Velvet babies.  She's the only agouti rat I've had since Nicodemus.  I love agoutis, but they're not very popular so you rarely run into them among pet store stock.  She had a twin sister from the litter who was just a shade darker; her twin lived with my roommate all throughout college.

Echo outlived her mama by a few months.  She was born in September of '06 and died July of '09, making her just shy of 3 years old.  She, like nearly every other rat in the litter, had tumors.  In Echo's case, they were benign mammary tumors which she had for several months before they began to impede her movement, forcing us to let her go.  I had chosen at the time not to have the tumors operated on due to not having a vet I was comfortable with in the area and my history with her daddy.  I worry sometimes that it wasn't the right choice...but I think she was happy with it in the end.

Echo was a sweetheart of a rat.  She never caused any problems for anybody.  She liked to groom eyelashes and once she stole an entire slice of pizza from me.  Her death led me to the Rat Shack forum, which in a way led me into rescuing.

Lily

Lily was one of the Nicodemus/Velvet babies I kept for myself.  There was just a hint of rex in her fur, a slight waviness that belied her daddy's heritage.  She was a lovely color -- and just as blonde in personality as she was in coloration.  Seriously, Lily was a food-obsessed bimbo for all of her life.

She spent most of her time obsessing over the food bowl.  If she wasn't eating food out of it, she was stashing bedding into it.  I have no idea why she felt it necessary to bury the food bowl with bedding, but she did.  She would carry it up two levels of cage just to stuff bedding into the bowl.

She lived to be nearly 3 as well before succumbing to a number of very aggressive tumors. Fittingly, when she died she did it nose-first into the food bowl.

Black Velvet Pandora

Black Velvet Pandora, aka Velvet, was the tiny black-hooded girl I fell in love with the day I adopted Nicodemus.  I really shouldn't have adopted them together, but you live and learn and I certainly don't regret the joy of having a litter.  The babies were a joy to raise and taught me so much about rats.

Velvet lived with me for a very long time.  I got her in September of 2006, and she finally passed away in spring of '09, quietly and without fuss.

Velvet was hilarious.  An interior decorator at heart, she would tear apart the entire cage to rearrange it to her liking.  She was never satisfied unless she had done everything herself.  She'd chew down hammocks, shred up nest boxes, drag igloos around, and was constantly stealing items from my room to go hide in the cage.

She also liked to chase her tail.  She would carry the end of her tail around in her mouth, tugging herself around in circles until she got dizzy and fell over.  She used to amuse herself by climbing up onto a shelf, then pulling herself tail-over-ears onto the floor of the cage.

She struggled with respiratory ailments on and off throughout her life, but lived to a ripe old age regardless.  She was an amazing mama-rat, and the softest rat I've ever met in my life.

Nicodemus

Nicodemus "S.R." Sewer Rat was only with me for two short weeks, but he managed to completely steal my heart in that time.  

After Athena died, I was rat-less for a few months, the only time I've had a rat-free home since I started.  I was so lonely and miserable that my friends all conspired to get me new rats for my birthday.  Armed with a gift card, I headed to that same Petco where I'd gotten Squeakers and Athena.  I had decided this time around that I wanted boys, and no white ones.  I wanted something as different from the girls I'd had as possible so there'd be no bad memories.

Well, that didn't quite work out, because as soon as I got there I fell instantly and immediately in love with a little black hoodie female.  And just as instantly in love with this handsome dumbo agouti rex male.  They were all housed together (at the time, this Petco didn't separate its genders - that has since been changed).  I waffled on it a lot, but finally decided I'd take them both and neuter the male.  

Unfortunately, he didn't survive the surgery.  The vet I took him to advised me to withhold food and water the night before surgery; this is unnecessary in rats, and downright dangerous due to their high metabolism.  Whether that was the reason he never came out of the anesthesia, or if there was some other health concern going on, I will never know.  It still breaks my heart to think of how little time we had together.  

He did however leave a legacy behind: 8 baby rats, mothered by the black hooded girl I brought home.  It was incredibly dumb of me to leave them together while waiting on the neuter, and I don't advocate anyone breeding their rats, ever.  But it worked out OK in the end.  I found homes for all of the babies with close friends, so I was able to keep tabs on them for their whole lives, and raising those babies taught me a TON about rats.  I did so much more research, between trying to find peace of mind about his sudden death and then educating myself about babies.  This is when I found The Dapper Rat, and started to get really serious about rat care. 

The babies: 

Athena & Squeakers

Athena and Squeakers came to me in 2004, my sophomore year of college.  They were my first rats and I made a lot of mistakes with them, but they taught me so much.  Unfortunately, as they were my first rats I also didn't take nearly enough pictures of them.  I don't have ANY photos of Squeakers at all, and the pics above are the only surviving pictures of Athena.  They were both PEW girls pulled from the feeder bin at Petco.  At the time, feeder rats were about two dollars cheaper than "fancy" rats.  Since then, there's been some pressure on pet stores to stop selling live feeders, so most pet stores are now having owners sign adoption contracts guaranteeing the pet will not be used as food.  It's a small step in the right direction.

Anyway.  Squeakers died just a few months after she came to live with me, of unknown causes.  She died in my hands and I will never forget it.

Athena lived on for just about two years.  She grieved terribly when Squeakers died and become somewhat vicious.  I never tried to give her another friend, although I wish I had -- it would've made her life much happier.  Despite being territorial (and sometimes downright bitchy) Athena was a lovely girl.

She was put to sleep after a long struggle with respiratory disease.  I was out of the country at the time, so I don't know all the details...the person who was rat-sitting had to make an extremely difficult decision that night!

Squeakers and Athena were my gateway rats, the ones that really started my love for rodents.