Sarah's Animal Rescue Blog

Vet Visits

2009-03-12T12:46:00.002Z

Last week we took Reya degu and Gilly and Simon the mice to see our specialist vet, Rob at Seers Croft. Reya developed a lump under her jaw which Rob believed was tooth related. Gilly is one of the welsh mice who had mammary tumours. Her tumours had gotten very big so I wanted Rob to check and see if she was ok to carry on. He agreed that she was still comfortable although he didn't think it would be too long for her. Simon had two of the blocked sebaceous glands that the welshies have issues with. In general Rob has recommended against removing them but Simon had developed one in the middle of his back and was worrying at it. He also had one on his ear. So yesterday we took Simon to have his lumps removed and to be neutered at the same time, we took Reya to have her abcess removed and teeth trimmed and we also took Reya's sister Kandi to have her teeth as well. Simon, I'm delighted to say since he's a bit of a fave of mine, coped brilliantly with his surgeries. Kandi's teeth were pretty bad but all went well for her. We were a little concerned about Reya as she refused to eat initially but she's looking fine again this morning (if a bit bald, bless her). While that lot were off having their bits done, I cleaned out Gilly's group and gave Gilly her daily check over. The sparkle had gone from her eyes and she had started to look uncomfortable. It was time :(

When I spoke to Rob to see how everyone else was I asked if he was consulting that evening to see Gilly. He wasn't but he stayed behind especially to see her. He could so easily have referred us to one of the other vets in the surgery to perform the simple task of sending Gilly on her way but he didn't. He likes to see things through. This is what makes Rob so special (as well as his incredible knowledge). There are pictures of him examining Rhino's in the surgery yet he shows the same level of care and respect for what most people would call vermin as he would for an endangered species. And what is more, he didn't even charge us a penny for the times he examined Gilly and for letting her go. He just wrapped her carefully in a little tissue shroud and treated her with amazing care. We are so incredbly lucky to have found him.

Run free Gilly bean. It was an honour and an inspiration to have known you.

We're One Year Old!!!

2009-03-06T20:21:00.001Z

STAR is a year old today and to celebrate we've written our first newsletter. You can download it from here

Ratty Reshuffle

2009-02-22T12:35:00.002Z

I decided to have a little move round this morning. Bianca was looking much brighter so I decided to see about putting her back in with Linette and Shalina. They were all delighted to see each other! I was worried about the other two bothering her wound and Shalina was a little over interested at first but then seemed to settle down. I'll keep a very very close eye on them but Bianca is so much happier to be home with her friends. Once she is healed I'll introduce the three of them to the resident girls so that Bianca can bond with them and Shalina and Linette can (hopefully) find a home together.

Earlier on there was a kerfuffle in the rodent room and I found Edwina being a bit mean to Blue again. I think she is probably a bit bored with staying in a single level hospital cage when she's young and healthy. So I decided to try something else I've been pondering too. Deanna the trekkie has recurring respiratory issues which have flared up again so I decided to try her with Blue in the hospital cage to make treating her easier and give Edwina a break. Well intros between Blue and Dee went without a hitch so they are now happily together. I'm so amazingly proud of Blue, she really is doing brilliantly at the moment.

So then I introduced Edwina back to the other girls which also went very well so now everyone is back where they belong which is fab :)

Bianca

2009-02-20T22:00:00.003Z

Yesterday Bianca rat went to the vets to have a mammary lump removed. She was joined there by Barry the mouse and Foxy the rat who both went in to have their little man lumps removed! Happily both coped very well and are home and recovering nicely. Bianca on the other hand has been a nightmare. The op went well but when we went to collect her I noticed that she had removed her stitches. And boy had she been thorough, leaving a huge gaping hole in her groin! So she stayed in overnight and was put back under anaesthetic to be restitched. But she did the same again in the night. So this morning she was knocked out again and this time she was stitched, glued and stapled back together! She is home now and so far everything is still where it should be. She looks a bit tired and battered poor girl so lots of spoiling is in order. I've kept her separate from her cagemates Linette and Shalina for now because last time one of that group, Brooke, had a lump removal the others chewed at the wound when I put her back in.

Things aren't going so well for that group. They were rescued from a home in Warwickshire where there were loads of animals who hadn't been cleaned for months and had been allowed to interbreed. The conditions were bad enough to make an experienced rescuer vomit. We took in Bianca along with 11 other girls and 3 boys. The three boys were Harry, Fred (now Angus) and Robson. Harry died a few weeks ago of tumours, Angus has a suspected brain problem and Robson has chronic respiratory problems despite them being only a little over a year old. Of the twelve girls 8 have been homed. Two of those has passed on and one has suspected kidney problems. Both Brooke and Bianca have now had lumps removed. Tonight I've heard that Maiya (now Tansy) has an ear infection which has led to a head tilt. To have so many health problems in such young rats cannot be a coincidence and must be related either to their poor genetics or the lack of care they suffered previously. I can only hope that their daughters, the trekkies, benefit from their better care although Deanna already has chronic respiratory issues herself.

Anyway the long and short of it is that we have decided that Bianca will remain here. I must admit I'm a bit downhearted tonight. This group of rats are very special to me having arrived here very scared and blossomed into confident, loving rats. They don't deserve so many problems so young :(

Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

2009-02-16T21:16:00.002Z

Finally, after nearly two years, Harry and Munchkin the spiny mice have been offered a home! Together! With someone who already has experience of spiny mice.

Pinch me someone, quick!!

Run free Harry & Rhona

2009-02-09T21:03:00.003Z

Poor Harry took a sharp decline and we had to let him go to the bridge on Thursday. It's awfully tragic that he should leave us so young and when he was really just starting his new life.

And last night Rhona the mouse took herself to the bridge. Rhona was one of the welsh mice we took in who developed tumours. I made the decision over the weekend that it was time to let her go but she passed away peacefully in her sleep last night.

In happier news the three mice we had neutered a couple of weeks ago have now all been introduced to some ladies and are very happy boys! Peter has already journeyed to his new home with his two new girlfriends. Despite all the recent sadness and upheaval with the boy mice falling out, I did spend Saturday with a huge grin on my face watching the boys enjoying company again.

The wonders of Snow

2009-02-03T21:10:00.014Z

The sad times are continuing here unfortunately. No updates on the poorly people here but there's been a flurry of sad updates from past residents of late. Rest in peace Charm, Oliver, Naboo, Snippet, Sprite, Ana, Svetlana, Squiggles & Shadow who have all left us for the bridge this month. Even when they're not here any more I still feel each and every loss. I'm just grateful to their lovely new owners who gave them all such nice lives and who kept in touch to let me know when their time came.

So anyway with snow bringing Wallington to a halt, no trains, no buses and roads covered in 8 inches of snow, a couple of days off work have been a godsend. I've been able to catch up with the cleaning out, get a few bits and pieces done and I even took a bit of time to enjoy the snow! With the sprog dogs of course!!

It has also meant I've had time to spend with our new arrival! This is Foxy. Born in a rodent farm where rats are intensively and indiscriminately bred just as dogs are in the more well known puppy farms, he ended up in the Reading branch of a well known national chain of pet shops. Whilst on sale he developed an abcess and was separated from his siblings while he underwent treatment. Being away from other rats at such a young age and a critical stage in his development has left him unsure of other rats. Consequently he was put into their adoption centre and advertised as needing a home where he would live alone. A rat that cannot live with others is incredibly rare (I've know two in almost 500) and I was sure all he needed was a home willing to try. He was collected from there by one of our adopters and handed in to us for rehoming. Buuutttt, as it happened I had just, a few days before, come up with a possible solution to a problem which had been troubling me. Quest and Tim are now 14 months old and living as a pair. The plan had been to neuter them to live with the girls but, to be honest, after losing their brother Skip I lost my nerve and I couldn't bring myself to do it. And now all of a sudden they're a bit old for an elective neuter but i have to face facts that one day one of them will go and leave the other alone. I realised the solution could be to mix another younger male with them and have him neutered so that he can stay with them until they leave us and then move in with the girls. And then I heard about Foxy and then I saw his picture and it was like it was fate. So we are now on day three of introductions and we're making slow progress. I'm incredibly proud of Quest and Tim who have been good as gold with their rather mixed up new friend and aproached intros with their usual vigour and enthusiasm (as you can see!). At the moment Foxy is quite scared of them but I'm sure we'll get there before very long.

In other happy news, Fred the neutered boy rat went to his new home on Sunday with Becky who adopted another grumpy neutered boy Barney from us last year. Note the matching names! They were also very similar looking so perhaps another example of fate intervening there? Either way Fred is very much enjoying his new home already (even if he is a little confused as to why that biting thing doesn't work with Becky).

Sad times

2009-01-31T10:15:00.004Z

I guess we've gotten off fairly lightly in terms of poorly people of late. Of course they always wait to get ill in batches.

One of the groups of baby boy mice started fighting so I was faced with the dilemma of separating them. I wanted to try to make sure I split off the right mice to minimise the risk of them being left on their own. Well I got it wrong. Arnie and Biffy were both guilty of attacking the others so I decided to split them off together and then separate them into singles if needed. The other 5 boys in the cage were clearly exhausted from being chased around so I wanted to get both the bullies out and give them a break. Well in the night Arnie attacked Biffy really badly, leaving Biffy with wounds to his backside and in shock. I had Biffy on a hot water bottle syringing him fluids but, when I got up at 3am to redo his bottle he'd passed in his sleep :(

Added to that, this week Harry, Fred and Robson came back to stay for their holidays. I noticed that Harry had a bit of a tummy on him and thought he'd just been enjoying the good life. However, when I handled him his tummy felt really hard. So he went to the vets last night and it looks like he has a tumour in his abdomen. He is having a scan on Tuesday to see exactly what is going on. It's too awful to contemplate that we might lose him. He is not much more than a year old and when he arrived he was terribly nervous and then became hormonal and aggressive. We had him neutered and he became the loveliest rat, the difference it made to him was really amazing. So he's really one of my special ones and I'm desperately praying for a miracle.

And finally I mentioned last time about Dexter who was here to see our specialist vet. Well the news wasn't good and it looks as though Dex's lumps are cancerous growths on his sebaceous glands. In the few days he was here new lumps developed and the existing ones grew so the poor lamb probably won't be with us much longer. He may not be one of my rats but I have gotten to know him over the years and he's a real sweetie so I couldn't help shedding a tear when the vet gave us the prognosis.

So all in all I'm rather :( at the moment and generally a bit frustrated as I just don't seem to be able to keep up with things. I'm trying to reduce numbers but it is yet to have any real effect. Still we should have about 9 mice going to homes soon so that will certainly help.

On a happier note we have three more rats going to their new home this weekend - Scott, Austin and Eoghan from the batch of babies that came in before Christmas.

A busy day

2009-01-24T19:33:00.003Z

We've had a very busy and productive day today. I'm exhausted but very pleased.

First of all two of the baby boy rats who came in just after Christmas - Rhydian and Leon - went to their new home in Poole. Then their sister Alexandra and her friend Haarla went to their new home. Haarla had been purchased from a pet shop as a "treat" for someone's pet snake. Thankfully the snake appeared to find a live rat intimidating rather than attractive and she survived and was abandoned at another pet shop. Then Danielle the hamster left to live with her new family. And finally, after 14 months here, Dre and Eminem the degus have left for their new home near the coast! I shall miss them lots! Dre in particular had made progress recently and finally seemed to quite like us. It's so great to know they'll finally have the home they deserve though.

We also have a new addition in the form of Fred, a 15 month old boy who was rescued from a home where he'd been kept alone in a small cage. This has left the poor boy with some issues and after suffering several nasty bites his rescuer realised he was more than they could handle and asked us to help. He has already been neutered so once he has settled in I'll see what he thinks of sharing his life with some girls.

As usual we owe a big thank you to Sylvia for her help in transporting Rhydian, Leon, Dre and Eminem to their new homes and delivering Fred to us.

We also have some temporary lodgers in the form of Jake (who was born here in Nov 06 and homed to Amanda who runs www.moonbix.co.uk) and his friend Dexter. Dex has a skin problem which several vets have so far failed to diagnose so we're going to see if the wonderful Rob at Seers Croft in Horsham can help. He's booked in for Monday evening so fingers crossed Rob can get to the bottom of what is going on and help him out.

So that's been our day so far...quite exhausting, but very productive!

The plan for 2009

2009-01-19T21:03:00.002Z

I've been thinking a lot recently about how we can improve things in the future. In all honesty the last few months have been a real struggle. Well you only need to look back through the blog to see its been one crisis after another really. Obviously we always prioritise caring for the animals and a lot of the time that has left us with no time at all for looking at homing applications. We've missed out on a lot of homes cos they've, understandably, gone elsewhere while waiting to hear back from us. Of course its a vicious circle cos if we don't find time to home animals the numbers will never decrease!

So my plan for the future is to reduce the number of animals we have here at any one time considerably. My hope is that we'll still be able to help a similar number of animals. But having fewer in at any one time should leave me more time to advertise them for homing and then process the homing applications, thereby reducing the length of time they spend here and having a higher "turnover" for want of a better word. Last year animals were here for an average of 78 days before they found a home - that's almost three months. I'd like that to be more like one month really. In animals with a lifespan of 24 months, spending three of them in rescue isn't good. Currently we have several animals here who have been in rescue for getting on for a year, some have been here even longer. I really want to have more time to work hard on finding the right home for them.

