It was almost like fate. A girl emailed me for help in September 2013 with someone else's rats. Then got me in contact with the woman in trouble. She had been breeding, let it get out of control and needed to rehome all the rats asap, due to the government getting involved and the potential loss of her home and her kids. She loved her rats and the local shelters wouldn't help her in Stratford. The social workers from the government were so helpful in suggesting she dump them all in a park!
She sent me pics of some, and unfortunately I was full at the time but helped arrange a transport to a shelter that would take them all in. Jenny being the kind soul she is, even did the transport from their home to the far-away shelter. She told me after she got back she almost took these 4 old boys home, she fell in love with them LOL
In April of 2014 I got an email from Victoria who had been in contact with someone who had some sick rats and needed advice desperately. Vic put me in contact with her. I discovered she had been fostering these 4 rats from Dec. 2013 from a shelter but she unfortunately knew nothing about rats initially. One boy was skinny, one had a tumour on his side, one had a terrible leg, which she was told was bumblefoot when she got him. The "bumblefoot" was actually a badly broken hock from the cage he was kept in. They told her there was nothing she could do
She got online and started asking questions and reading, and in the end it became bumblefoot and she was trying to treat it as best as she could. The skinny boy became very sick and she asked for help with her fosters and was just told to keep him comfortable until he died Being a rescuer of other animals and a true animal lover she couldn't do that and in the end with a lot of organizing and a bit of driving, met up with me and handed over the 3 old boys. Unfortunately the seriously ill one died that night in her arms.  | This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1600x1200. |
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Happy in their foster home...together
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When I met these boys, found out the shelter they were from, something pinged in my head and I went digging through my emails and found them...it was the SAME boys from Stratford!!
I gave Buddy and Nacho their original names back, and kept Butterscotch's new name of Sirus. The boys looooved each other.
Arrival at my mom's place
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Buddy had a looseness to his movements that set off alarm bells, a slightly sleepy expression that possibly could be earlier indicators of PT.
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and unfortunately I was right, he regressed into classic PT symptoms very quickly
He was diagnosed by Dr Munn and put on bromocriptine which he really responded to! Buddy was back!
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Buddy, Nacho and Sirus
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My beautiful happy boy
Buddy even being elderly and a bit frail loooved to run on the floor, he was just so happy and always came back for visits, cuddles and scratches.
Sadly over the last few days Buddy stopped responding to the medication, but he was also 34 months old, he had developed a tumour on his side and a lump on his face I thought originally was an abscess was also a small tumour. Last night my lovely boy breathed his last while curled up over my neck. He had a good last day with his brother, being licked and groomed and spooned up against, but it was time for him to rejoin their brother Nacho. The good thing is that brother Sirus is healthy, very old, but no real issues, so hopefully we get to keep him another month or 2 as I promised Buddy as he slipped away that I would care for his brother for him.
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