Inca

Inca –The 3-legged Dynamo Fights No More – Nov '09-May 19/12

Wow I cannot believe this saga is over, it’s a journey of firsts for me and for her, medical and emotional as well.

She arrived from being dumped in a box with 3 other girls in front of a petstore. I was originally supposed to get them but a rescue decided they would take them in instead. Inca was originally supposed to be Tria (Tria meaning “three”) as she had 3 normal legs and a stump from a previous injury. But the names got mixed up and she became Inca, and stayed my beloved Inca. :D Tria was her much older sweet hoodie friend.

Inca on arrival. She was a little spooky and didn’t quite trust me, unlike her friend Tria who was a darling from the start.





Unfortunately her stub became ulcerated and was becoming infected so we made the big decision to amputate her hind leg.

This did NOT slow this active little girl down LOL




She decided she wanted to renovate her cage 




Then she developed a melanoma on her ear which had to be removed.




Next was the loss of her friend Tria…she was devastated. Afterwards I couldn’t get her to accept other rats, she attacked them or was terrified of them.

Then this my 3-legged girl developed a mammary tumour in front of her remaining leg. A girl like this could not deal with any tumours so she went in for a removal and a spay to prevent any more.

The surgery was easy but we discovered that Inca had a very strong pica reaction to buprenorphine and got out of her preventative wraps and managed to chew her removal incision open even more than before. She had to be rushed to the vet on a Saturday morning for a repair surgery…

It was after this event in her life that something changed. I had to be very careful of my fingers near her cage (even changing her waterbottle had to be done carefully)…she stopped trying to eat fingers. :D She also let me do things for her. Before I would see her trying to itch her sides with her little stump moving furiously, but I would reach in to give her a hand and she would leave. Now she discovered itchy bits could be scratched and she looooved it.



With this change of heart I kept trying to find her a fit with a group, but mostly it didn’t work. Until I tried the Lilith group, and with a bit of a uneasy start it settled into a great friendship

And now we enter the final phase of Inca’s saga. She started very patchy fur, very pink skin, but no scabs (I treated for parasites anyways), and no signs of being uncomfortable or itchy. My vet ended up doing a scraping and we confirmed she had the not-common with rats demodex mites. We think the back to back surgeries stressed her immune system and allowed this inherent parasite to get out of control.



She was then put on ivermectin for 6 weeks (4 injected, 2 orally) and it was really starting to resolve but then my sweet girl had a stroke and I knew the demodex was the least of our problems.



and today after some improvements and regressions my sweet brave girl left me. What a Life she had though. It was not necessarily easy but it was full.