Moving today. After I got home and TOOK MY GODDAMN MEDICATION and calmed down some, I realized that the landlady would not have bothered asking me to come back Tuesday if there had been something catastrophically wrong with the paperwork, or the background check people had gotten me mixed up with someone on the Homeland Security Watch List. Since I do not look like an axe-murdering maniac in person, and I have a sensible explanation for why my "emergency contact" and "next of kin" are both people who are in no way biologically related to me, I am operating under the assumption that I will be signing a lease on Tuesday morning.

The rat for some reason has decided to flip the fuck out this time, as opposed to all the other times I've boxed things up and moved his cage around. He's elderly by rodent standards and has chronic snurfles, and he gave himself what amounted to an asthma attack this morning around 7. I woke up when he threw himself onto my feet. I assumed he'd just been a doof and fallen off the top of his house, which he's done before, so I delivered him home and went back to bed. Then he did it again, very much on purpose. He doesn't know he can jump, so it was basically a semi-controlled splat! onto the floor, followed by a frantic waddle for my futon.

(I'm never really worried this one will get lost. The very first thing he does when he hits the ground is scuttle right over to me, wherever I am, and go HI MAMA LOOKIT ME IM VISITIN YOUUUUU. Once he did it while I wasn't there; he hid in a corner until I got home, and then made a beeline for my feet.)

I didn't want him to hurt himself, so up I got at the ass-crack of dawn to cuddle him while he had a tiny furry werflig little breakdown. I told him he had all my sympathy, because I've been doing that off and on for weeks. Then I gave him some extra Benadryl, because that both unclogs his nose and makes him calm down. He's conked out now, as it's time for one of his many scheduled daily naps.

If it's absolutely necessary, I can sedate the little booger with an infinitesimal bit of alprazolam. I've done it before, albeit with rats who were already obviously terminal -- it doesn't fix anything but their distress, but it hasn't killed any of them yet, either. Technically, I could apply the medication to me like I'm supposed to do, but if I give it to the smaller patient, it takes care of both freak-outs at once.

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