Realistically it's going to be a while before this new way of doing things kicks in. I want to get to a maximum of 15 cages here at any one time and at the moment we have 25 so we have a fair bit of homing to do before we're at our target level. Hopefully this time next year we'll be able to report a difference though :)

In other news, we've had a very kind offer of help with the website. I've had a sneak preview this evening and I can't tell you how excited I am! Hopefully before too long we'll be unveiling a snazzy new look website which will also do some clever things behind the scenes to make keeping it updated easier :D

Review of 2008

2009-01-04T21:56:00.008Z

Well it's annual review time! This year is an odd one as we switched in March to fostering for Furry Friends to opening Starlight Trust Animal Rescue. I couldn't decide whether to record all together or separately. In the end I decided that the usual graph on the right records the STAR stuff so for the review I'd do everything. Then I got carried away and decided to put everything since we started fostering into tables. I do like my tables and stats I'm afraid!!!

So this is a complete record of our "intake" - this includes animals we have adopted, animals we fostered and animals we took is as STAR.

I can't quite believe that we have just taken in our 1000th animal! And nearly half of them were rats.

You can see on here this pattern we've had of one (or two) species dominating a year. In 05 it was rats, as we'd just started fostering and looked after several litters of babies.

In 06 you can see we took in a huge number of Russian Hamsters, far more than all the other years combined. This was a huge batch of mixed sex animals who were abandoned in a rescue, many of whom were pregnant. Rat numbers were also particularly high that year because of the "maskies" - who came from a family who didn't realise that boy rat plus girls rats equalled vast quantities of baby rats.

In 07 the big intakes were the Spiny Mice and Degus, both of which were rescued in large numbers from homes where animals had been left to breed out of control and were living in shocking conditions. And this year it was Fancy Mice from the same sort of situation. All in all these big rescues from one awful home seem to account for about a third of our annual intake :/ Where on earth, one has to wonder, are families and bodies such as social services in these situations? They tend to come from homes where the owner has a mental health issue so why does no-one step in earlier before it becomes such a huge issue?

So what happened to all these animals? I also did a table for all of the outcomes...

The animals are recorded by the year they came in on this table. Again it includes animals from all sources. It's odd how the number of animals who died is so consistent. These of course include our own pets so many are those who just reached the end of their days here as opposed to rescue animals who died before they could find a home. Still it shows why we get so emotionally exhausted sometimes with an average of about 2 friends a month leaving us for the bridge :(

It's lovely to think that we have now found new homes for 624 animals! I'm very proud of that figure. If you include the animals we released (wildlife being returned to the wild), passed to other rescues (this also refers to wildlife, 2 were passed elsewhere for release and 2 for permanent sanctuary) and passed back to Furry Friends for homing then that's 740 happy outcomes we've been involved in which is really pleasing.

It's a shame to see that 4 animals who arrived in 2007 are still waiting for a home :( That's Harry and Muchkin the two spiny mice who I'm beginning to think are going to end up spending their lives here, and Dre and Eminem the degus. Since their cagemate Smokey passed away I'm pondering having them neutered and adding them into our cage. I'm concerned about adding more girl goos into that cage since Naomi killed Fudge so perhaps neutered boys would be a safer introduction and ensure that we don't end up with too few in there. Reya and Kandi aren't spring chickens any more and I don't want them to get down to two cos then you risk a deep depression if one gets left alone.

Anyway 2008 was a quieter year for intake (until the mice came along) largely because homing was slow which meant we didn't have much room for new animals. Almost a third of the animals we took in during 08 are still here and the figures don't reflect those 2007 animals who didnt find a home into well into 08 as well.

Still, all in all I'm pretty pleased with our first year (ish) as STAR. Here's hoping for an even better 2009 :)

Just a quick update

2008-12-20T16:53:00.004Z

We're still not really fully functional here I'm afraid. My Grandma came home from hospital last week but my Grandpa is still in and will be over Christmas - for the second year running :( We've also both been ill again with a rotten cold and chest infection although we're more or less over that now. So we're slowly starting to get back into things but we still have a lot of catching up to do with cleaning, answering emails etc.

Happily last weekend saw four rats go off to new homes - Angel and Daisy went to keep new friend Poppet company and T'Pol and Hoshi went to live with Reggie, a wild ratty girl who had been rescued as a baby. Introductions are still going on there as Reggie has never seen another rat but I hope to have some lovely pics of their happy ending before too long.

Four mousey ladies are booked to go to their new home on Boxing Day and the four degu girls have also been offered a new home, living with some other degus adopted from us.

A little sad news to report though in that Smokey degu passed away yesterday :( Smokey was one of the goos who came from the house in Essex which was overrun with degus living in awful conditions. He arrived in January 07 in a pretty bad way and clearly quite elderly then. Others from his group went to a new home and then the other two, also elderly, passed away so Smokey was introduced to two younger boys, Dre and Eminem. He got on great with them and it gave him a new lease of life really. A few days ago I thought he suddenly looked his age again although I checked him over and there was nothing obvious. And then last night when I went in to feed everyone Dre and Eminem were acting strangely and hadn't eaten all their breakfast. I checked the nest box and darling Smokey had passed in his sleep. He was a real character and will be greatly missed. I'm sad for him that he never did find a new home but I know for sure that he was very happy here for his last two years so I don't think he really knew the difference. We certainly loved him like one of our own.

One last thing - if you come to this blog via Sprogpages.co.uk you'll notice something odd. Sprogpages now redirects to starlighttrust.org.uk! We're having a bit of a reorg there and sprogpages will become a subdomain of starlighttrust. So fear not it will be back - I'll update again once this has happened. If you email me using a sprogpages address I should still receive it but if you don't hear back then please resend it replacing @sprogpages.co.uk with @starlighttrust.org.uk instead.

Can we also take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy christmas and a lovely new year.

Much love

Sarah & Dave

Apologies again

2008-11-09T15:20:00.002Z

Everytime we think there's light at the end of the tunnel something else happens.

Just as we were getting over our run of bad luck we both got flu. As we were getting over that the big mouse rescue happened. As we were getting on top of that, on Friday night, both of my grandparents were taken to hospital by ambulance. My Grandpa is ok but my Grandma had a heart attack and had to be resuscitated. Her long term prognosis is not yet known :(

So continued apologies to all those waiting for replies to emails, phone calls etc. Our priorities at the moment have to be keeping the animals cared for and visiting my Grandparents so it's unlikely that you'll hear back from us in the next week realistically.

Thank you for your continued patience.

S&D

Eeepy, eeep, eep

2008-11-07T17:36:00.001Z

We have a mini baby boom here tonight!

In the green duna, where I first heard squeaking Wednesday night there appears to be three babies. They're starting to get their colouring through now and look pretty sturdy

In the red duna, where the original litter of 10 were that didn't make it, I found one single baby. He looks like he was probably born yesterday I think.

And in the larger of the two tanks someone has gifted me a litter of 6 pink little wigglers. They look like they've been born today

Everything crossed for them!

Escapee mouse (now known as Rodent Boy) is still evading capture. But I think I know where he is and have set the trap accordingly. Hopefully tonight's the night!!

Fireworks Rant

2008-11-05T21:06:00.002Z

OOOOOOh I HATE this time of year. This evening instead of being able to clean out cages, attempt mouse captures etc I'm spending it trying to comfort hysterical dogs. It drives me MAD that inconsiderate, selfish people can put my poor babies through such absolute torture for a bit of fun. We as a nation condemn the abuse of animals for fun when its in the form of fox hunting or bull fighting yet we think nothing of ruining the lives of millions of dogs each winter for a bit of fun. We dont bother even trying to walk our lot in the evenings this time of year..it's hard enough to even get them to go in the garden after dark they're so scared. When we have been out with them and fireworks have gone off they've panicked and I've been worried about them running off. Literally from October to mid January every year their lives are seriously impeded by their fear of bangs when they're going off and other nights too cos they're pemanently worried about them going off. It's just totally unacceptable and the wretched fireworks need banning now!

Mouse Update

2008-11-05T21:03:00.002Z

Well having almost given up on our escapee we spotted him this morning. Despite two attempts to catch him he has so far comprehensively outwitted us! But at least we know he is ok.

The litter of babies who arrived Sunday sadly did not make it. I checked their cage this evening and there is no sign of any babies. Another doe who was heavily pregnant in there is also looking slimmer so it seems likely she has either reabsorbed her babies or they have also been eaten :(

On a happier note the cage next door to them is eeping away happily so everything crossed for more luck in there.

The mouses have arrived

2008-11-03T20:48:00.005Z

Phew, what a weekend. Yesterday disappeared in a mousey whirlwind although our weekend was nothing compared to Emma at Furry Friends who drove to North Wales at half six Saturday morning collecting I don't know how many hundreds of mice and then sexing them all, medicating the injured ones and finally falling into bed at half past three only to be up again in time for us to collect ours at 9am!!

So we came away with 20 girls and 23 boys plus a litter of 10 pinkies altogether. 8 boys have gone to Kelly and 4 girls went to Vicky, one of our lovely foster carers. Amongst our boys was one very poorly little lad who we called Conner. There was nothing obviously wrong with him, I suspect all the stress was just too much. I spent hours Sunday cuddling him, warming him and syringe feeding him and trying to tell him his ordeal was over and he had a wonderful life to look forward to. Sadly it wasn't enough and he passed away :(

We have a couple of other battered boys but nothing too serious thankfully. And, one has managed to escape so we've had to set a humane mouse trap for him this evening. Unfortunately these mice are used to living rough so he's not about to let himself get found!

I don't hold out a great deal of hope for the 10 pinkies. They must have been born Saturday night and it's unlikely that the mother will care for them after so much disruption. Plus I had no way of knowing who the Mum was and no cage big enough to house all 20 girls! So I had to guess based on the one who appeared to be sitting on them. The babies have disappeared from the place I left them in the cage and the girls in that cage have been busy nesting. Maybe they have taken them into the nest, or maybe they have eaten them :( The best I can do now is leave them alone and keep everything crossed. But resisting having a peek is near killing me!!

Anyway I have 60 unanswered emails to tend to! Sorry everyone!! So I'll leave you with a couple more pics

Mousey preparations

2008-11-01T17:12:00.003Z

Today we've been getting ready for the mousey influx. Emma has collected them and is on her way back from Wales as I type. So we'll be collecting our batch bright and early tomorrow morning - about 50 of them. Gulp!

So this morning I was preparing all the mouse accessories

Including some hi-tech, very expensive things!!

and getting cages ready - 8 in all (some mice are going to foster homes tomorrow)

I've just updated the stats ----->

Which show that we've taken in 120 animals so far this year. Which basically means tomorrow almost half of the animals we've taken in over the last 9 months will be arriving in one day! Eeep!

Can anyone help with mice?

2008-10-25T13:07:00.002+01:00

We've heard about a terrible situation in Wales where hundreds of mice are being kept in buckets and are in very real and immediate danger of being killed. Environmental health are involved and I shudder to think what they'll do to them and how :(

Realistically, given than half of them will be pregnant, we can only take about 30 in here directly. Which seems like a drop in the ocean when there's an estimated 500 needing help. If you can help by fostering or adopting - even if it's 2 or 3 it'll make the world of difference to those mice - please get in touch. Please spread the word on any animal sites and forums and with any other rescues you know.

And apologies yet again to anyone waiting to hear back from us. We're finally coming out of the depression and flu fog we've been in the last few weeks and now we're hit with this. We're desperately trying to catch up with the cleaning here and make as much mouse space as we can. I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you all :)

2008-10-17T14:58:00.002+01:00

We just wanted to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone for the messages, cards and letters we have received in the last couple of weeks. It was very unexpected but hugely appreciated. Your support and understanding has been very encouraging indeed.

Things have settled down here thankfully although we've not achieved a great deal as we've both been hit with flu. It's typical that as soon as we stop we get ill!!

The good news is that we had 16 animals head off to their new homes last weekend which was just brilliant! It included a few people who had been here for quite some time as well. As usual massive thanks must go to Sylvia and Olivia and everyone else involved with getting the animals to their homes. They are the forgotten heroes and without them we wouldn't be able to home half as many animals.

We also have a couple of new additions. One being Onslo, a single male rat who had been living on his own for quite a while. He'd also been known to bite so hasn't had much human attention either. So he has now been neutered and this weekend we're hoping to see how he responds to some girls.

The other new addition is a bunny friend for Kitkat. She was quite depressed after Shadow died and went off her food. As luck (fate?) would have it, we recently homed a hamster to Karen who is involved with rabbit rescue locally. So I contacted her and she suggested Ginger, a six year old boy who had been looking for the right home for a few months.

Introductions are going fairly well. Well, they're going great on neutral territory but Kitkat gets grouchy with him if they're out near their cages. Hopefully with time and patience they'll soon be able to move in together though.

So that's a little update on how things are. We hope to be back to business soon but still have a whole load of catching up to do thanks to the flu as well!

A brief statement

2008-10-04T13:55:00.001+01:00

Just to let you all know that we are closing our doors for a little while. We've had a really horrible time with 8 losses in the last few weeks, four of them in the last four days. All have been sudden and tragic and so horribly unfair.

After 15 years working in animal rescue I ought to be hardened to it now but I'm not. I still cry for each and every one of them and my heart is totally broken at the moment. The final straw was finding our beloved Shadow rabbit dead this morning with no warning.

