Three years ago my wife and I got three pet rats. A little over a year later, we added two more, and for a brief moment had a lovely little mischief of five happy boys.
Then we lost one of the new babies in a freak accident after he got injured during a scrap, then, a few months after that, the first of the original trio left us, and so on, and so on, until today, when the last of the new babies, who was now just over two, passed away.
And as much as I try to focus on the happy times, watching them boing about on the sofa, or stealing snacks from us, or just snuggling inside the hood of my jumper and falling asleep, it’s really hard to reconcile that with their short little lives.
We recently adopted a pair of 6yo cats, and while they could feasibly spend the next 10/15 years with us, there’s always that nagging doubt that they’ll suddenly develop an incurable illness, and we’ll lose them too soon.
But that’s all kinda worth it when they’re asleep on your lap, purring away. Or in the case of the ratties, boggling and bruxing.
Sorry if this is a bit maudlin; I’ve just buried Wilbur in the garden, and I miss my little toast-stealing friend.
This is a very real and normal part of having rats as pets. I’m sorry you have to go through it. My partner and I nearly gave on rats after loving an oops litter for nearly 2 years then losing all 8 of them over the course of a couple months. It was just the normal time for a rat to be done being a rat, but it felt like a biblical plague. Seemed like every week I had to put another of my friends in the garden out front of the old apartment.
While trying to figure out what to do with all this grief, we came across the myth that when a child dies, some god or another sprinkles daisies across the earth where that child lived or where they were buried. My rats occupied an interesting intersection where they were not, of course, children but they were absolutely My Babies. In light of this, we decided to get a daisy to plant over the spot where they rest, right next to one another just like they did every night when they were rats. It was an African daisy in particular, which is an annual in all but the southernmost USDA hardiness zones and will die annually basically anywhere in the US except along the southern border. We are in Pennsylvania, but somehow that African daisy has been going strong outside the old apartment for four years now. It pops beautiful flowers every summer and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, even though the new tenant is clearly not taking care of it at all. The rational-depressive in me is thinking about climate change, but the romantic in me sees a plant being kept alive against all odds by the sheer accumulated love and silliness of 16 rat-years. My friends saying hello, and letting me know they’re okay.
As far as giving up rats, we had decided to. We even gave away one of our three cages and were looking for homes for the other two when a breeder came across on Craigslist who had the goofiest, most beautiful pink eyed double rex beans I’d ever seen. So we hopped in the car for a couple hours drive and we’re rat parents again. The heartache is real, but it’s worth it. They’re litter mates, so odds are we’ll have a rattie mass extinction event some time in the next year or so. That’s gonna hurt a lot. But for now they’re cute, and silly and playful. They do tricks and get into mischief. We’re fortunate enough to have a spare bedroom that we’ve rat-proofed and filled with obstacles and hides and dig boxes. We even got to put little floating shelves on the wall and built them a super Mario Bros themed obstacle wall. The best part is, when they come out of the cage for enrichment time they line up at the door and everyone gives me a kiss and gets a cheerio.