R.I.P Brian

Two weeks to the day after William died i had to have Brian put to sleep :o(
I thought he was pining but it turns out he had developed a chest infection which left untreated worsened and on Tuesday the vet said that although she could try and treat him the chances of it being successful weren't very high and i decided that it would be unfair of me to make him suffer any more :o(
I am gutted and feel very badly that i didn't have him seen before it got so bad. I have also decided to take a break from keeping ratties, i get so attached the little monkeys and their lives are so short, i'm not sure my heart can take the sadness any more. I'm not saying never, i'm just saying not yet.

Besides, i am running out of room in the garden!

RIP Squiiggle :o(

I knew he wouldn't live to a great old age like Freddie did but i wasn't expecting him to go quite so soon after Freddie :o(

Life

can really give you a kick sometimes :o(
I've lost my two old boys in the space of a week. Freddie was 2 years and 7 months which is a good age for a rattie, he was only ill for about 24 hours and slipped away quietly in his sleep. i am thankful for that. I believe he had pneumonia, he looked so forlorn, i am so glad he didn't suffer long with it.
Squiiggle on the other hand has been ill for most of his life, he suffered with Myco which is an affliction a LOT of rats suffer with. For the past three weeks he's been getting gradually worse and since Freddie left him you could almost see the weight fall off him. He couldn't eat properly and i was hand feeding him every few hours as it was the only way to get him to eat, he got out of breath just walking from one end of the cage to the other and if he got stressed out he just couldn't breath.
He'd suffered enough so i took him to the vet this morning and had him put to sleep. I have nothing but praise for the vet i saw, he was sympathetic and explained the procedure and although i am obviously upset i know i did the right thing for Squiiggle.

They will both be very missed, especially Freddie as he was our first and i am going to think long and hard about getting any more ratties now. Brian and William are happy enough with each other, and although i absolutely adore babies i'm not sure i can deal with the heartache that goes with old age :o(

RIP Fredster

I'm feeling very sad - Freddie died this afternoon after a short illness.
Will post more when i'm able to see the keyboard through the tears :o(

Pretty happy!

I'm feeling quite pleased with myself and my ratties right now as they are all snuggled together in a hammock in one cage!
For those that want more rattie goings on see my other blog for photos and details :o)

Still no yarny goings-on here but i'll be getting back to it on Monday as i WANT - yes, i actually want to finish something - to finish the 200 blocks blankie and i only have 3 squares left to do!

We've got a 3 hour journey tomorrow so i must remember to sort myself out a small, portable, simple project for the car - i might even get some socks on the needles :oD

Got to take Lukey to the kennels for his weekend of partying now, i always feel slightly apprehensive when i take him there, even though so far he's had no problems, there's always a worry... is this what it's like t have children?

I know i said that rats

belonged on my other blog... but i had to share this piccie with you!

Isn't that cute?
:oD

Blankies and babies!

So that's the last of the multi-colour sqaures finished. I'm going to do the last 4 in a single colour (if i can decide which ones to use that is!!) and then decide after that about joining them all together - i have all those ends to sew in first!!
Hopefully the single colour blocks will be quicker to do and i'll finish them by tonight, then decide on joining tomorrow. I want to set myself a fairly strict timetable for it as i'd like to do another one - there will be two babies after all - but i want to do other things too so if i set myself a time limit to do it in then hopefully i'll finish it, unlike the poor hexagon blankie which is still sitting in it's project bag waiting to be finished for a baby that was born last year!! Bad franney!
Mum and Dad are coming up tomorrow, they're staying overnight and then we're all going down to Portsmouth (Southampton??) for my Uncle's dedication. I think that's what it is called. He served in the Navy and as such he is entitled to a burial at sea, so on Wednesday his ashes will be cast into the waves. Let's hope the weather calms down by then!

In baby news - especially for Lise ;o)
They're home, they're gorgeous and they're MINE! So hands off ;o)
This is soooo going to sound like a cop-out but i have been trying to take photos of them and unfortunately they don't sit still long enough to get anything more than a tip of a tail or a whisker! I shall persevere though as they are so cute and i want to share them with you all :o)
Ratty updates don't necessarily qualify as crafting so there will only be the odd update here, the majority of them will be over on my "normal" blog ;o)

Two more blocks finished!

But no pictures as yet i'm afraid.
We had a friend over to visit and spent a lot of yesterday in the local WEtherspoons sampling their beverages ;o) we decided we rather liked the raspberry sambucca so we went to Sainsbury's on the way home for some supplies :oD
One bottle of Sambucca later, along with lemonade and raspberry cordial we made our way home and spent the evening mixing cocktails :oD
I had done a block yesterday morning before she got here and this morning while we watched Primeval i finished number 8. I'm immensly pleased with them despite my inability to count correctly which has resulted in rather a lot of uncrocheting but the extra effort is worth it as they look so pretty. Of course, i am spoilt with the Baby Bamboo, the range of clours just tones so well with each other, even i couldn't get the colour combinations wrong on the blocks :o)
So, photos will appear at some stage but i am going to be busy oohing and ahhing over some babies of my own for a while as in about half an hour i am off to pick up my babies! :oD
I am so excitied! I just can't wait! :oD

Here's hoping you've had as nice a weekend as i have, i do like it when things go right :o)

Thankyou

for all the comments you've left regarding akshun rat, it's much appreciated i can tell you.
I still miss the little fella but i'm gradually coming to terms with it and i do accept it was the best thing for him, i just find the whole process of having an animal euthanased so upsetting :o(
If i were allowed to be with them during the process and i didn't feel like i was abandoning them it wuldn't be half as bad!