We have some animals booked to go to new homes and others booked to come in which we'll go ahead with. But aside from those we'll be shutting our doors for a short while just to give ourselves time to regroup. There are some things we want to get done such as rearranging the rodent room, setting up some new cages and building a new play area so we'll take the opportunity to get those things done so we can come back new and improved.

Apologies to those who have outstanding applications to home animals. I hope you understand. Letting animals go to their new homes is another thing that ought to be easy by now but it isn't. It requires a certain amount of emotional strength and bravery which I just don't have at the moment.

Regards

Sarah & Dave
Starlight Trust Animal Rescue
_________________

That'll teach me

2008-07-15T21:20:00.002+01:00

Ok on the one hand everyone is behaving themselves here and I'm actually up straight with the cleaning today for the first time in weeks. We've had some really promising home offers recently too.

But in the last two days I've heard about around 70 rats needing help. Some thankfully already in rescues but they are struggling to cope with them all. Others in imminent danger of being pts. Still more thankfully safe in their home but needing somewhere to go soon. It feels like what we do is a drop in the ocean at the moment as no doubt these ones we have heard about are a tiny fraction of the animals out there needing help.

I'm tempted to appeal for help with fosterers so these rats can be safe and rehomed with our backup but with other people caring for them. But we have very limited time for vetting homes at the moment and I have to bear in mind that we are responsible for animals in foster homes so we need to be prepared to take the animals on foster back if things don't work out. With this in mind I'll say for now - if you have homed from me before (either as STAR or as a fosterer for Furry Friends) and you think you could handle some fostering (not just rats, also degus, gerbils and mice), drop me a line :)

I might be speaking too soon

2008-07-13T22:20:00.002+01:00

...but things seem to be calming down. Astro is doing great, Fudge had a dental and is recovering fine, the new girls aren't showing any signs of being pregnant, I'm almost up to date with the cleaning and I've finally gotten round to updating the website (hope you like the little improvements I've made). It's largely thanks to the lovely Katie who has been helping out with the homing applications (as well as fostering some mice) which has left me with time to do other things.

I suppose I don't really have an excuse for not having done the housework now. Darn!

A bit more than we bargained for

2008-07-05T22:27:00.002+01:00

We've not taken in any new animals for a while now because we've been absolutely chocker with those already here. In fact we have quite a waiting list at the moment of animals waiting to come in. But the other day we had a call from a lady who had 5 baby girl rats she needed to home urgently. She was so desperate that she was considering having them put to sleep if we couldn't help. Well we had some girls going to their new homes this weekend so I figured they could sneak in in their place.

Unfortunately on arrival it transpired that 5 girls were in fact 4 girls and 1 boy. And that boy had been in with two other girls at home. So we ended up taking in 2 baby boys and 6 girls who are possibly pregnant.

Thankfully two of our wonderful foster carers have stepped in and taken 2 girls each which is a huge help.

The good news is that 4 of the "Might-Be" girls - Akuti, Blanche, Dodie and Zahra - went to lovely new homes today.

Also Astro is doing a lot better. He is gaining weight and his eye infections have cleared up. He has another check up on Thursday and hopefully then he can come off the antibiotics :D

Still having a rough time

2008-06-29T21:49:00.002+01:00

Things have yet to improve here.

Last night Maisie passed away, completing the hat trick of ratty deaths in the last month. Astro is still fighting but the infection from his chin spread to his eyes. He took a turn for the worse recently and lost a lot of weight but he is soldiering on. Everything is healing well, we just need him to stay strong and eat more.

I've not been too well myself either so we are still struggling to keep up with everything here. So continued apologies for lack of updates and slow response times to emails etc.

Apologies

2008-06-11T21:05:00.002+01:00

for lack of recent updates. It has just been a horrible few weeks. Quick run down - Skip is gone, Widdle is gone, Susie's lumps are worse, Maisie won't be with us much longer and the vets advised euthanasing Astro. We are still incredibly busy and with everything else going on we're just so behind on everything right now.

We took Astro to a specialist and he has had an operation to remove his abcess. He's doing ok, his weight is stable and he is bright and active but we've had to give him a potentially dangerous antibiotic and he still has pus in his op site. We're back at the vets with him again tomorrow.

So please forgive the lack of blog posts, the hideously out of date homing pages and the even longer than normal response time to homing applications and other emails. Hopefully things will settle down soon!

:(

2008-05-23T16:21:00.002+01:00

Shadow is back indoors cos he started scratching himself up again.

Skip is bunged again, two weeks after his last enema. No amount of laxatives seem to be shifting it.

Super Susie Tripod has two lumps but I don't think it's right to put her through having them removed.

Astro has a big lump under his chin. I'm hoping it's an abcess - we're off to the vets soon.

Widdle is also coming to the vets. But he won't be coming home. He has been going downhill for a little while now, particularly over the last few days. This afternoon he has begun having little seizures so I suspect some form of brain tumour.

I'm just exhausted with all the worry and sadness. It's constant at the moment :(

Some Good News

2008-05-10T21:47:00.003+01:00

First and foremost I'm delighted to report that Skip had his enema yesterday. All went well and they've flushed him out good and proper!! He's back to his usual norty little self already :)

Secondly, Barney the grumpy single male rat has had a perfect sounding home offer and will be leaving us tomorrow for his new home :D

And finally, Shadow and Kitkat wabbits went outside today for the first time in about 3 months. Here's some pics of them enjoying the sunshine!

Worrying

2008-05-08T21:37:00.000+01:00

Urgh I am just exhausted at the moment from so much worrying. I have had months of worrying about Shadow, I am just done worrying about Erika (with a sad outcome), I am worring about Mollie squirrel (she's losing weight, very quiet, not eating much just as she was a year ago) and well I'm almost constantly worrying about Skip. I guess it has come to a head tonight because Skip is bunged again. It has only been two weeks since his last enema but he hasn't really been quite right since. I don't think they entirely unblocked him to be honest. So I don't want to leave him til Monday which means praying the vets can fit him in tomorrow. I can't describe how horrid I feel tonight, I just adore him so much :(

Erika

2008-05-08T17:40:00.000+01:00

Erika degu has left us today :(

She went to the vets a few weeks back cos she was losing weight. I thought it was to do with her teeth and when they turned out to be overgrown it appeared I was right. Initially she seemed to do better after her teeth were seen to but in the last few days the weight has suddenly just fallen off her and she ended up like a walking skeleton. It was obvious her time had come but she didn't appear to be suffering so we decided to let nature take its course unless she looked to be in any pain. And then last night it was apparent she didn't have long. I sat with her for a while, kissing her and talking to her. Then I made her a nest and made her comfortable. To my surprise she was still with us this morning but slipped away some time this morning.

Erika was very special to me. She was the most confident of our degus and would climb out of the door and try to escape and get up to mischief at any opportunity. She seemed to genuinely like us and would happily sit on my shoulder. She will be very much missed.

Bubbles

2008-05-04T23:58:00.003+01:00

aka babies ;)

Got them out and weighed and photographed them again. Most are doing well but the 4 who had been stolen by Akuti are still flagging behind the others. She had stolen them again today and all but 1 baby was in her nest. If she persists I might have to think about separating her and her babies out so that all the babies get a fair chance to feed.

Anyway here are some new piccies

Poor Ronnie :(

2008-05-02T22:49:00.002+01:00

Wednesday night we went to bed and soon after things really kicked off in the rodent room. At first I thought it was Reggie's gang who have been a bit squabbly recently but it was coming from the cage containing Frankie, Ronnie, Harry, Robson and Fred. There had been a little tension between Ronnie and Harry, mainly cos Ron liked to hump Harry. Well it seems Harry finally had enough cos he turned on Ronnie big time raining dozens of bites down on his back :( I opened the cage and Ron jumped out the door and straight up my arm, clearly in shock. So he and Frank have had to be moved out of that cage and are in temporary lodgings in the bathroom til tomorrow when Reggie's lot go to their new home.

It seems to have been the week for fall outs. The baby boy mice and their Dad came back from foster and the boys fell out straight away. One of them has had to be taken out and the other two are dubious as to whether they will stay together. I darent try them with Dad while they're like this so I might end up getting them all neutered at this rate :(

Anyway, as I say Reggie & Co go to their new home tomorrow which is great news. We really need the space at the moment as we have a waiting list of about 50 animals waiting to come in!

Eeper update

2008-04-29T21:28:00.002+01:00

Well we had some sad news on the eeper front. After the arrivals on Tuesday, we had another batch of arrivals on Wednesday and then the third girl, Priya, showed signs of being in labour. On Thursday lunchtime we got home to find that she had given birth to two dead babies and wasn't looking too great herself. So we rushed her to the vets and on the way and while we were there she gave birth to four more dead babies :( The vet did an x-ray and thankfully that seemed to be all of them so she escaped having a hysterectomy and came home for nursing and observation. I'm pleased to say that she is now looking fine and seems none the worse for ordeal but I found it incredibly sad that the poor babies were so close to life but never got to experience it.

The other two girls have 9 babies each who are all doing well. These pics were taken yesterday

Eeeep eeeep

2008-04-22T18:58:00.002+01:00

We have eepers!

One of the Might-Be's has finally popped. I got home from work this evening, went straight in to check on them and heard the tell tales eeps coming from the nest. I haven't seen them yet. Dave reported no eeping at lunchtime so they can only be a few hours old so I shall leave them alone a little longer much as I'm dying to have a peep and see how many we've got. I shall have to add another nest as well since Mum1 appears to be monopolising the igloo and there are still two more at least who look fit to burst!!

I'll update as soon as I've seen more!

Newbie Update & other news

2008-04-20T15:16:00.003+01:00

Well the new rats (aka The Might-Be's) have turned out to be right handfuls. On Tuesday night I split the girls into two groups, separating any who looked pregnant into a suitable nursing cage. On Friday morning I went in to check on everyone and found the room is some disarray with several water bottles on the floor. The reason - a large hole in the nursing cage which the chompy little minxes had created! So I had to have a move around and they are now housed in a suitable all metal cage. There are four girls who look imminent - a couple look fit to explode in fact so I think we'll be hearing eeping within a few days.

In other news Big Bad Barney rat went for his neuter on Wednesday. He recovered fine despite my concerns about his age and rattly chest so now we just need to wait two weeks til he is safe to see how he reacts to some girls. It looks like Daniel, Miles and Reggie might also be getting visits from the testicle fairy as there has been quite a lot of scrapping going on in their cages.

The Mummy amongst the mice we took in a couple of weeks ago who are on foster with Katie has given birth again. Katie is leaving her alone for now but once I have numbers or pics I'll let you know.

Shadow wabbit seems a bit better I think but we'll find out for sure tomorrow when we go back to the vets and he is weighed.

Skip got bunged again and had to have an enema on Friday. Last time he had diarrhoea afterwards but he's still a bit bunged up now so we're keeping a close eye on him and giving him laxatives.

If you pootle over to the rats page you'll see that we have a new addition to the family as well :)

Influx and a smaller ...errr....outflux

2008-04-13T21:41:00.002+01:00

Wow what a weekend! It was set to be a busy one anyway cos I was pretty behind on cleaning and stuff after a busy week. Then came the call on Saturday about an estimated 15 rats needing rescuing. Serena from Pet Rescue went to check out the situation and found 20 odd rats, 20 odd chinchillas plus cats, hamsters and degus all living in horrendous circumstances in this home. The things was we were full. But there was no way these animals could be left as they were. So we spent all weekend moving cages and animals around and making some extra room. Thankfully Furry Friends and NANA stepped in to offer help for a lot of the animals too. We have taken in two russian hamsters and 15 rats. One of the female rats was with the boys and the boys broke into the girls cage recently too so chances are some of them are going to be pregnant.

We also had a call this weekend about 35 rats needing homes. It just feels like what we're doing is a drop in the ocean at the moment :(

On a happier note Bennie and Roberto the rats, Bailey the gerbil, Kayla the syrian hamster and Lola, Lexi and Rodney the robos all went to their new homes today. This is really great news - Kayla and Bailey had been looking for nearly 3 months and neither were overly happy in rescue. The three robos weren't overly friendly so it'll do them good to be in a home and get some more attention.

Anyway, the new arrivals have been left to settle in after their long day. I'll get photos and update in the next few days :)

Shadow again

2008-04-10T22:05:00.002+01:00

Although Shadow's skin is doing well I was still worried that he hadn't gained weight. So I attempted to weigh him tonight. I don't really have anything ideal to weigh him on and there's always a difference between our scales and the vets scales but it looks like he might actually have lost more weight :( He has also sneezed a few times recently and tonight I noticed the inside of his front paws is wet which suggests he has been cleaning away nasal discharge. So it's going to be back to the vets again for Shadow.

There a funny pair my wabbits. Kitkat is grumpy, Shadow can definitely take or leave people. But I love them so much and it's breaking my heart to see him like this. I was hoping to put him back outside this weekend but that doesn't look likely now :(

Madness

2008-04-09T22:07:00.002+01:00

It has been a bit overwhelming the last week with the number of requests we've had to take animals in. A total of about 2o animals inside a week I think. Thankfully most have found places elsewhere because there really isn't any room at the inn at the moment. We have taken in a family of mice tonight as they were a bit of an urgent case. There are two adults who were missexed by a pet shop and the resulting babies. It's likely Mum is pregnant again too, hence the urgency to get them here and settled. Anyway, they're all very lovely. The babies are about 2 weeks old and just balls of fur with springs in their feet at the moment! I tried to get some pics but I had trouble keeping hold of them even with two hands so I gave up in the end. I'll get some once they're more settled.

