The mystery of "Himmmm"

Last week, I lost the old man rat. Tseng told me he was done on Thursday morning, and I took him in that afternoon. My beautiful monster is gone.

Tseng was a lucky rat. He was originally destined to be snake food, but the snake got picky. Snake Mama had nowhere to keep live rats, so she offered him and his female cagemate around on Facebook. I got on a commuter train in the middle of a pandemic, rode all the way up to Lowell to meet some random lady for two minutes, and got right back on the same train to come home, two rats richer. My then-roommate took the girl, and I got the boy. 

I had two other older rescues that I'd re-named Rude and Reno, so the wiggly little Siamese was christened Tseng. Snake Mama told me he was six months old, which was patently impossible; he might have been four months old, but unless he was a dwarf variety, he was far too small for six. I was vindicated later when he grew into an absolute behemoth.

The girl was, predictably, already pregnant, so we just let the two of them chill in the travel cage until the girl-rat blew up like a balloon and got bitey, which is a good indicator that a rat is about to give birth. I divided my big cage in two; the old men were temporarily relegated to the bottom, and Tseng got the top floor to himself for a bit. I kept half an eye on him for days, worried that he was still so small he could smash his little head out between the bars and take off.

I introduced the concept of the baby to the Old Turks first by putting Tseng safely into a cat carrier and letting the big boys smell him for a bit. Reno investigated and decided nothing interesting was going on, but Rude went out of his tiny furry little mind trying to get Tseng free. When he couldn't figure out how to let the baby out, he laid down with his nose stuffed into carrier door, making the same tiny fwee fwee Noise of Socialization he made when he wanted my attention. When I put them back into their respective apartments, Rude and Tseng worked together to eat a hole in three layers of cardboard floor so they could nose each other through the wires of the middle shelf. 

The next time, I just dropped the baby onto the bed with the giant old men, and kept an eye on them. They snoofed one another briefly, and started playing in my blankets. Easiest introductions I've ever done.

Rude left us at the end of November, evidently having decided that Ratsgiving was the pinnacle of his existence and he ought to leave on a high note. Reno devoted himself to growing one of the largest tumors I have ever seen attached to a rat, and finally declared it finished in early February. After the Old Turks passed, Tseng decided he was not interested in any other roommates. I tried some introductions, but Tseng did his best to ignore what was going on until the other rat made one too many attempts to interact, then he whipped around and tried to eat the other rat's face off.  

Okay! I said. Message received! You get a room to yourself! Why I keep getting the weird loner rats, I don't know, but I've discovered so many fascinating ways to keep rats from getting at each other from opposite halves of the same cage. He had the top floor when I was caring for Garion and Errand, but was moved to the ground floor unit when the Toon Bros arrived, mainly so it was more difficult for the young'uns to provoke him. They could climb up and chew holes in the ceiling when Tseng was on top, but Tseng was too hampered by his own bulk to do the same. Mainly he tried to intimidate them. When rats are trying to start a fight, they sort of jump at each other sideways, with their fur all puffed up, and make this loud SPOOFT! SPOOFT! noise, trying to seem bigger than they are. Tseng rocked back on his dumpy backside and tried to huff-jump straight up at the offending neighbors, the grumpy old rat equivalent of banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. Logistically, it wasn't very effective, but at least he got a lot of exercise.

Rude and Reno were huge. They were badly overweight when rescued, and eventually slimmed down to a svelte two pounds apiece. Two pounds is about the maximum size for Rattus norvegicus, mind you; they went in to see the vet once for what turned out to be mites, and everyone there was duly impressed that I somehow managed to bring them a pair of rats larger than Barak. Tseng's last officially recorded weight was 954 grams. I hope he knew that his uncles would have been very proud of him. He was, admittedly, a bit chonky; I tried to put him on a diet a few times, but he just went on strike and refused to participate in anything that wasn't dinner. Better a fat rat who waddled around a lot than a slightly less fat rat who sulked 24/7, I figured. But he was also just absolutely gigantic, easily the length of my forearm plus that much again in tail, and required two hands and a lot of negotiation to pick up. 

Scooping him up was enough of a hassle that he preferred I didn't do it. He had a point; I could technically get all four of his feet on my hands at once, but in practice if he didn't want to be squished into a ball he ended up standing awkwardly on my forearms. Shoving my palm under his belly and lifting, as some of the others prefer, was out of the question, as there was far too much rat for one hand. I compromised and decided he could have a Rat Transport Box, which was a shoebox with an opening on one end that lived in his carrier. While he would grudgingly let me grab him and plop him into it when the fire alarm went off, for playtime I got the box down, let him climb in, and then moved the box to the desk and let him come out to run around on his own time. He figured out pretty quickly that shoebox = runarounds! and seemed entirely satisfied with the arrangement.

The older he got, the more 'runarounds' became 'naparounds'. I have a smaller travel/isolation cage set up on the end of the desk, so the rats have somewhere to grab food and water while they play. Tseng decided it was a good snoozing spot. He spent a lot of time sleeping fatly on his back in the corner underneath a laptop sitting on the roof of his cage, because he didn't feel like moving, I didn't feel like disassembling the cage to move him, and I had a Zoom meeting to get to. I didn't fancy being on camera one day and made my meeting portrait a photo of him napping back there, furry white belly to the sky and all his little chicken feets sticking up. The other attendees thought it was hilarious.

Tseng had a lot of opinions. Surprisingly, he was not that motivated by random snacks. I have video somewhere of me trying to give him a dish of my Chinese takeout, and him irritatedly smacking me away with both front paws, because he was too busy destroying a box to want it. No, he was motivated by very specific snacks. I bribed him to take some medication at one point by rewarding him with teeny tiny Chips Ahoy cookies out of those $1 snack cups, and those became one of his primary reasons for living. There are other kinds of cookie snack cups out there, but they were inferior and not to be bothered with. He would grudgingly take the Nutter Butters and Oreos and eat just the middles out of them, but I tried to feed him a Nilla Wafer once, and he just sniffed it and looked up at me like, "Really? I thought you were better than this."

Tseng is how I know that rats get brain freeze. I fed him a spoonful of ice cream. He took a great big bite, reared back with his face all scrunched up, and shook his head so violently his ears flapped. He came back for more, obviously, but there was more licking and less munching from then on.

Peanut butter was another favorite. I had to feed it to him a teeny glob at a time, because given the chance he would take a giant bite and then have to mlem-mlem on it for ages trying to clear his mouth. He departed this vale of tears absolutely covered in chocolate, in fact, because I gave him a peanut butter cup for the ride out to the vet. He wasn't terribly interested in eating at that point, but he did dig the peanut butter out of the middle and then sleep possessively on the rest.

'Not eating' is a pretty good signal of the end. So is 'rat who can't stand being picked up abruptly climbs into your lap'. Rats who have hit the point of no return start to army-crawl restlessly from place to place, laying down briefly and then moving on, over and over again. They're looking for a spot where they can be comfortable. But they can't find it, because the discomfort is inside. I gave him as many painkillers as I had, and some valerian so he could feel less distressed, and when he finally calmed down enough to nap for a few minutes, I walked all the way out to the kitchen and made him a scrambled egg. Which sounds sort of ridiculous, I suppose, scrambling an egg for a rodent, but if you're going to serve someone their last meal it might as well be one you know they like.

He went off to join Rude and Reno in a box with all the peanut butter chocolates, cookies, cinnamon sticks, and cozy bedding he could possibly need on the way. If you wish to honor his memory, I recommend tucking yourself into bed and eating an entire bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups all by yourself.