A Certain Point of View

In late February of 2008, I had a terrible flu. Ratty and I sat on the couch and watched a lot of tv and played a lot of games. He was a fine, large rat, a good 5.5 inches, much larger than the wee 2.o inch long baby that was shivering on our porch 18 months ago. We had had to buy him a new cage, a three-level model with ladders and an attached wheel (and it was the smallest cage they had).

Rats are neophobes, they don't like new things. Ratty initially resisted his new cage, even though he couldn't even stand up in his old cage and couldn't run in his wheel anymore. But after staying up with him over night several nights, he adapted. Late at night, I could hear his new wheel squeaking, so I would go down and lubricate it with vegetable oil. (It was an annoying chore, but it was a really annoying noise.) Ratty was growing mellow, as male rats do, and he needed coaxing to exercise on his wheel. I occasionally dotted his wheel with peanut butter. He really enjoyed his extra time with me staying home with the flu. We would both fall asleep and I could hear him snoring.

We came home in early March and discovered Ratty in respiratory distress. Had he caught my flu? Veterinaryintervention was upwards of $400; the vet's second option was to trynursing him at home with a course of antibiotics and give him one last chance before putting him down. T. reminded me that Rattie should have been eaten bya cat 18 months ago when we found him shivering on ourporch - therefore, he had a good life on borrowed time. I think to myself, "Stupid logical thought processes, force me to adopt a rat, make me end up bonding with it, and then minimize his life? Stupid logical men."

Very sick Ratty would go from sitting in his lair to running hysterically on his wheel. Later I found out this is Nature's euthanasia - panic from illness would set a rat running pell-mell, making them easy prey, thus ending their life quickly.

Rattie had mycoplasma, or possibly a secondary infection from mycoplasma, the vet wasn't going to test for sure. M. is a common disease among petstore rats, and eventually their immune systems give out. $400 for veterinary intervention was a lot of money, and for just a few short months where Ratty would be in and out of strange oxygen chambers and not happy in his cage, and not with me. Remember, Ratty is a neophobe. It was nice to know that I did not transmit my flu. It was awful to think that his mellowing behavior wasn't just old age, it was probably the disease spreading - hindsight is always20/20. Probably, the snoring was also another indicator of incipient respiratory disease.

After two days of nursing and inserting medications and tempting him with food, I realized painfully that this was unfair and unjust. Ratty was struggling for every breath, and not having fun. He had long ago stopped eating and drinking. There he sat, amid all of his favorite and most forbidden foods, completely ignored: peanut butter, M&Ms, puffed corn cereal, nuts of all sorts, a dog's chew toy, a chickenbone. The last night of his life, late at night, he looked up at me from the doorway of his lair and gazed at me steadily, wheezing. There was a little wrinkle in his forehead I had never seen before. He readily climbed onto my hand, as sick as he was. It was, I felt, a plea for mercy.

Putting down a rat is not like putting down a cat or dog. You can't hold and cuddle and say good bye, because rats have a flight instinct. They just know when someone is trying to kill them. So Ratty was put in a little clear plexi chamber (I got to hold the chamber, which is cold comfort) and allowed to breath comfortably for a while, and then introduced to sleeping gas until he was unconscious. Then he was given the kill shot. He gave off some reddish fluid called porphyrin from his nose and mouth, which is an indicator that he was frightened and under stress, which made me feel terrible. Vets often don't know how to treat rodents, and there were no other vets in the area willing to treat Ratty.

They let me take him home. I put him in the refridgerator until T. came home (which freaked him out a little). Hey, he was in a clean box, in paper towels, away from food. The next day, I cleaned him up (he didn't complain this time) and wrapped him in my best museum-quality linen (it didn'ttake much) and my husband and I buried him in the garden not far from where we found him.

The hastily bought cage and the new adult cage are in the garage. I don't have to rouse myself to silence the wheel squeak in the middle of the night anymore. There are no more bits of hay around the living room. Ratty liked to hoard piles of food around the living room, and I think most of them are gone. I don't need to watch Dancing With the Stars.

How I miss him.

Ratty was extremely smart, and very curious. If I wore a jacket, he liked to go up and down the sleeves, coming out in my lap, and the expression of conquest and exploration was unmistakable. Hilarious.

Facial expressions on a rat, particularly a pink eyed white, are very subtle. But eventually, I learned to read them. Rats are extremely social and like to know what's going on, and will stay up with you. And will get up with you. But a rat yawn, late at night, watching Letterman, is impossibly cute. Most of the time, though, his expression (I swear) was "Huh! How about that!"

I let him run around the living room, keeping watch for the cats. Mostly, everyone let him alone. Little Black Kitty, who grew up outside, occasionally would look at him oddly - "Why are they cuddling food like that?" If he felt threatened, he would hide in my hair. Once, I would have shuddered at the thought of a rat in my hair. I knew he loved me when he snipped a lock to take back to his cage. He didn't even use it as bedding, it was a prize.

Typically, I opened Ratty's cage and sat and played with him after work. T. played with him before work in the mornings. Once, I fell asleep with him loose in the living room! Cats prowling everywhere! I woke up with a start, and there was Ratty, he had climbed back into his cage and patiently waited for me to wake up. He actually looked a little annoyed, that time. T. got mad at me. Until I caught the two different occasions he forgot to close the cage all day and Ratty had to spend the whole day in his lair, rather than toodling around and exercising. He looked really tired and bored that day, and very happy to see us.