General Updates

2008-04-06T12:40:00.002+01:00

Sorry for being a bit useless with the updates of late. This week has been pretty hellish. Not animals (for a change) but personal things. First of all a friend of mine, Sally, who had been fighting cancer for 9 years, finally lost her battle last weekend. She was only early 40's and so full of life and fun. It wasn't a shock as such but devastating nonetheless. Secondly Dave's Dad was taken to hospital by ambulance on Tuesday with chest pains. Turns out to be nothing to worry about but we had a few days of worry so things are even more chaotic than normal.

This weekend we've been doing some reorganising. We got some storage units which we've set up in the bathroom (which is actually bigger than the second bedroom where the rodents live) to make things a bit tidier. We also had the 5 bales of cardboard bedding we'd ordered delivered and Emma has recently passed about 10 bin bags of shredded paper our way so between everything in the bathroom and rodent room being pulled out and sorted and 15 bales and bags of bedding waiting to be put away you can imagine the chaos!! It's only a diddy little house and we've barely been able to move in it the last few days. Anyway, we're pretty much there now although we've found that the cardboard bales won't fit in the loft as planned so there are random bales of cardboard dotted about the place at the moment!!

So I thought I'd take the opportunity to update the blog while I get my breath back from lugging bedding about.

Homings - none since my last update I think. Sylvia is doing a transport run next weekend so hopefully we should have a bit of a clear out then!

Arrivals - 9 utterly delicious little baby degus. The three boys have gone to Furry Friends and the six girls are with us to find a home. I'll get some pics soon. We may also have some rats arriving in the next few days. Not quite sure where I'm going to put them yet but they're urgent cases so we'll work something out.

Shadow - is on the mend! He has now had his second mite treatment and his skin is healing up well. They're still indoors but mainly cos we had snow this weekend, otherwise I had planned to put them back out. Friday we scrubbed the bunny house down with veterinary disinfectant to make sure there were no lurking nasties. The plan is just to put them out during the day, at least for the time being. Shadow still seems a bit thin to me so I want to be able to keep a close eye on him.

Chins and Degus - Fudge and Erika went to the vets a couple of weeks ago. Both were found to have some dental disease but nothing too terrible. The specialist certainly thinks it should be manageable so that's great news. Hans seems pretty much recovered from whatever was going on with him. He still seems a bit slim to me too but he's much brighter and happier in himself. Skye had a sore eye too but nothing that we couldn't fix with a few days of eye drops.

Juliette and Naomi - the two baby girl degus who were up for homing. The plan was that the six new baby girls would go in with them and it should have been a very simple introduction. However, they turned out to be complete thugs and beat the poor babies up. So I thought I'd teach them some manners by letting them meet our 4 girls. It actually went pretty well. They held their own and all got on quite well. They met the chins without any problems too. So, since we had the space and our four are getting on a bit, I thought it made sense for them to stay really. They've settled in so well! The first day was really cute. Fudge wanted to make sure they knew who was boss so was giving them a little bit of hassle. The new girls kept going up to Hans and hiding behind or underneath him. When Fudge came to bother them, Hans huddled over them and swore gently at Fudge. Then he was washing the new girls too. It was the sweetest thing to watch and had me quite tearful. It wasn't that long ago that Hans was all alone. The degus all seem to be drawn to him and he's rarely without a degu snuggled up to him.

Rats - I'm a bit saddened by the lack of interest in the adult rats we have here at the moment. There's Daniel and Miles two year old boys, the group of 4 slater girls, and Frank and Ronnie. None of them have had any interest in the few weeks they have been here. I'm particularly fond of Frank, who has a head tilt. He decided to scare the poop out of us one night this week. When we were feeding Dave found him pretty much collapsed on the shelf in their cage. He was breathing really fast, his chest was noisy and he was quite limp and dehydrated looking. I gave him some medicine and offered him some liquid food. It was only really his enthusiasm for that that stopped me calling the emergency vet, I was that worried about him. Next morning he was fine and he has been fine since. I can only assume he got stuck on the shelf and got into a panic. He has a ladder now to make sure he can get down, bless him!

Amongst our own rats, Edwina is settling in brilliantly. She has come out of her shell a lot and is getting on great with the others. Maisie isn't looking so good sadly. I think she'll have to have another mite treatment as her scabs are coming back :( Her daughter Keeya, also felt I needed a scare last night. She pulled a toe nail. It's amazing how much they can bleed when that happens. We went in to feed and their cage was covered in blood! Thankfully we traced it to one tiny toe nail but it looked like something terrible had happened in there!

Phew well my wrist really hurts now! I think thats everything for now. We took some pics of the dogs in the snow earlier so I'll try to put them up later too.

Edwina and the Jenny/Freddy tower

2008-03-27T21:38:00.003Z

Ok I have a confession. I am, of course, totally against buying from pet shops and I think the pets at home adoption scheme is of distinctly dubious merit. But this evening we popped in for an emergency hay supply top up. And of course I have to just check on the animals and make sure they're ok, although my local store is usually quite good. And there, in the adoption section, is Edwina, sitting in a tiny tank on her own with some fiddlesticks and a small hamster wheel. The sign on the tank said she needed a special home. So I had to ask and it turns out she has a head tilt. I offered to take her on and find her a home but on adopting from the rehoming scheme you have to sign a contract saying you'll return the animal to them if you can't keep it. Much as I dislike pets at home I know if someone signed my contract and then disregarded it I'd be fuming. So I was about to walk away and said I would leave them my details and for them to call me in a few weeks if she was still looking. Then they said she'd already been looking for three weeks. So, including the time she spent out the back on treatment, this little 3 month old lady had been on her own in a tank in a pet shop for at least four weeks!

So I know I shouldn't have but I couldn't leave her there all on her own with only a small chance of finding a home suitable for her needs. So she has joined us as a permanent resident.

She's a big wiggly and disorientated so we didn't trouble her too much to get pics but here's a couple just to introduce her

Intros with my gang went fabulously as expected but there was one hitch. There wasn't really room in the main cage for another person. So I had a plan for a "quick" solution. Two hours later the freddy/jenny tower was born

So everyone is very happy with their new extension and friend. Here they are exploring

Edwina

Oooh a proper size wheel

Exploring

Eva showing off what is undoubtedly the yummiest belly in the world ever

And checking for weaknesses and possible escape routes

Keeya - Mum, look, I'm starfishing way up high!

Maisie finds the attic

Super Susie Tripod

I was a teensy bit worried about making the cage taller as Widdle, who is now 29 months, has gotten a little wobbly on his back legs of late. Seems I needn't have worried

The nosey slater girls next door were a bit jealous

Welcome home Edwina :D

Worry

2008-03-17T21:50:00.003Z

Shadow has been to the vets this evening. His back has gotten so much worse just over the weekend. Anyway he has had more antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and anti mite treatment. He's back indoors again as well as he has lost weight so needs a bit of pampering. Within an hour of being indoors he has pulled more fur out leaving him with a huge bald, scabby patch on his back :( This has being going on for two months now poor boy. The vet has taken some bits of fur to look at under a microscope as well to see what we're dealing with. He might need to have some special baths.

As if that weren't enough, Skips bum is playing up again. He has been a bit bunged up on and off for a week or two. Nothing terrible, just a bit bloated in the tummy. We've found that milk of magnesia has done a good job of getting thing moving again. Well the last few days he's been having trouble pooing and his bottom has been getting a bit bunged up. This evening he has a very dry poo in there..the sort that usually proceeds one of his bad spells :( So we've unbunged him as best we can for now and put some liquid paraffin up his bottom which tends to help. We'll be giving him milk of magnesia twice a day for now too. Hopefully the things we have learnt will enable us to stop it before it gets bad again.

All in all I'm looking forward to falling into bed and becoming unconcious today :(

Lots of news

2008-03-15T19:10:00.002Z

I can't believe I've left it so long without an update, especially when there is SO much to tell you!

Ok, to update on recent stories....Frank is now living very happily with Ronnie :) Hans had his x-rays which were all clear and he seems much better. Not quite back to his old self yet but eating and looking well at least.

Those ladies who were on baby watch have all had the all clear. That's Calista degu, Lola and Lexi the robos and the four female rats from Norfolk.

In not so good news, Shadow rabbit has scratched himself up again and done a really good job this time! He has three patches now, one on his back, one on his side and even one on his tummy. He is booked in to see the vet again on Monday.

Fudgey degus teeth are overgrown again :( She is booked in to see a specialist in Kent on the 25th. Erika degu is going too as she has been losing weight so I'd like to see if her teeth are the cause.

New arrivals wise we took in 8 baby boy rats (aka The Gangsters). Their sisters, The Molls, are on foster in Hertfordshire.

Anyway, now on to the really big news!

On the 6th March 2007 our dear little oldie dog Fraggle left us suddenly after a short illness. It was less than a year since we lost our other old lady Meggie Moo to cancer and we were both devastated.

We feel that the girls are still with us in some way and we like to do all we can to honour their memories. For some time we have talked about how we'd like to win the lottery and set up a trust in their memory to help animals. Of course, we're still waiting for the lottery win but as their anniversaries approached we began to think that perhaps this was something we needed to make happen for ourselves in order for it to be a real tribute.

As you know, we have been fostering animals for Furry Friends for about 3 years now. This has worked brilliantly and we've really enjoyed working with Emma who has been incredibly supportive and a real inspiration to us. Under her guidance we have learnt a huge amount. As part of our recent ponderings we began to think that perhaps we could do the work we do now in tribute to the girls with a long term goal of being able to help other animals too.

So we are very proud to announce the creation of Starlight Trust Animal Rescue aka STAR. We will be running a small rescue from our home taking in and homing small rodents such as rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, chinchillas, degus etc. The animals we already have here on foster will be homed through Furry Friends as normal and we will continue to work very closely with Emma and the other contacts and friends we have made

You can learn more at http://www.starlighttrust.org.uk

Sprogpages will continue pretty much as is. The rehoming pages will stay until all the Furry Friends animals are homed and after that the site will continue as a showcase for our own animals. The blog will continue and will serve as the news page for both sites :)

Poor Frank

2008-02-28T21:15:00.002Z

You might recall that amongst the recent new arrivals was a group of three boys, Frank, Miles and Daniel. Frank is the little man with a head tilt.

Last night, just as we got into bed, there was a lot of banging and crashing and squealing from the rodent room. I rushed in there to find poor Frank being attacked! He has three wounds on him but there's not a mark on either of the other two which just goes to show that it was an attack rather than a squabble.

So poor Frank has had to be separated and is now on his own. I have no doubt that if he'd been left in there they would have done him serious damage or even killed him. I'm very surprised as there had been no sign of any problems between them previously.

So once Frank has had all his mite treatments I'm going to try introductions with Ronnie. I think the two of them might be compatible and Reggie could then go in with the babies arriving tomorrow.

Hans Update

2008-02-28T21:12:00.002Z

I'm delighted to report that Hans has begun eating for himself again today. He's looking much brighter and has been in the sand bath and generally much more alert and active :)

Less delightful is the fact that I managed to go to work today with the gloop I'd been syringe feeding him all down myself with realising. Oops!!

Hans

2008-02-27T20:09:00.002Z

Please keep Hansy Man in your thoughts. Last night I found him looking very subdued and with a gooey stuck together eye. I cleaned his eye and gave him antibiotics and eye drops but I was really worried at how subdued he was and totally off his food. I wasn't sure he'd last the night to be honest.

Well he has been to the vets today and it's not clear what's going on. The eye itself is ok but the tissue around it is very inflamed. It might suggest a problem with his teeth which would be very bad news. So we're carrying on with the eye drops and antibiotics and adding in some painkilling anti-inflammatories. We're also syringe feeding him so he can get his strength up a bit. Then he'll have an x-ray on Monday to see what's going on with his teeth.

He is looking a bit brighter this evening and took some of the syringed formula quite willingly. Please keep him in your thoughts so he gets his strength back and keep your fingers crossed that it's just an eye infection and not a tooth problem.

The Noobs

2008-02-27T19:53:00.002Z

As mentioned, we were expecting quite a few new arrivals.

On Sunday we took in 9 new rats from three different sources. Firstly, from a home in Norfolk we have The Slaters. A group of four girls with lots of mouth! They were pretty shy on arrival but then they had had a long day. Now they're much more friendly although none are overly keen on being picked up. They're a really cute, funny bunch who have got the hump with my own girls being in the cage next door and have been huffing and puffing at them and then taking in out on each other like a bunch of chavs outside a nightclub on a Saturday night, hence the names! Although they're "boring black hoodies" they have really nice markings and are all very pretty. They need to stay here for a few weeks to make sure they're not preggers.

So, the boss is Kat. She is the friendliest and once she realised I was ok she spent most of the evening on my shoulder

Second in command would appear to be Lyn. She is curious but really sounds off when you try to pick her up!

Then there's Zoe who has a really pretty white nose which you can't see in this pic

And then there's Little Mo, the smallest and shyest of the batch and almost chocolate in colour.