Anyway, life in the rat cage goes on, and luckily my fatmonkeys didn't meet akshun rat so they're not missing him. After the New Year i will be looking into getting a pair of baby boys from a local rescue :o)
I'm trying to be realistic, Freddie will be 2 in December and rats don't tend to live much beyond 3 so if i get two littlies then when one of the big boys "goes" the other will have company. I can't see Squiggle living to a grand old age with his breathing problems either! I'm beginning to realise why i didn't replace my gorgeous Oscar all those years ago, it's an emotional thing being a ratmum! ;o)

:o(

I was hoping to have good news this evening but i am very sorry to have to say that akshun rat didn't come home from the vet with me :o(

Despite our best efforts he was still losing weight - he'd lost 30g in two weeks which is a lot for a little rat who only weighed 220g to start with :o(
He obviously had things going on inside him that we didn't know about and weren't able to treat with anti-biotics so although it doesn't feel like it right now it was for the best :o(

I'm really going to miss him :o(

i have discovered

that i really don't like knitting two socks at once on two circulars. It's the reason my Cottage Garden socks aren't finished yet and the reason that the LLSS socks took so long too. Unfortunately i am really rubbish at counting rows and remembering to put markers in so i am just going to have to suffer until they are done or make a more determined effort to put a marker in every ten rows *insert roll eyes emoticon here*

So, no knitting news, nothing has been done since last week, i've been feeling too BLEUGH to do anything much and akshun rat is taking up a lot of time with feeds every couple of hours. Been speaking to Mum every other day and she's doing well now, she says she feels much better and thinks the infection has gone which is good news :o)
In other knitting related news, Bloke's friends have had a baby girl *YIPPEE* so i have another blankie to add to my list, i'm not sure what pattern to use yet though. As i've already got a hexagon blankie and a fish blankie i'd like to do something different and something GIRLY would be even better! I already have the wool for it, i went and got it as soon as i heard there was a girl to knit for as i loved the colours when i was choosing the boys wool :o)
I'll grab a photo later, and post some of akshun rat doing his hydrotherapy yesterday :oD

he's hanging on

so we had the vets last night and akshun rat came home with me, i really didn't think he would be. I thought the vet would say that the kindest thing to do would be to have him put to sleep but she said he's not ready to go yet! She's recommended hydrotherapy to strengthen the muscles in his back half for five minutes a day this week and ten minutes a day next week. We'll be going back in two weeks for a check-up and i think if he's still with us then then he's a good chance of growing old with us. But i'm not going to get my hopes up, every morning when i come downstairs i fear the worst :o(
I picked up some baby porridge and complan and he has 1 tsp of each mixed with some water and half a teaspoon of lactol which makes about 3 tsp of ratslop and he's managing to eat all of it most of the time. I'm feeding him every two hours during the day and up to about midnight when i go to bed but not through the night because i am selfish and need to sleep! He doesn't seem to be making any effort to move around the cage and so i bought some vetbed for him to lie on so that he's not just lying in wee which will end up giving him ulcers but i am concerned that he's not getting enough to drink because he won't go over to the water bottle, but he won't drink it out of a saucer either so i'm not sure what more i can do other than offer him his bottle every time i am passing!

I'm pretty sure the rat rescue business isn't for me, i am already so attached to the little guy and he's only been here ten days!
How can you not find this little face cute!

Pitter Patter!

We have a new arrival!
He was found scampering round someone's tent while we were camping. Nobody seems to know where he came from or who he belongsto and he somehow made his way over to our camp in the early hours of Sunday morning. After some debating i was asked if i would be able to take him home as i had boys already and i also have a spare cage etc etc. He spent Sunday in a big bucket and then a four hour drive home in a cardboard box in a VERY hot van but he didn't seem too bad when we got home. He has since deteriorated a little and seems to be losing the strength in his back half but it might just be that he's in shock or something. He's a handsome little devil and very hand tame, he bit someone at the weekend but i put that down to being REALLY stressed out as he hasn't shown any aggression towards me at all and i have been poking him aorund something chronic, as has the vet! According to said vet, he has mites and was given an injection to treat them but he was otherise given the all clear. I am not happy with this and have an appointment on Monday to see my usual rat vet in Caterham and i'll take Squiggle along too to check out his noisyness.
I'm not sure i have done the right thing in not trying to find his owners, i know i should, i really do, but something's stopping me :o(