#spoiledratupdate

I lost Garion -- one of the old men -- a week ago today. It was not unexpected; a previous owner actually happened to know their birthdate, June 1st 2018, which means Garion was just shy of three. Hitting three for a rat is like a human hitting a hundred. Domesticated rattos live a lot longer than their feral counterparts, but not a lot of them make it quite that far. Garion also spent a fair chunk of last year suffering through the single worst bout of pneumonia I have ever seen a rat survive. He recovered pretty well, but never quite regained all of his weight, and had persistent breathing trouble that I'm guessing was down to scarring of the lungs, since it didn't respond to antibiotics but did remit a bit with the faceful of Dulera he got every morning.

I kept the two old men when the other six went off to Mainely Rat Rescue specifically because I figured Garion didn't have a lot of time left. It's difficult to re-home senior rats, I was already their third caretaker, and I did not like the idea that either Garion or his brother Errand might pass away while still in foster care. I wasn't about to split them up either; they'd been together literally their entire lives. Errand was not the brightest of rats even before he started trying to eat paint, but he's very protective. When Garion was wheezing, we had to stuff them both in the Sick Bay cage together (which you aren't supposed to do, lest the healthy one catch lurgy), or neither of them would really eat.

Garion settled into the role of crotchety old man quite a while ago, but he did give me just enough warning to deliver their birthday mini-cupcakes about a week early. (They both ate all the frosting off the top, then Errand flipped them over and trampled cake into everything. Which was pretty much what I expected.) I called the vet and made his Final Appointment as soon as I knew he was really in trouble, but Garion had other ideas. There was some complaining, some trapping his brother in a corner for cuddles, and some scuttling around looking for a comfortable spot that didn't exist. He got as much Tylenol as he wanted, since frankly hepatotoxicity wasn't exactly a concern anymore. I told him I loved him and his previous mommy loved him and I promised I would take care of his idiot brother. He spent his last hour or so laid out in my lap, being gently pet, going slower and slower and slower until finally he stopped.

Just as well. Garion hated traveling. I had to fill him right up to his beady little eyeballs with valerian-laced yogurt to get him to the new apartment. He would not have enjoyed an Uber ride to the vet.

As with all of my rats, Garion was sent off in a comfortable box, with all of the snacks and treasures he'll need in the afterlife. Chocolate chips, baby carrots, an extra birthday cupcake for the road, some chopsticks to gnaw on, one of his favorite crocheted huts to curl up in, and a stuffed version of his brother, so he has someone to cuddle with until he sees the real one again. 

If you want to honor his memory, two of his favorite hobbies were bossing his brother around, and climbing onto the highest thing he could find so he could perch like a scruffy little gargoyle, and peer judgmentally down on all below. I'm sure you all can figure something out. He was also a complete chocoholic. We would have gotten him help for it, but 12-step programs won't accept you until you admit you have a problem, and Garion saw absolutely nothing wrong with stealing and hoarding as many chocolate chips as he could find. Not even when he napped on the pile and mashed it into his fur. In his defense, "rat slept on something delicious" is rather a self-solving problem.

Errand is still with me. Aside from some thinning fur on his face, and some understandable sads right now, he is the same squashy dumbass he was a year ago. I have no idea how long he'll last. I gave him and Tseng a few days to adjust, then smeared them both with pistachio pudding and dumped the little fuckers in the bathtub, in the hopes that maybe that would make the other rat tasty enough to get along with. It worked for about three minutes, before Errand lost his temper over nothing. Tseng, who outweighs the old man by almost 50% but learned all of his ratting from Rude, did basically nothing to defend himself, and seemed confused by the very concept of someone trying to pick a fight. He managed to no-sell the whole thing so completely that I didn't realize Errand actually did nick him until I picked the little booger up.