And showing what nosy little monkeys they are

Also from this same home is Barney. He has been living on his own but his ex owner said he was ok to travel with some other boys. They disagreed and took a big chunk out of his shoulder. This has closed and scabbed already but he's a bit of a mess bless him. He's riddled with lice and covered in scabs and cuts. He's obviously meant to be a big handsome stud muffin but at the moment he's just a very battered old man. I'll see how he reacts to some baby boys who are due to arrive soon but he may end up being neutered. Dave has fallen in love with this lad big time. He is such a sweetie !

Then, from a local home, came these three boys, also crawling with lice.

Daniel and Miles are two very well roaned huskys and a lovely pair of squishes. They're easy to tell apart as Miles has a stripe of colour left on his back

Daniel

Miles

And Frank is a smeezy lad with a headtilt. I suspect he has had this for a while but he'll get a course of baytril just in case. He copes well with his headtilt although he twists when he gets stressed.

And finally there is the evil that is Reggie. He was the only boy in his litter and is undoubtedly the naughtiest little monster I've ever met. He is totally full of himself. I've introduced him to a lone lad, Ronnie, this evening. Ron is 5 months to Reggie's 8 weeks ish but it's obvious he'll be boss. He kept running up to Ron, bouncing on him, and then running away as if to say "chase me, chase me"!!

Here's Reggie

And with Ronnie

I'm hoping to add at least one other baby boy to their group as I think Reg will want a friend of his own age.

And then last night we took in a group of four spiny mice. Now this case saddens me. More so than the rats who came from a home where they were missexed, left to breed and crawling with lice even. This is one of the spinies who arrived yesterday

And where did he come from? The home of someone who knew no better and let things get out of control? No, another rescue. Who on earth can animals rely on if they can't rely on a rescue? It really saddens me.

So none of these animals will be ready for homing for a little while since almost all have parasites and/or wounds to recover from first. Still, they're safe now at least.

Skip Again and some imminent arrivals

2008-02-23T15:45:00.002Z

I'm pleased (delighted) to announce that Skip is doing great. Everything seems to be functioning well and he has been producing poo and pushing out the right end ok!! Unfortunately last night I gave him a new flavour of baby food and neglected to check the ingredients thoroughly and missed that it contained tomato. For some reason tomato really does not agree with Skip so this morning I was greeted by the sight and smell of Skip, Quest and Tim all covered in orange diarrhoea. Pleasant! Still, it's all coming out which is the main thing I guess!

I tided up the animal database this morning and was pleased to note that we only have 62 animals here at the moment which is a reasonable number for us. Of course, I spoke too soon! Tomorrow we are taking some rats from a large batched being rescued from a home in Norfolk. Not sure how many yet but definitely 4, possibly more. We also have 8 baby boy rats due in from an accidental litter. Then Emma called to ask if I could take a group of three girls who have been handed in this evening. One appears to have a pituitary tumour which is a type of brain tumour common in rats which affects their mobility. It's likely she will need to live out her days here. Emma is also taking back a large number of spiny mice from a rescue who have been unable to home the ones they took in from the big rescue we did a year ago.

So I don't think the numbers are going to stay that low very long! On the plus side, when Sylvia goes to collect the animals from Norfolk, she is taking Whiskers, Pretty and Biggles the degus and Hobbs the hamster to their new homes. I'm really pleased for the degus in particular although I shall miss them lots. I know I shouldn't have favourites but I do have a major soft spot for those three girls and was tempted to add them to my own group. But I decided to see how things panned out and if a home came up for them they would go and if there are others left without a home they can stay.

So today and tomorrow we're moving things around trying to make as much room as possible for the new arrivals. I'll update you once they're here :)

Another Skip Update

2008-02-19T21:49:00.003Z

Skip got on well at the vets today :) They've managed to pretty much empty him out and his tummy is back to normal size! It's so good to have him home. He's supposed to be sore and resting but nobody told him! He has been bouncing round the cage, digging up scraps of dried food left over from Quest and Tim's dinner last night and stuffing his face. He really is bloody amazing!

We're not out of the woods yet. There's still a chance that something ruptured and he'll die of peritonitis in the next few days. And I don't know if having been so full will have stretched his colon further up and whether he'll go on to have worse problems with his pooing that we won't be able to solve cos they're higher up. Only time will tell really whether he can make a full recovery from this.
For now I'm just SO glad to have him home and looking well.

Skip Update

2008-02-18T20:54:00.002Z

The good news is that we cleared Skip's bottom blockage Saturday night. The bad news is that there seems to be a blockage further up that we can't get to. He hasn't been to the toilet since we unblocked him and his tummy keeps getting bigger and lumpier as he is still making poo but it can't go anywhere :(

So we took him to the vet tonight and he is staying overnight. In the morning they will anaesthetise him and try to ease the poo down through his colon and out the other end. It's a risky procedure as his colon could rupture which would be fatal. Even if we get him home tomorrow the next few days would be critical as we wait to see if he becomes ill from peritonitis caused by a rupture.

So please please keep him in your thoughts. If anyone can do this it's Sandra our wonderful vet. If anyone can survive this is Super Skip. The odds are against him but then they always have been and it hasn't stopped him so far.

I won't even try to tell you how I feel about this. He's my world and I adore him. He has to be ok :(

Apologies

2008-02-16T12:57:00.003Z

To all those waiting to hear from me at the moment. It has been one of those weeks.

Skip is still bunged up, one week on. I'm so worried about him and he's getting very fed up with my efforts to debung him and is trying to bite me. I can't begin to describe how much I hate this, I feel so useless and so scared :(

Added to that we've had four losses this week. Raini degu, who was expected really, Mags and Silly degus who just went totally out of the blue, and Tara the roborovski hamster. Dear Tara was more than two and a half years old and the last of my own robos. She had been slowing down and getting rather crotchety for a while and I was expecting to have to make a decision about her soon. But she went by herself last night. Play nicely with your sisters at the bridge darling.

Please keep Skip in your thoughts. If we don't solve this soon then I think it might be time to call it a day :(

New arrivals

2008-02-09T16:50:00.001Z

I was quite relieved by last weekends clear out as things were pretty crowded. I decided I wouldn't take anyone else in to give me a chance to catch up a bit. Of course, the best laid plans and all that!

On Tuesday Emma asked if I could help with some roborovski hamsters. She'd had a batch brought in by someone who had been breeding from them and no-one wanted them. They had been fighting badly and Emma had had to separate some of them. So I took a group of three who had been kept separate from the others. On arrival I checked them over and found, to my dismay, that there was one boy and two girls. So they have had to be separated obviously and we'll have to wait and see if the girls are pregnant.

And then on Thursday Emma asked if I could help with some rats. She had had a call from a woman who'd had a single female rat for about a year when she decided to get her a friend. So she went to the pet shop and bought a four month old male to live with her!! As if that wasn't plain ridiculous enough, this is the cage she had them share

Yep, that is a hamster starter cage, although I wouldn't keep even a dwarf hamster in it myself. This poor year old lady suddenly had a young hormonal boy sharing that tiny cage with her and she had nowhere to go to get away from him :( So she (now called Roxy) joins Calista degu and the two roborovski girls on Baby Watch. The boy, Ronnie, is having a few days chill out time on his own and then I'll see if he would like to lodge with Skip's crew until some suitable boys to pair him up with arrive.

Speaking of Skip, he's bunged up again :( He had been doing amazingly well and pooing for himself quite a bit but almost overnight he got into problems. Still, at least we know how to sort it now I guess.

The Sprog Dogs and the New Sofas

2008-02-09T16:35:00.001Z

Our second hand 15 year old sofas were starting to collapse so we decided to treat ourselves in the January sales. A couple of weeks ago our new sofas arrived. Although it seems the sprog dogs are under the impression that this was their treat rather than ours ;D

Tessie Doo thought they made a great place to play :)

Gratuitous cutey doo pic

Begley likes the corner

And apparently the cushions are quite cuddly!

And they're great platforms for the previously unseen on film Begley cheeky face

Loki, who isn't usually one for being on the sofas, has hardly left them

Fin, with his foot fetish, loves the reclining action

Cass approves

The only hitch so far is that Barney finds them a bit hard to get up on with his bad hips. But he's getting there. And we have a solution...more on that later

Some group shots

But, even better than the new sofas is what we did with one of the old ones. We put that at the back of the living room and have created a doggy area in that back half of the room. This means that they can (with the exception of loony doo) all be left loose at night or when we're out so no more crates for them :D

Cass loves that she can lay on the sofa ALL day instead of - shock horror - having to sleep on the floor sometimes!

She doesn't mind sharing with Barney too much though. Barney can get on this one easily and is realising that sofas are pretty nice places to be!

Tired now!

And doing his Elvis impression!

We quite like our sofas too but obviously that's not what really matters ;D

I know I say this a lot but....

2008-02-02T20:03:00.000Z

....wow, what a day!

The day began early when we met the wonderful Sylvia who helps transport animals to their new homes at Emma's. Today 12 animals travelled to their new homes thanks to Sylvia!

Kimberly, Shortie and Shyla will be lodging with Sylvia and then Lois, another furry friends fosterer, on their way to their new home in Poole.

Spike and Nutmeg will be lodging with Sylvia before travelling to their new home in South Wales.

Snowberry the hamster and Percy and Squits the spiny mice went to live with Hannah, who has adopted from us before. They'll be very spoilt rodents indeed :D

Minnie the gerbil went to live in Chesterfield, and three of the group of 7 gerbils went to live in Pontefract.

So, after that big clear out I'd planned a big blitz, sort out and move round in the rodent room. As so often happens though I got distracted. For a few weeks I'd been looking at that nice big new chinchilla cage and poor lonely Hans and wondering. I thought the chances of introducing him successfully to another male and two female chinchillas and a group of 5 degus was pretty slim. But he has been so lonely, I thought I had to give it a go. 6 hours later (which seems like a lot but is far, far quicker than I expected) and they are all living happily together. It was the easiest introduction I have ever done of any animal I think. I'm still in shock. I am SO SO happy I can't tell you! Hans arrived here 6 months ago having just been neutered after falling out with his brother. There had been complications with his neutering and when he got here he was horribly thin. I opened the door of his carry box and he jumped straight out into my arms. It was love at first sight but there was no room in the old cage for him. Dave (who insists all chinchillas are evil) and I are both besotted with Hans. He's always at the cage door wanting a fuss and a play. He's the most affectionate chinchilla I've ever met, even more so than Astro. So we're both really chuffed that he'll be staying with us. If a little worried by what evil we may have unleashed on the world by giving Astro a partner in crime!!

What a weekend

2008-01-27T20:44:00.000Z

Dear me, it has been a busy weekend!

Saturday was spent having a big clean out as usual. Then in the evening we had a new arrival in the form of Snowberry, a syrian hamster who had been advertised on my local Freecycle.

In the evening I was feeding some of the degus when one climbed out of the door of the cage and fell to the floor. I went to pick him up and he took his confusion out on my finger. He got me in jst the right place and oh boy did it bleed.

Sunday morning I went out to clean the rabbits and give them their second mite treatment and found that Shadow had been scratching again :( He has caused more wounds on his sides and they have now gotten infected. So he and Kitkat have had to come indoors again.

Later we had two more degu arrivals. Two little girls and one boy from an accidental litter. The girls are staying here and are now lodging with Calista, Emilia and Latoya. The little boy has gone to Emma to live with some boys there.

And finally we took in three baby syrian hamsters. Their Mum was purchased from a pet shop and turned out to be pregnant. I'm a little worried about one of them who seems a bit underweight and bloated so I'll be keeping an eye on them. They're terrible pictures but you get an idea of how cute they are anyway

Sad baby news

2008-01-25T23:32:00.000Z

I was quite excited Wednesday night as Uma mouse looked like she was going into labour. When I checked on her Thursday she looked slimmer but I couldn't see any babies. I needed to check everything was ok so I looked in her nest and there was some blood but no babies. It would appear that being moved just a few days before she gave birth was too much for her and she must have eaten her babies. Pragmatically, it's for the best. She is very young, has already had at least one litter of babies and obviously it's a whole lot fewer mice to find homes for. But I was still ever so upset at the thought of all those little lives which never got lived :(

The good news is that all 5 girls have homed lined up already but I'm worried that one of the older babies, Moretta, might be pregnant herself as she is looking a bit round too.

I'll keep you posted anyway with mousey and degu baby news.

Comings and Goings

2008-01-19T22:24:00.000Z

We're having a little flurry of activity, the first since Christmas really.

Gorgeous Gus has gone to his new home this weekend :) But he is to be quickly replaced by two more gerbils due to arrive tomorrow. I'm also expecting three rats and two more degus imminently.

Also this evening we have taken in 5 female fancy mice, one of which is very pregnant. I've not had baby fancy mice born here before so that should be interesting! Here's Mum showing off her big lumpy tummy

We've had a fairly naff couple of days as we've both been poorly with a bug. Grandpa is doing much better though and everyone who was poorly is looking better so things are looking better generally.

Better!

2008-01-13T22:00:00.000Z

I feel much better today :)

I have spent literally all day catching up with the cleaning out and doing the last bits of reorganising left over from our refurbishment. So I am finally up to date with the cleaning!! Yay!! And the room is all clean and tidy! Well apart from the two fat, grumpy rabbits currently living in the play area, much to their total disgust!