T. told me never to feed him through the bars, or he would learn to snap at anything through the bars, fingers, food, cat paws... He loved food. He was an acquisitive little rat, and he loved anything edible and would run away with it. I disobeyed and learned my lesson, a bitten finger. (He retreated to his lair in ratty angst.) A rat was like a small child, and like any child, consistency was key. I had to retrain him not to snap at things.

I realized the depth of my love and my bond for Ratty one day when he was sitting on my shoulder and we were walking around the house near a mirror. He was looking at my ear, and I was watching him. He suddenly noticed my earring, a diamond, and he tried with his might to pull it out. I hollered "Ouch!" and even squeaked like a mouse to get the point across. Ratty ran down my arm to my elbow and covered his face, pulling his ears in ratty angst. He wouldn't look at me. He felt bad! I scratched his cheek "It's ok, Ratty, I'm ok." We were still near the mirror. "I'm ok." Ratty ran up to my shoulder, and patted and cuddled my ear. There was real remorse there.

Yep, he was really curious, did I mention that? At one point, he kept sticking his pointy little nose in my ear. Deeper and deeper! I finally got annoyed and stuck my pinky in his little ratty ear - see how he'd like it, having someone stick their thingie in their thingamebob. His jaw actually dropped, and his eyes widened! I saw comprehension! He never did it again.

Ratty and I developed games -- "Guess which fist is the food in?" "What's in the Pinata? (sealed toilet paper tube with stuff inside)" "Where Did It Go?" "Follow the Leader (piece of food) Through the Junk on the Desk" that were funny and challenging. Occasionally, we even played "Tease the Lion" where he'd try to climb on a sleeping cat. Ratty demanded a lot of time, and life was never dull.

I initially drafted this in 2006, forgot, lost heart in 2007, and I am posting it now. Forgive the changes in tenses. I just need to publish this.



It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, 2006. I was still in bed, recuperating from holiday dinner. My husband came in from getting the newspaper and said "There's a rat on the porch." "Ew!" I said. "Is it dead?" "Nope." I rolled over "Well, don't feed it," I joked. My husband grinned "Er. Too late. It likes raisin bran." I shot up out of bed -- "You're feeding a rat on the porch?! Are you nuts?!" It was a little pink eyed white, barely two inches long, miraculously sitting on our porch (we have 12 steps up, I still don't know how he got there) and shivering under the handrail. Eating raising bran.

The whole house and porch stinks of cats. I'm still convinced that, after having gotten loose and having wandered around the neighborhood, Ratty had finally lost hope and was suicidal. I didn't know anything about rats, but my husband had rats as a child, and he delightedly put him in a bucket and trotted out to the petstore for supplies. We argued about keeping him (we had seven cats at the time) and by the time we got around to naming him, Ratty answered to "Ratty." (Actually, we had named him after a hated city councilman, but after bonding with him, we realized the rat was far smarter than a mere politician.) I looked for a home for him diligently. No one wanted him.

Meanwhile, I hated that Ratty sat in his new enclosure and cowered. That's when I discovered a website called "rat fan club dot com" and learned we were using evil pine bedding (we changed) and I trust-trained him with peanut butter and puffed rice cereal. Rats and mice relate to humans mostly by their hands, so I started by handfeeding him. Eventually I led him to take babyfood and peanut butter off my palms, where he had to stand amid my fingers and lick it off, rather than snatching food and running away screaming back into his upside down lair.

Now, he sits on my shoulder when we watch tv. Rats are nearsighted, and when they want to focus on something, they sway. Sway. Sway. Sway. He likes to sway at his reflection. He likes to sway to "Dancing with the Stars," "American Idol," and other dreadful tv shows - the things I have come to do for him! He recognizes me and runs to me when I walk near his cage. I like improvising toys for him, like stuffing toilet paper rolls with food and sealing the ends for him to figure out how to open. I love him. (Even the cats put up with him.) It has been 18 months or so now, and Ratty is maybe almost two years old. Petstores would not sell us a single companion rat, (only twosies) so we just spend a lot of time with Ratty.

Ratty's pecularity as a rat is that he won't clean his tail. So periodically, I take him on my shoulder, carefully grasp his tail, take a toothbrush, some pet shampoo, and scrub him. (This is ok.) He grasps my hair and chitters! He's not happy. Not in pain, not under stress, but not exactly happy. When he was first trust trained, I finally got him out and gave him a bath -- I thought I had completely screwed up training forever -- but he smelled funny, and he had accidentally ground poop into his fur from the wheel. THEN he was under stress, so I know that this is not a big deal. He grumpily holds my ear or my hair, proffers his butt and waits, which I think is hilarious. I give him an extra special forbidden treat afterwards, like an M&M, and it's hysterical, seeing his expression of wounded dignity, his damp tail cradled in his paws, his prized M&M under his arm.

If planes can crash and nobody's dying, maybe the world's going to be okay, after all. I'm feeling optimistic for the first time in years. Eight years, actually.