Figure a. - A bin being investigated by McClane. The bin holds wonderous attraction for McClane. Ptolomy will have a glance in that direction but for McClane, the bin is better than anything else in the world. The boy gives rats a bad name. He will obsess over it and ‘Claney is a very single-minded, smart rat. We are forever having to drag him away from it. Likewise with:
Figure b - bin bags. Rustley, plasticky, filled with junk - what young rat could resist. Sometimes I think McClane thinks he’s being helpful by dragging things out of the bin bag - ‘Oh noes mummy, you didn’t mean to throw out THAT bit of bedding!’ Although having said that, yesterday he seemed to have an awful lot of fun just by jumping on the bin-bag like it was a trampoline.
As well as the bin and the bin bag, another favourite game is ‘Playing with the ripped-up newspaper we occasionally have for our bedding (i.e. when mum and dad are broke!)’. All you need to do is clean out their cage, rip up some newspaper (McClane loves this part, but it makes Ptolomy nervous) and then leave it in a pile in front of their cage. They love dragging bits back into their cage - helping mummy again - and generally distributing it up and down the hallway. The big boys enjoy this too - Piggy particularly enjoys nest building with shredded newspaper. What gets me though is how they always drag a single strip up onto their shelves and curl up asleep on it, proud that they know what its meant for even if they’re not doing it as right as they think they are.
Ptolomy’s favourite game is biting feets (especially Si’s) and you can literally see him giggling (ok, boggling) as he does it. McClane, on the other hand, adores clothes and will happily nibble at them for as long as he’s allowed. We probably didn’t help the other day - in many ways - by getting an old sock and filling it with yoggies, before hanging it from the bin and letting McClane go for it like a pinata. Best. Game. Ever!
On a sadder note, we learned that our ex-mouse girl Sneezles passed over a while ago. It was expected as she would have been very old had she still been alive, but it was very sad too. She was our sweet little angel.
It really does seem my blog is turning into an obituary page so, as of tomorrow, I am going to start updating this page more often.
Pedlar mouse had to be put to sleep last Thursday. He had been so sad since Wu and Timmy died, but had been clinging on to life. To be honest, we never expected him to be the last of our surviving mice. He was always so sickly that I barely have any recent photos of him as they aren’t pretty. A horrible eye infection he could never quite shake off. Mites. All that good stuff.
Over the last few weeks he had hind leg degeneration and last weekend his front paws seemed warped by arthritus. Then, after I treated him for mites last week, 70% of his fur fell out. He went quickly from being an excedingly plump mouse to skin and bones. Then, on Thursday, his eye burst. Thank God adrenelin kicked in and he didn’t seem to be in pain, but Si took him to the vet to be euthanised. The Vet also discovered a huge tumour in his throat that had literally come up overnight. We had to let him go.
We miss the little chap, who was so friendly and absolutely adored Si. He really did. And, fairly unusually for mice, he loved being cuddled and really enjoyed human company. But this is sad for another reason. Pedlar was the last of our mice. There will be no more. They are such fantastic little chaps yet they’re even harder to keep healthy than rats. Every one of our mice’s lives has ended in tragedy. We can’t take it any more.
Things having settled, I’m beginning to enjoy my boys without fear again. They all see much happier these days. Dobby, still not one for cuddles, bruxes like a mentalist as soon as you open the cage door and chat to him. Piglet seems slightly more responsible than before - the weight of alpha status resting heavily on his scruffy shoulders. And by God, he’s a scruff! Riff was in charge of grooming Piggy, so…
Pocket went through a stage of rejecting cuddles, but he’s over it now and is turning into a very cuddly chap. And he’s huge! He’s going to be monster-sized, for sure. Mumble is still very nervy and jumpy - he’s the only serious contender to Piglet’s reign and Mr Pig has decided the best approach is to squash insurgency before it starts - so he randomly bites Mumble every now and then. Not hard in the least - just a warning really - but poor Mumble!!! I would feel more sympathy for him though if he hadn’t ripped a huuuuge hole in our rental sofa!
Pedlar mouse is very old these days. In truth, he’s always been sickly - we never expected him to outlive Timmy and Wu - but he’s getting reserves from somewhere. He’s impossibly weak, thin and bony and with very thin fur. He sleeps a lot. But he still has that spark. Like Tinker before him, he adores his daddy and Si has been getting him out for special cuddle time for hours each evening. It’s very sweet. Mice, however, are incontinent so pee everywhere they go and it’s very difficult to get them used to not pooping when they’re out and about. Pedlar’s a bugger for that. At the mo Si is cleaning out his cage and I’m baby-sitting him. He’s trying to escape. He’s funny.