We have had some new arrivals too. I neglected to mention that last Sunday we had a gerbily arrival. A handsome, single older boy who I have called Gus. Today we took in three degus (as if we didn't have enough of those already!). These people thought they could make some money out of breeding and selling degus. When the second litter failed to sell they thought they'd let a rescue pick up the pieces of their stupidity. Grrrr!!! So Emma has Daddy and the baby boys and Mummy and two baby girls have come here. Mummy (now called Calista) is more than likely pregnant again. They are blue degus which just means they are slightly different in colour really. Apparently blue degus are prone to malocclusion but what's a painful, life threatening dental problem compared to getting very slightly prettier and easier to sell animals, eh? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A tough few days

2008-01-12T18:11:00.000Z

Advance apologies, I'm feeling pretty :( tonight. It has been a rough few days.

*self pitying whinge alert* Things are still difficult outside the animal side of things. Grandpa was finally released from hospital yesterday and is doing well but has had to go to a care home for now. This is in part because Grandma is now ill with a severe chest infection and fluid on her lungs and is on bed rest at my Mum's. Added to that I'm having a really busy and stressful time at work at the moment too. Oh and I think I have an ear infection, hence me writing my blog rather than being upstairs cleaning out as I should be. Dave insisted I have a rest cos the room keeps spinning whenever I stand up!! *end self pitying whinge*

Thursday night I took Fudgey degu and Nutmeg the foster rat to the vets. Fudge had overgrown teeth and Nutmeg had an abcess on his throat. Both stayed overnight to have anaesthetics the next day. Fudge was to have her teeth burred and Nutmeg would have his abcess lanced and flushed.

Friday I had a call to say Fudge's teeth were worse than was originally apparent and the back teeth were severely overgrown. The vet suggested we put her to sleep. Now, naughty as this is, I have to confess that Fudge is my favourite. When she arrived with another possibly pregnant female she was terrified. Anytime I went into the room she screamed and panicked. I was sure she was pregnant because she was so very fat! But her cagemate gave birth a couple of weeks later but she didn't. When the time came to home them all I decided to keep Fudge here and put her in with my others. She was a bit more used to me but still very nervous and I just couldn't put her through the stress of moving to a new home. I started a campaign to win her over and made a point of handfeeding the degus every night. I can still remember the first night she took something from my hand - it brought tears to my eyes! These days she has blossomed into a confident girl who is alpha of my degu group. She's not keen on being touched by us but she is very happy to come and take treats. So, given that she was still distinctly round and full of energy and otherwise in good condition there was no way I could agree to the euthanasia. I asked the vet to burr her teeth down so that we could see how she got on for a while. If the teeth regrow quickly and cause her problems then we will have to consider her future. But if all she needs is her teeth trimmed a few times a year then I think that's worth considering. She bounced back incredibly well from her ordeal and seeing her give all the others kisses and make little greeting noises to them all was so touching.

Nutmeg, I'm pleased to report, is also doing fine and is on antibiotics to deal with any infection.

So, then this morning I went out to see to the bunnies and found that Shadow had a big wound on his side. So he was off to the vets and it transpires that he has lice. So he and Kitkat have been brought inside and both must be treated for lice. Shads also has antibiotics to help to heal his skin, poor lad.

So I'm still hoping for that magical time when everything settles down and gets back to normal and I catch up with everything!

A review of 2007

2008-01-04T19:11:00.000Z

This time last year I computerised all my records and was able to see exactly what we had taken in and what happened to them. Well I've carried on with this throughout 2007 which is a great time saver and the time has come to look back over the last year and see what we achieved. Last years figures are in brackets for comparison.

In total during 2007 we took in 295 animals, actually pretty close to last years 292.

This breaks down as

4 chinchillas (2)
44 degus (8)
2 dogs (1)
7 gerbils (24)
1 fancy mouse (18)
128 rats (178)
8 roborovski hamsters (3)
2 russian hamsters (54)
99 spiny mice (0)

And what happened to them?

164 found new homes directly from here (201)
64 were returned to Furry Friends HQ to be homed from there (41)
20 of them died :( (12)
7 of them stayed here (9)
40 are still here (29)

It's interesting to review really, if a little disappointing. Rats are usually the biggest intake here yet we took in 50 less of them. Of course the big intakes of 2007 were degus and spiny mice which also explains the high number who were passed back to Emma to home as we swapped them between us to make the best use of home offers. It also explains why 13% of the animals we took in last year are still here :( Don't assume that these were Decembers intake - in truth we took in very few animals during December. 17 of those still here were admissions from January to April. Deaths are also up. More than half of these were spiny mice who arrived in terrible condition or who were born to sickly mice and didn't make it. There were also several degus who again arrived in terrible condition after years of neglect. There were also four baby rats from the Portsmouth Rescue who were horribly inbred and whose mothers were malnourished.

All in all, during 2007 we said goodbye to 31 dear friends.

Of my own animals:-
Apollo the chinchilla who died suddenly shortly after his second birthday
Dawn the roborovski hamster who finally scuttled off to the bridge at well over 2 years old
Squirt and Dumpling the rats who broke my heart when they were taken from me during a lice infestation
Dearest Poop the rat who made sure he was here to celebrate his 2nd birthday before he let that pituitary tumour take him
Fraggle the dog who died very suddenly from a virus after spending only 9 months with us.
Sweet Abbi rat who didn't quite make two and went suddenly but peacefully in her sleep

Of my foster animals:-
Fozzie the rat who had been returned from his home. A few weeks later he died from congestive heart failure.
Camilla the gerbil who was attacked and killed by her cagemates
Campari the russian hamster who died suddenly, probably from the stress of fighting with his cagemate
Trixie the very naughty rat who shocked us by dying very suddenly and for no apparent reason
12 spiny mice including Chummy, Scabby Hop-Hop and Chewy
Erwine the dog who was rescued from a horrible situation in Ireland. Sadly, just as things were finally looking up for him, he was found to have advanced lymphoma.
Donkey, Gordon and Nads the degus who I have written about recently.
4 baby rats from the portsmouth rescue, including little Merlin who had megacolon

My hope for 2008? To have fewer of these enormous rescues! In 2007 we had the huge spiny mouse rescue (99 animals), the huge degu rescue (44 animals) and the big portsmouth rat rescue (48 animals). In total these accounted for 191 of the animals we admitted - that's 65% of our intake!! The spiny mice rescue alone accounted for more than 1/3 of our intake. What made it worse was that two of these rescues were of animals which are hard to home, meaning that they spent a long time here and took up a lot of space, preventing us from taking in more homeable animals. Of course, it would be nice not to be needed at all but realistically I'd just like to be able to make good use of the little space I have here and be able to find more animals good homes quicker. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the year brings.

A little better

2008-01-04T17:31:00.000Z

Well things are looking a bit better here. I finally managed to sort Skip out and everything seems to be working for him again (with a little help from me).

Grandpa is still in hospital but we're still waiting for real news on how he is. For now he seems to be doing a bit better anyway.

This week we have been working flat out to reorganise the rodent room. The main catalyst was a dire need to get the chinchillas and degus into a new cage before their old one collapsed. As the new cage was so much bigger this necessitated a big switch round and Dave has built a big shelf unit to hold all the small cages. Anyway we're really pleased with it but utterly exhausted! Today has been an enforced day of rest - the totally ditsy things I keep doing were a clear signal that I needed a day off!! I've taken the opportunity to update the website a bit - you should see some new toys to the right...I hope they work ok but with the way my brain is today I wouldn't guarantee it!!

The other good news is that the last of the roborovski hamsters are heading for their new homes today, narrowly avoiding spending a whole year in rescue.

Bad to worse

2007-12-29T18:08:00.001Z

Sorry for the gap between updates but things really are going from bad to worse round here. Both Nadia and Donkey have left us. Donkey just faded away and passed away peacefully here. Nads' prolapse turned out to be a tumour and she had to be put to sleep.

Then, about a week before Christmas, my Grandpa was admitted to hospital with a heart attack. He is still there now and, well, things aren't looking great.

Skip has gotten bunged up with poo again. It's probably partly my fault as with Christmas and Grandpa I guess I wasn't as attentive as I should have been and it got out of control. I've been trying to debung him for days now. We seem to be finally making some progress at last cos I've been working on it hourly today.

So, if you're waiting to hear from me about a homing application my apologies. I will get back to you once things have settled down a bit.

2007-12-15T15:24:00.000Z

Today has been a horrid day. I didn't have much time to clean people out during the week so I planned a big cleaning blitz today. Oddly enough I was really looking forward to it. Not so much the shovelling vast quantities of poo bit but just spending the day in there with everyone and getting everything sorted out.

So the first cage I cleaned was that of Donkey, Smokey, Dre and Eminem the degus. They were two separate pairs up until last week when I introduced them. They had seemed to be getting on well together but today I found fresh blood in the cage. Donkey was looking a bit sorry for himself so I took him out and found he was limping. So I called the vets, got an appointment for two o'clock and went back to my cleaning. I did a few more cages and then got to the cage containing Nadia, Whiskers, Biggles and Pretty the degus. There I found more fresh blood and began to wonder what on earth was going on. Everyone in that cage looked fine in themselves, all bright and active, but Nads was my prime suspect as she has two hernias and I was worried something had happened with them. Well it was even worse than I had imagined. When I picked her up and looked underneath I found that she had a prolapse coming from her girly area. I knew this was very bad news indeed. So she was duly added to the vets appointment an off we went.

Donkey should be fine..no apparent break so probably just a sprain/bruising. He has had metacam and baytril and we'll see how he gets on.

Nads' outlook is very bleak but I wasn't willing to give up on her just yet. The vet we saw was very nice but a) didn't seem quite knowledgable enough about rodents for me to be totally confident in her judgement and b) suggested that there was a very small chance that things could be repaired with surgery, which was enough for me to latch on to. At the moment Nads is her usual, incredibly evil self. When I was cleaning her cage out she was running in her wheel. At the vets she climbed up me and sat on my shoulder chirping in my ear twice. To me that's not the actions of an animal in terrible pain. So we decided to see how she goes until Monday when Sandra Super Vet is back from her holidays. If anyone can fix her, Sandra can. In the meantime she is also on Baytil and Metacam and we have to watch very closely to make sure she can wee and poo. I've seen her poo for definite, so we're just waiting in hope that she shows us she can still wee ok too. If at any time this weekend she looks to be suffering we will of course take her back and do whatever needs doing :(

I have no idea if I have done the right thing and I think there is a very good chance that we will have to let her go on Monday but I just couldn't bring myself to send her on her way while there was a chance (however small) something could be done for her and while she was still so bright and active.

Please keep her in your thoughts. She is an incredibly special little girl who drives me mad most of the time but I have an enormous amount of admiration and love for her.

Great News!!

2007-12-01T11:47:00.000Z

Well after the vet visit Skip continued to bloat more and more and to become quieter and more sickly looking. I was so worried, and sure that we would be taking him to the vets this weekend for his final journey.

So I posted again for advice on www.rathealth.co.uk and the wonderful Vic (RatGirl@RatRitz) gave me some excellent advice as usual. She said we could try laxatives but that this was risky and was really kill or cure. She said we could also try giving him an enema. I wasnt keen on this idea but it seemed we really needed to do it as we were fast running out of options.

So we settled down to do this Thursday evening and discovered that Skip's anal passage was totally full with very hard, dry faeces. I'm talking a build up at least twice the width his anus should be and at least an inch long! I did squirt some soap solution and liquid paraffin up there as best I could but it was so solid I could see this wasn't going to work on its own. So, armed with some tweezers, I began breaking bits off and pulling bits out bit by bit!! Poor Skip obviously didn't enjoy this but he was so good and so patient, not once even thinking about biting me. We carried this on for a couple of hours, with a couple of breaks for Skip so he didn't get too upset. Eventually I began making real progress and I could see and feel that things were getting much better. Then, suddenly, slurp and pop and out came the last solid bit like a giant spot. Quite satisfying in an incredibly disgusting kind of way!! And then followed the most unbelievably enormous quantity of bubbly, liquid poo. You remember those indoor fireworks called the snake which looked like a big unravelling dog poo? It was just like that! Poo poured out of him for a good couple of minutes and then I gave him a good clean up and settled him in a cage on his own in the bathroom overnight so that he was warm and not pooping over Quest and Tim. I was so worried that he would go into shock or something but in the morning he burst out of his bed, overjoyed to see me (why?) and full of beans and energy. He was right back to his old self again! Quest and Tim were really pleased to see him and he was delighted to be back home. He is eating well, still just fruit and soya milk at the moment, and there are no signs of him getting blocked up again at the moment. I think its something we'll have to keep a very close eye on really. We need to feed him a very restricted diet, check him for bloating and blockages daily and help him out with medication when he needs it.
Of course, it's not secret that I adore Skip with an absolute passion and I was very unsure about him ever going to a new home. Well, now we know that he definitely has special needs he definitely has to stay. I can only think of a handful of people I would be confident to home him to but I really think it would be too much to ask of someone to take him on not knowing if he might only have days or weeks to live and with him potentially needing more enemas etc. So Skip is now officially staying put and, of course, that means Tim and Quest will be too :D I won't risk having Skip neutered in case the surgery upsets his digestion but Tim and Quest will have the snip so that they can come out and play with the girlies at least. That way they can join the others for dinner too, meaning that Skip doesn't have to share his special food and they can still enjoy the normal food too.
So, who knows, maybe all we have done is bought Skip a bit more time. Maybe that will be days, maybe weeks, hopefully many many months. We'll just have to take each day as it comes and be very vigilant. I do know that if anyone can fight this, then Skippydoo can.
I will get new pictures of my three handsome boys to add them to the rat page officially soon :)

Skip again

2007-11-27T20:25:00.000Z

We've been back to the vet with Skip again this evening :( After his initial improvement he has been going down hill again and his tummy is really bloated. The vet was actually quite surprised at how well he was given how impacted he is :( But there isnt a great deal more we can do. He has medication to stimulate his intestines to work which he has been having for a few days now with no apparent effect. He now also has liquid paraffin which should hopefully soften his poo to make it easier to pass. The vets recommendation was that if he's not significantly better in a few days we should think about letting him go :(

So the plan of action is to put him on an entirely liquid diet for now since the smoothy last week seemed to help. Mixed in with that will be his liquid paraffin and we'll carry on with the zantac too. If that goes well we'll add some solid fruit, then some veg, then some fish, gradually working up to more solid food to see what he can and can't manage.

