I honestly have no clue how old Eli was. The Rats Town Rattery that was dumping him and the rest of their rats said all their rats were 1-2 years old.
These rats from this RTR rescue were all injured, and starving and unhealthy and some were sick. I still cannot tell how old some of them are since they may just be aging before their time, or are really really old. Eli was acting very old lately, and I knew our time was short but not this short.
He was my heart, my soul…along with my girl Hope. He was My Boy, and I was His Human. We went through so much together and came through the other end when things looked very grim. He was one of the most special rats I have ever known, and that says a LOT.
It started with him nameless arriving in the night of June 2nd…there was no way I could leave any of the boys there…so 28 of them came home. The 19 girls went to my friends rescue.
During triage, you can see his injured/dead eye…I don’t look very happy here do I? He was skin and bones.
Little Eli had the eye removed with my vet and with a bit of infection post-surgery, he finally healed up and was much better. He gained weight and he just became the sweetest boy ever. He would gently nose my face like a blind person feeling your face.
The group he was with were just too pushy and made him nervous so he made a new (old) friend with Russell.
Unfortunately there was a terrible accident between Eli and Russell, and he ended up being with a different group and he loved his Zeus especially.
Then a truly terrible thing happened. One of the scarier moments of my life. I had a cozygloo in the FN with Eli and his cagemates and he was buried in there chattering his teeth. I pulled him out and he seemed really stressed out. Then I noticed his eye was all red, and that there was bleeding into the ocular bulb. I gave him some dex to reduce any inflammation/pressure. I kept him with me overnight and at 4:30 am he had a full blown seizure. I was positive I was going to lose him! He came through and came out of it, but a short time afterwards showed a lot of symptoms of aggression, rubbing, teeth chattering, etc, but this passed…in the morning he was even running around.
I rushed him to my vet in the morning, and thankfully he was recovering so well, we decided that the pressure in his head caused the seizure not the seizure being the problem,. So he was put on baytril/doxy and dex to prevent any more. Sadly the eye shrank but with no issues, but now he was totally blind and the poor baby only had his tightly curled and short whiskers to help him get around. He bumped into everything.
Two weeks after the initial seizure, Eli became insanely aggressive, and completely unhandleable, at one point he was grinding his teeth into the side of my hand while in the air. I went to my vet and came home with amitrityline to see if it would level out his stresses. I was so worried it wouldn’t work and I would have to let a blind, angry boy go. I hated the thought and was a real mess over this. He’s been on this ever since and he’s never shown one more sign of aggression. He couldn’t stay with his former cagemates so he was alone for a short while until I found him old Connor another RTR boy he hadn’t been with since they arrived. Connor and he were love at first sight.
But Connor being an older and sicker RTR boy had to leave us first, and Eli was alone again. I put Issa and Lilith with him next. Isabella was very kind to him, and Lilith went wherever Issa went.
Eli loved to sleep on me or near me…he was so comfortable I could gently move him and he wouldn’t wake up. I could tell when he was awake even if he didn’t have eyes. He would come to find me if I took too long to come to him, his head up in the ear trying to hear where I was…then trotting up and climbing my leg into my lap. I shall miss that.
Then I found him gone. He had lain down on his side beside me and just slipped away.
I did my usual ritual, and put him on fleece (to wrap up), added some lab blocks and some cheerios (to take with him into the afterlife), and some pennies and extra change (to pay the ferryman to cross the River Styx, and extra just in case there are some wee ones who don’t have any money, so my babies can share with them).
Eli is now sleeping happily and forever. Always in my heart my love.
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