Return of the Mummy Rat...

When I said at the end of my last post, "more soon...." I really thought it might be a litle sooner than this! I had a nice little early Christmas present arrive on Christmas Eve - a lovely dose of German measles; excellent - impending senility together with a childhood ailment. Only to Mummy Rat could this happen.

Still, I've spent the majority of my week-and-a-bit holiday laid out in glorious state on the sofa with Tim and Grissom (two of my little boys) in their 'hospital' cage next to me. I've been able to just put my hand down and have two little rats to stroke - Tim in hospital with his lump (his bad leg is now better, thank goodness - twisted, but usable and still attached to Tim, which is the main thing) and Grissom as his companion. Grissom was the runt of his litter, is tiny and incredibly good natured, but with a will of iron. He is the best companion for the poor sick Tim - the least likely to get stroppy because of the smallness of the hospital cage. Another rat, Del, had spent a week or so in the hospital cage before Christmas due to the fact that he had a sore on his back (the dreaded Mite Outbreak of 2008 - several vet visits and many capsules of Ivermectin later, now thankfully contained) but was getting more stroppy by the moment by being constrained. It got to the point where you only had to look at him sideways and he was there, issuing threats.... and Del is one of the most laid-back people I know. Exit Del, enter Grissom.

We had a brief attempt at putting the ancient Taylor (the grandfather of the family and in my eyes, needing some TLC) in the hospital cage but I woke up in the middle of his first night in there (from my bed on the settee where worried Mummy Rat was maintaining vigil on the Poor Sick Tim - at that point with a very bad break of his hind left leg) with a burning need to check the hospital cage. I feared the worst - fate had woken me up to be with Tim for his last few moments on earth ... - when it turned out that what I'd ACTUALLY been woken for was to realise that we were a man down in the hospital cage. Frantic search ensued - furniture removal, lights blazing, bad language and much sweating on the part of Mummy Rat - only to find that the ancient and infirm Taylor had opened the door of the hospital cage (how? I have no clue and he's sure not telling) and had made the 18-inch leap from the roof of the hospital onto the lip of the main cage (a massive parrot cage that goes by the name of Rat Towers). The lip does the round of the bottom of the cage - to catch seed, I would imagine, but in our case to catch any donations the rats wish to make to us - and Taylor was lapping it like Damon Hill on a good day, looking for entrance to his rightful home. The others were there, cheering him on - Tim giving the slow hand-clap from the roof of the hospital cage, unable to make the leap himself being a leg short - so I didn't have the heart to put Taylor (pet name of "T-Bag" - no wonder he didn't seek closer proximity to his human fan-club) back in hospital. Poor Tim - the first potential "companion" rat I managed to grab after I'd captured everybody who was where he shouldn't be was our little energy capsule Bing. Bing in a small cage is a recipe for disaster but when it's 2:20am and you have a room to reassemble before you can get back to fake-bed to resume vigil over the Poor Sick Tim, it was all I was prepared to consider.

And I got sick, why...? To quote Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, "It's amazing I'm sane...."