I think the next few days are pretty critical though so please keep him in your thoughts. He is the most incredibly special little guy. I know realistically its a miracle he has lived this long but he has a real fighting spirit and love for life so if anyone can beat this, Skippy can!

Skippy Update

2007-11-24T17:27:00.000Z

I'm pleased to report that Skip is much better :) The vet couldn't find much in the way of impacted faeces and thinks we can manage his problems with a bit more fruit and veg in his diet. So he has had a great week, with yummy fruit salads for pudding every night! He's pretty much back to his usual self in terms of activity but still looks a bit thin and scraggy. Given the way his appetite is now, I don't think it will be long before he is back to his usual plump, glossy self.

I'm very sad to report though the very sudden and unexpected death of Gordon the degu. He had shown no signs of ill health but I found him dead on Thursday.

Skippity Doo-Dah

2007-11-20T13:55:00.000Z

Skip is one of the Portsmouth babies. He and his two half-brothers (?) have been kept back from homing as they hadn't been thriving and there is a history of megacolon in the group. They have been doing pretty well and are the loveliest boys in the world, full of mischief and fun! On Sunday I noticed happily that Skip's bottom was unusually clean - he usually has slight diarrhoea and gets a bit messy. I should have occurred to me really that this wasn't necessarily a good thing as constipation is worse than diarrhoea in a rat with megacolon. So Monday at feed time he didn't come running straight out as usual and there he was at the back of his cage looking a bit sorry for himself. His tummy is a bit bloated, he is hunched up and quite quiet for him. Dave - being the utterly fabulous person that he is - went out at 10 oclock last night and bought a load of fruit which he then made into a smoothie! Skip attacked this with considerable enthusiasm and we gave him some antibiotics too to protect against infection. This morning I'm pleased to report that he is looking a lot brighter although he tummy is still swollen. So we are off to the vets this afternoon to get some treatment to help him to poo, bless him!

I am seriously, utterly in love with Skip. I can't begin to describe what a little hero he is. He really ought to be below average activeness but he is undoubtedly the silliest, bounciest, most playful little boy I have ever met. He is just so full of fun, you can't help but smile! So please keep everything crossed for him making a good recovery. He has defied the odds in coming this far, I'd like him to keep doing that for a very long time yet!

This Weekend's News

2007-11-19T13:49:00.000Z

Lots more people have travelled to new homes this weekend :) Ratties Marina, Nerine, Squiggles, Mikado, Jimbo, Nelson, Puck and Oberon have all made their journeys up north with the latter four boys travelling all the way to Glasgow!

Of course there is always an exchange to be made and, in return, we have taken in 7 male gerbils. They are super cute so I'll make sure to post piccies of them very soon.

Eva and Meryl

2007-11-13T20:53:00.000Z

Following the sad passings of Poop and Abbi recently, there are two ratty shaped gaps round here. I've been very tempted to keep Eva, one of the portsmouth babies, since the day she was born so I have decided to definitely keep her, along with another baby girl, Meryl. I will update the Ratties page very soon so you can meet them properly :)

Run Free Poop :(

2007-11-12T21:07:00.000Z

It has been a sad weekend :( After Abbi dying suddenly on Friday, Poop lost his fight with his brain tumour. He did so well, battling on much longer than expected. But today it was quite clear that he was ready to go. He slipped away peacefully with the help of the vet and has gone to be with his old friends Squirt, Dumpling, Lily and Jasmine and his brothers who have gone before him.

Ins and Outs

2007-11-11T20:00:00.000Z

We've had a few people go off to new homes this weekend. Melia and Delilah the baby girl rats were collected for their new home and Kimberley, Shyla, Shortie, Ludo, Hoggle, Lancelot, Gollum and Frodo and spiny mice Niki, Simone, Jessica and Clare left for the first part of their journeys to their new homes.

The new arrivals are two possibly pregnant little girls rats (no names yet) and two young male rats called Spike and Nutmeg, who are lovely little chaps!

Run Free Abbi

2007-11-09T22:20:00.000Z

After weeks of expecting Poop to leave us, I was shocked to find Abbi passed away today. She has been perfectly fine, not a hint that she was in any way unwell. She appears to have just taken herself off into the hammock, gone to sleep and not woken up again :(

Run free darling, reunited with your sisters at the bridge

I can't think of a title for this one!

2007-11-07T21:06:00.000Z

We've had a good run on homing the last few days and most of the baby girls have now been reserved - just six left which is great. Hopefully ten rats should leave for new homes this weekend and a similar number the weekend after which will at last free us up some much needed space. Not being an actual rescue myself, I don't usually deal with hand ins unless they are animals Emma has agreed to take who are coming direct to me. But recently I'm getting more and more emails directly asking me to take animals in. But I'm absolutely full and then some, with animals even spilling over into the bathroom at the moment. And I know Emma actually has a waiting list of animals waiting to come in. I suspect things will only get worse with Ratatouille now showing. Inevitably kids will wants rats as pets, they will be bought from a pet shop with little thought and they'll end up in rescue in a few months time.

Anyway, on a happier note, Poop is still going strong :) Oh and check out www.stuffonmymutt.com - you might see some people there you recognise!!

He did it!!

2007-10-31T14:13:00.000Z

Monsieur Le Poop has celebrated his second birthday along with his brother Widdley Woo! I'm so chuffed! We had a little celebration involving veg and cake! Here are some piccies as promised :)

Oops

2007-10-27T14:39:00.000+01:00

Over a month. Sorry.

What a news packed month it has been too. There's no way I'll remember everything which has happened so I'll stick with some brief hightlights.

The main, most exciting news is that our Sprog Dog numbers are once again at 6! I won't go into the whole story again here - you can read it on this page

Homing of the Portsmouth Rats has gone fairly well with all the Mum's and baby boys now homed or reserved. There are still a lot of baby girls left though :(

The really great news is that the last of the pink eyed white gerbils have found a home. They had been waiting over a year for someone who wasn't put off by their colour.

A few of the degus are reserved for new homes as well :) And two lots of spiny mice found new homes :)

The sad news is that Poop, one of my own rats, is unwell with a suspected brain tumour. He probably only has days left with us. It will be his 2nd birthday on the 30th of this month and I'm hoping he can stay with us that long at least so we can have a little party for him and his brother, Widdle. Hopefully I can update again in a few days with some nice pics of a rat party :D

An update

2007-09-16T20:57:00.000+01:00

Blimey has it really been two weeks already? It is just non stop at the moment. After a week off work I have finally gotten on top of all the cleaning. But it's a bit like painting the forth bridge.

We've taken in even more animals in the last couple of weeks. One of the Portsmouth does, Marissa, gave birth to three babies but rejected them. Sadly two of them died but one, Eva, we managed to foster on to Meredith. This was keeping her alive but she was struggling to get a look in amongst Merediths already generous litter of older babies. So Lois, who was involved in the original rescue, very kindly drove another doe, Mandy, who gave birth around the same time as Marissa, to me and Mandy has luckily taken Eva on. Eva is now doing really well.

We also took in two very timid girls. Usual story - bought from a pet shop, never handled and people wonder why they are scared and bite! They'll be going out on foster with Tanya who adopted two scaredies from me earlier this year so that they can get more attention.

Also next weekend we should have quite a few babies heading out to their new homes. Justine, Maria, Jelena and Amelie, the Wimbledon girls, will also be off to their new home.

Three of the baby boys from the Portsmouth gang are causing me concern. They are very undersized and just not thriving. I've had to separate them from their Mum's now since they're that age but they're still so tiny. As they are largely white there is a chance they may have a genetic condition called megacolon which is fatal :( So for now we're just feeding them up and keeping a close eye on them. They are all lovely boys but one in particular, Skip, has really stolen my heart. He is such a norty little lad and as soon as he sees me he is up demanding attention. I really hope he is ok :(

Loki had her other op on Thursday to remove three more lumps. It all went well so now we are just waiting for the results to make sure they were benign. She had another blood test and her liver enzymes have gone down a lot which is really good news.

Back to work tomorrow. *sigh*

Bonkers

2007-09-02T22:13:00.000+01:00

Things are officially bonkers here!

Having taken in 30 rats from the portsmouth rescue (who are all doing fantastically by the way), we got an urgent request for help from one of our previous adopters. A batch of baby rats were handed in to their vets surgery and their future was very uncertain.

So today I took in 11 beautiful baby boys - you can see pics of the rats needing homes page.

The good news is that the group of four girls - Thelma, Louise, Bridgette and Ariel - have gone to another foster home in Somerset where they'll get more time and attention to help them gain confidence.

But despite that, numbers of animals here at the moment are at an all time high - 123 to be precise! I dread to think how that might increase if any of the portsmouth girls do turn out to be pregnant.

Sad news - Chummy the Spiny Mouse passed away last night following a major bust up with Munchkin which left him badly injured and in deep shock. He was my favourite little guy - really sweet and friendly - so I am very saddened by his death. Poor Munchkin isn't looking great either - no injuries but he is very shocked and looking very sorry for himself :(

Pinkie Update

2007-08-29T22:09:00.001+01:00

Everyone is doing well :D 12 healthy looking, warm pink wigglers :)

Here's a pic

I also took some pics of the older babies

Aren't they just delicious?

Newbies

2007-08-28T18:08:00.000+01:00

Well I ended up taking in 30 rats yesterday. Phew! I hadn't intended it to be that many but there were 5 apparently nursing does and litters and I wanted to keep them together so they could share the feeding and to avoid separating out the wrong doe.

Amongst them was a litter of 13 teeny little pinkies with no obvious Mum. I put them in a cage with some two week olds and three of the Mums but several hours later no-one had shown any interest. So I have had to separate one of the does out into a very very small cage so that she really has no choice but to feed the babies. I feel a bit mean but so far it seems to be working and she is feeding them. Sadly one of the babies has passed away and I'm concerned that we might lose a few more yet but we'll obviously do everything we can for them.

There are some seriously delicious babies amongst the older ones though - watch out for piccies soon!

Breaking News!

2007-08-27T11:58:00.000+01:00

Apparently someone does actually read this blog! I have been told off for lack of updates, lol!

Ok so brief round up. Pokemon had some blood results back and her white blood cells were normal. So it looks as though there is some minor liver issue going on - probably benign tumours - but nothing scary like leukaemia. We have to give her some liver supporting supplements and take her back for another test soon. Hopefully that will show some improvement in her liver enzymes in which case we can just monitor and support her liver function. If not we'll have to do more tests.

In the meantime she appears to be missing all the attention and has now pulled one of her claws. So is back on the antibiotics and has a bucket on her head again *rolls eyes*.

I've finally admitted defeat and Kitkat and Shadow bunnies are now official permanent residents. They were so unlikely to find a home and so settled here so it made sense really.

I'm a bit worried about one of the degus, Erika. She has lost weight although she is still her usual norty self. Which makes me worry that she might have dental problems. So she'll be off to the vet this week.

I also have an outbreak of mites amongst the rats which is affecting Sue, Widdle and Poop as well as one of the foster girls, Louise. The usual treatment has failed to have much impact so at the moment they are being treated with a homoepathic remedy I have had success with before in treating parasitic skin conditions. Hopefully that will sort it but otherwise that will be another vet trip!!

I managed to make an enormous muck up with my latest batch of foster rats and mis sex one of the babies! I know, ridiculous!! It means she was in with her brothers at an age where she may possibly have been able to get pregnant. So she would have to stay here until we were sure she wasn't pregnant. But there is also a question mark over whether she might be a hairless rat which can have health issues so I have decided it is best all round if she stays as a permanent resident too. She's utterly delish - very norty and cheeky, just my kinda girl.

As I type I am waiting on the arrival of a load more rats from a big rescue in Portsmouth. I'm not sure exactly what will arrive yet but sounds like lots of pregnant and nursing Mum's and their babies. Pics to follow soon of course :)

Phew, well I think that's everything for now!!

Times is tough

2007-08-06T21:38:00.001+01:00

Usual apologies for the delay in updating....

Things are a bit tough here at the moment. Long story short Loki is still having tests and at the moment one of the possible outcomes is Leukaemia. You can imagine how worried we are :(

We've had quite a lot of new arrivals in the form of some particularly delicious dumbo rats and their babies. You can see the super cute pictures on the foster rats page. We also have a single chinchilla boy called Hans who I was quite worried about for a while as he was very thin and not eating much. He is doing great now though - all he needs now is a nice new home with a girlfriend.