And as for the bubbies:
They are really lovely - 12 weeks old now and absolute nutters, always playing. Ptolomy is still very shy - he reminds me of Mallow in many ways - but he’s affectionate enough. McClane is the rat of dreams - very affectionate and lickey, playful and hyperactive but calm and cuddly when it’s cuddle time. He’s friendly, confident, inquisitive, adventurous and a little charmer. He’s so human. He’s also very smart - I’m in the first stages of teaching him how to give his paw and he’s learnt the first stage already i.e. he’s learnt now to hand out his paw when I’m offering a treat. It took him about 3 minutes to learn it. However, he didn’t realise that every time he got his treat and went off to stash it I was pinching it and givin it back to him each time. So maybe not so smart.
Thank you so much everyone for your words of support during this truly horrible time at the Vermin Realm. It has been the worst time of our lives, rodent-wise, and it’s not an experience I ever want to appreciate. Your support has meant so much to me, more than I could possibly articulate. And I need to say a big thanks to Si, for being the bestest, most brilliant rat-daddy in the world. He came through for us all, again and again. And he was my rock. He still is my rock. I love you Si xxx
So, what now? Well, I’ve kinda been throwing myself into my artwork, which is not very ratty - although ratty pics do sneak in from time to time. If you want to look at these, then I guess you should check out my rodent rebels page. I’ve also been working on lots of cartoons starring Smurt, Snitch and Dervel, so it’s worth keeping your eye on this page. In terms of this site - not just the blog, but the site as a whole - I will definitely be reworking it at some point. There’s a lot to be done. McClane and Ptolomy need their own photo pages. I need to update the graveyard. 
Ideally I want to revamp the whole site because I’m not too sure with the way it looks at the moment. I like the blog. The blog works for me.Both blogs. But the main pages, the guestbook, the links - the structure of the main page - I’d like to work on that. So I will. But there’s no hurry. This site will not be going any where. I want it to evolve and evolve. For now, I suppose I’m just working on the links page, updating the lolrats page, occasionally doing my blog. I admit, most of my work is going towards the rodentrebels site. I’ll probably want that finished before really setting down to work on this one. But do keep checking out the links pages - I think I will pare this down to one page for simplicity’s sake.
And do keep an eye on Riff’s site. There will be things posted from time to time. But if you want to join a new club, McClane is setting up his own gang. I’ll post the URL here when it’s all sorted.
And thanks once more for your patience. Being without Riff, Cobway and Toga is a very real pain. I miss my 3 special boys so much. They were my three favourites, and Cobway and Toga were particularly dear. But I’ll try to look to the future. I’ll try to forget how they were so cruelly snatched from me far before their time. I still have 6 boys who rock my world - and that’s NOT including Simon and Pedlar mouse.
 I am absolutely gutted about this very shocking death, which sadly occured while I was on holiday. Basically, Timorous (Timmy) was 100% healthy in every way - the perfect speciman of mousehood. And he was my mousie :( But he died on Sunday after a very sudden, unexpected and short illness. Basically, after Wu died we put Timmy and Pedlar onto a new type of substrate, which we later caught Timmy eating. We immediately put them both onto their old bedding but, on Friday, Timmy began looking very ill. He was breathing very rapidly, had gone cold and was quite listless. I had to go away on Saturday morning and he wasn’t looking any better, so we gave him some baytril, I gave him a cuddle and we hoped his tummy ache would ease. Then on Sunday morning Si phoned me to say that Timmy hadn’t made it. He’d gone in to check on him in the morning and found him curled up as though asleep. At least it was peaceful. I just feel so sad that it all happened when I wasn’t there to tell him how much I loved him.
Poor little Wu couldn’t go on any more. Although he didn’t appear to be in any pain, the abcess/tumour in his face just kept growing and growing. Eventually it spread to his throat and his lips, making it extremely difficult to eat. As soon as this happened we knew he only had days before he would be in a world of misery, so we made the kindest journey.
Dear Wu, such a little character. We’ll miss your cheekiness and wheel-obsession. You’ve left your daddy very sad, and your brothers miss you.
