Esk

 

I’m hopefully going to be writing a little more to clear a backlog of posts I’ve wanted to write but been unable to while my computer was messed up; but first some sad sad news.

We had to have our Esk put to sleep yesterday. She was nearly 2, which is an average age for a rat but seeing her sisters still so full of live made it so much harder.

She had something wrong with her brain. With rats that’s about as much as you get to know diagnostically. We could have put her through an MRI to see if it was a tumour or if she’d had a stroke but the end results would have been the same – palliative care so there was no real need to put her through that.

She was the friendliest of the group of 4 girls. She was always running up to the cage bars to see you and she used to nibble the hard skin on the side of my fingers. Our little rattie manicurist.

 

In Tiffany’s last days she played the role of body guard and protector. No one even dared touch Tiffany without Esk attacking them! One consolation we can take from that is that they’re back together now, both in their prime snuggling with Rommie our very first rat.

 

 

Esk for a long time made me think I’d lost my mind. When we first moved to Newport from Gloucester the girls and Tiffany were in a large travel cage. I was sleeping on the sofa as our bed was still in Gloucester and I’d wake up in the middle of the night picturing a rat on top of the cage. As soon as I woke up, turned on the light and looked in the cage there was still 5 rats.

Turned out she was escaping to the top and then chickening out and going back in with her friends, toys and food!

 

I know she had a great last few weeks. A trip to my parents, with lots of food and love. Her last weeks were spent with Esme, who’s had a lump removed. She misses her a lot; we all do.

 

We spent yesterday together, me and her mostly. She just wanted to cuddle, a complete difference from her usual bouncy self. More than anything she just looked tired, she looked so ready to go.

 

I held her all the way to the vets office, wrapped up in a green towel. We waited for an hour or so, it was busy he was running behind but I didn’t care I could have waited all night. When we saw Paul he agreed that it was right, she’d lost a good third of her body weight in the last few days, she was eating but it took more energy to eat then she was getting from the food. He took her through the back and it was quick and painless. I think he held her while she went and she knew that we did the best thing for her.

 

It’s been two years since we last lost a pet. Time heals all wounds and you forget how raw it feels, how much of a hole they leave in your heart. You want the world to stop, to yell that she was a GREAT Rat and she didn’t deserve to die. That she should live forever, that all pets should.

 

All we can rest on is that we gave her the best possible life. We loved her completely and she loved us completely back. I could have avoided the heartbreak and pain by not letting them come into my lives, but I feel both of ours would be so much poorer for that.

We Miss you Eskie; our little “wild” rat, picked up off the warehouse floor at Pets at Home to make up the numbers!