The good news is little single mouse boy and single grumpy hamster girl are now cohabiting. It's early days but so far so good.

Anyway, please keep everything crossed for Loki. She is having an ultrasound and more bloods taken tomorrow so we should know a bit more then and hopefully know exactly where we stand by the end of the week.

Pfffffffffffffffff

2007-07-15T19:37:00.000+01:00

Dear me, look how long it has been without an update!

Well, Begley's cough seems better although not entirely gone. We'll have to take him back for a checkup.

At the moment we are more concerned about Loki. When we took her to the vet about her chewed leg, she had diarrhoea everywhere. Consequently she had a course of antibiotics.

Then we found a lump by one of her nipples. So, on Friday, she had this and two skin tags removed. Her pre op bloods showed that her liver enzymes were raised so she needs a further course of antibiotics and retesting in two weeks.

Friday night her op site started bleeding so we had to take her back. Saturday morning we found two more lumps - one on her foot and one on her chest. So, once she has recovered and her liver is sorted, she needs to have another operation :(

In happier news, loads of the degus have gone off to their new homes today which is really great. There should be lots of new arrivals on Monday to take their place.

Mr B update

2007-06-29T22:39:00.000+01:00

Well, Begley went to the vets again on Monday and Sandra thinks it's more likely a simple respiratory infection or some lungworm. So he has some wormer and antibiotics and we'll see how he goes. He has been a bit better but he does still have a little cough when he gets excited.

Loki has been chewing on her leg. We've been doing some work on the house this week so the dogs have been upstairs while we've been working downstairs. This is not acceptable to a Pokemon who does not like to be left out of anything. So she has shown her displeasure (and attempted to get attention) by chewing her leg and making it sore. So at the moment she has to have a bandage on it to stop her getting to it. She likes having a bandage cos she gets lots of attention and sympathy!! She's such a tart!

The little mouse mentioned a couple of posts down arrived this evening. Once he has settled in we'll try intros with the grumpy ham! Fingers crossed they hit it off.

Poorly Beeble

2007-06-24T21:24:00.000+01:00

My poor baby man Begley is ill :(

It started yesterday morning when he began coughing. He has always tended to cough when on the lead or excited or when one of the other dogs lays on him but this went on all day.

I took a video to show the vet

So we took him there this morning. She thinks he has a collapsed trachea which apparently is a genetic condition. This is why he coughs when pressure is put on his throat, when he exerts himself or gets too excited. We're hoping to see Sandra in the next couple of days to try and find out more about how serious this is. I'm reading conflicting info on the internet and it seems we need it properly assessed to see what grade of collapse it is. He may need medication, he made need surgery, or we may just need to keep him cool, calm and not too podgy. It's very worrying anyway - he is my very special boy and I love him so very much. He has been milking it for all it's worth today - as if he wasn't enough of a spoilt brat already!

Incoming...

2007-06-17T15:00:00.000+01:00

Today is not a happy day for me :( It's a year today since Fraggle came to live with us so today we should be celebrating her first gotcha day. But she is no longer here :( And it's Father's Day which is a sad day when your Dad isn't with you either.

So it's nice to have a cute piccie of a future new arrival to cheer me up. This is the little mousey man who is coming to stay next weekend and hopefully be the grumpy russian hamsters new friend. Isn't he scrummy?

Too hot!

2007-06-14T22:16:00.000+01:00

I forgot how horrid the rodent room is in summer. Within five minutes of starting cleaning out I'm sweating horribly and no matter how much I clean it permanently smells in there :(

We have had some more new arrivals since the weekend. Bizarrely enough, after Jilly, Cassie and Bunny came for their hols, two of Jilly's daughters have been returned. Nothing sinister, their Mum's circumstances changed and she did totally the right thing and returned them to us. And they've come back clean, healthy and with lovely temperaments. I don't suppose they will be here very long. Of course, Jilly is their Mum and their Dad is one of Spike, Beaker and Fozzie who were returned in April. Quite spooky!

I had a lovely time with Mollie this evening. She has been a bit neglected the last few days. I just dont seem to be able to catch up with things at the moment. I'm behind on the cleaning and don't even ask about the state of the house! So there hasn't been much time for vermin princess cuddles. So tonight she came out and she was bounding around the room like a nutcase! So I started fighting with her with my hand and to my delight she fought back. We had a lovely play and she was really enjoying herself! It was hilarious. Her claws were a bit long so I trimmed them and all the time she was having playful little nibbles at my fingers. I am an incredibly happy, proud Mummy tonight :D

Me again

2007-06-10T20:09:00.000+01:00

You can't shut me up today!

We have some new arrivals. Guess what? More degus!! Four young boys who were left over pet shop stock. They seem like nice, friendly, healthy lads anyway. I can hear them having a chat with their new neighbours from here!!

Fanfare

2007-06-10T16:50:00.000+01:00

Announcing the new name of our latest addition.

Henceforth the chinchilla formerly known as Lily shall be known as "Skye".

I thank you!

Aaargh!

2007-06-10T12:34:00.000+01:00

I can't believe this. I've only gone and broken my toe - again! This is the fourth time in as many years! First I broke the little toe on my right foot by whacking it really hard on the base of my bed. Then I broke the second toe on my right foot when I fell out of the shower (dont ask). Then, just as that was almost healed, I jammed it into a metal cage and broke it again. Then Friday night I opened the kitchen door to walk into the kitchen but mistimed it so pulled the door back and moved my left foot forward at the same time. So now I have a pretty purple line all the way down my toe and it reaaaally hurts! I guess it's something to do with having silly clown feet!

Anyway, apart from that all is well. New chin (who STILL doesn't have a name) has settled in brilliantly. And I have some ex foster rats here for their holidays - Jilly, Cassie and Bunny (now Maddie). It's lovely to see them again and, after a few coming back looking not so great recently, especially nice to see them looking so very healthy, happy and well cared for.

It's Official...

2007-06-08T21:09:00.000+01:00

....we are now a three chinchilla household again :)

Introductions have gone well and the new chin is now living in the main cage with Star, Astro and the degu girls. We have a lot of work to do to convince her that humans aren't terrible evil things but we have plenty of time for that. At least now she has lots of friends and she seems quite pleased about that.

Here's her pic. Isn't she stunning?

All she needs now is a new name. I want to stick with the theme and have a few ideas but nothing definite yet. I'll keep you posted ;)

It's a sad day today

2007-06-04T18:13:00.000+01:00

I've had two messages to say that ex foster babies have made their way to the bridge today.

First of all there was Sprout. Sprout was one of the same group as Widdle and Poop. They were one of my first litters of babies and a very dear group to me. Sprout was one of my particular favourites as he was always the troublemaker of the group. Sprout developed a pituitary tumour which didn't respond to treatment so he was helped on his way to the bridge this afternoon.

And then there was Flower who was again part of a special group. She came in along with Bluey, Rolo and Yogi, some of my all time favourites. She was an incredibly pretty, dainty little thing, a real girly girl. She had been ill for some time with various tumours and was helped to the bridge this morning before she begun to suffer.

Run free babies :(

At last!!!

2007-06-02T21:41:00.000+01:00

Finally, after ten months, Chilly, Chester, Mickle and Bob the gerbils have found a new home!! They honestly are the loveliest gerbils I have ever met and yet they waited and waited for a new home purely because they were pink eyed whites. I'm so pleased for them but I am going to miss them SO much. Particularly the little kisses they used to give me each night in exchange for their dinner.

We have a couple of new arrivals too. First off there is a little russian hamster who is going to be a friend for a single mouse...hopefully!! No name yet for that one.

And then there is Lily the chinchilla. At the moment she is a foster but she is here in the hope that she might get on with Astro and Star. I prefer to keep things in threes so that if one dies, no-one is left on their own so I'm hoping she'll bring the numbers back up. Chin intros can be a nightmare though so it'll probably be a while before we know if things will work out. If she stays she'll probably have to have a name change though since there can only be one Lily and she was a small but very norty rat! She's quite a stunner...I'll get pics soon!

Bye boys

2007-05-28T18:44:00.000+01:00

So yesterday Big Daddy, Zak, Murray and Junior went to their new home.

I was a bit wibbly but not too bad. I guess partly because I am so sure that they're going to a great home and partly because I'll probably see them again as Alexis usually has her rats come back here for their holidays.

Mollie is still doing really really well. I must weigh her again cos she feels so solid now!!

Another Mollie Update

2007-05-24T21:00:00.000+01:00

She is doing SOOOOO well :D

I weighed her and she has gained 30 grams!! Which is about 10% of her bodyweight so pretty bloomin amazing. She is really active and bright and we've got a lovely new routine going. I get in from work and pop her into her carry pouch while I make up her milkshake. As I'm mixing it up she pokes her little face out the pouch and sniffs the air all excited!! Then she has a feed and then another one before bed. No wonder she's turning into such a porker!

Mollie's Progress

2007-05-20T20:08:00.000+01:00

I'm delighted to report that Mollie is doing really well. She is much brighter, feeding well from the syringe and eating some solids for herself too.

I took some cute vid of her having her tea the other night. I don't know why it has that silly Youtube message on it...click on the play button and it does work, honest!

In other news, Big Daddy & Sons are going to their new home next weekend. I'm so happy for them cos they're going to someone I know quite well who has adopted from me before so I know they are going to have a fabulous life.

Mollie is poorly :(

2007-05-18T21:08:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the delay in updating. It was intially because there really wasnt much to report. Although I'm crazy busy at the moment keeping up with caring for everyone, there haven't been any new arrivals or homings to report or anything like that.

And then the last couple of days have just been all about the mollster. Wednesday night I got her out to play only she wasn't interested in playing at all. Then she didn't touch her food overnight which is unheard of. She has been very lethargic and not at all with it - even for Mollie.

I've been doing some research and talking to various squirrel people and it's looking like she might have a calcium deficiency. So I'm syringe feeding her a sort of milkshake full of lots of vitamins and it does seem to be helping. This evening she has picked up quite a bit so hopefully that will continue.

Anyone who knows me or is a regular visitor will know what Mollie means to me. She's like my baby, I utterly adore her. The thought of her not being here anymore is just unbearable. So it has been a pretty rough couple of days. Please keep her in your thoughts and pray she continues to make good progress.

A silly pic

2007-05-07T21:39:00.000+01:00

Nothing much to report today. Just been using the extra day off to try and catch up a bit really.

Oh I did get a new phone last week with a much better camera which makes taking adhoc pics of people doing silly things much easier. So I thought I'd share this one of the vermin princess waking up.

Farewell Dear Friends

2007-05-05T20:44:00.000+01:00

Today some very special friends have gone to their new homes.

Bad foot and Sidekick, my two special spiny boys, and Gracie no legs and her little friend, have gone to their new home with Kelly who runs www.allaboutmice.co.uk. I know they're going to have a wonderful life there but I will miss them here.

Spike and Beaker also went to their new home with Jo. I handed everyone over near Guildford and saying goodbye to the boys was really tough. I've known them for nearly a year now and have forged such a strong bond with them with everything they have been through. I have to admit to crying most of the way home - I thought I was past the crying when the rats go to new homes now but I guess not!

I forgot to update you on Nads too. It turns out her lumps are hernias! Although not brilliant at least they're not tumours which was the main worry. The vet thinks its best to leave well enough alone since she seems to be coping well.

Anyway, the place is pretty chaotic at the moment so I must go and sort everything out.

Sleep well Scabby

2007-05-02T21:39:00.000+01:00

My favourite little spiny mouse, Scabby Hop-Hop, left us for the bridge this evening. No warning, just gone in his cage. I guess he was probably quite old. It's very sad though as he had a nice new home all lined up for him soon.

In happier news, Stumpy McNolegs (aka Grace) is doing great and last night moved into a bigger cage with a new friend. They're getting on great :)

Mollie is back to her old self too :)

And I'm hugely relieved to report that Spike and Beaker have been offered a fabulous home with Jo who rescued them originally. She has several baby boys so will be able to introduce them to some new friends immediately. Hopefully that will perk them out of their current depression.

Degus are all doing well. Nads is in at the vets tonight and will be having a scan in the morning to see what her lumps are. Fingers crossed they're nothing sinister.

Mollie & the toast

2007-04-29T20:09:00.000+01:00

Poor Mollie had another fit this morning. She was quite out of it for a while afterwards so I brought her downstairs for a cuddle and a share of my toast. I couldn't resist taking a little video cos she was so enthusiastic!

Otherwise a nice uneventful Sunday in SprogLand. So I'm signing off for my Sunday night date with the boys in Supernatural and Lost!!

Degus R Us

2007-04-28T22:03:00.000+01:00

Well they have arrived. Another 18 of them!

There were going to be 6 boys and 12 girls but as I checked them I noticed something amiss with one of the boys. He actually looked too much like a boy. Sorry to be indelicate but his bits were HUGE! Degu boys don't usually have visible dangly bits! So I looked more closely and realised that he was actually a she with two big swellings in her groin. I don't know if they are perhaps tumours or if she is very very full of milk. She'll be off to the vets on Monday so please keep her in your thoughts. I pray it is something easily fixable as I'm rather in love with her already. I always planned to adopt a few girls from this rescue since I've lost a few of my girls now. So I've decided she'll stay here for the rest of her days one way or another. I just hope it's for plenty of time yet. I have called her Nadine - Nads for short. I know. Sorry!!

Mollie squirrel had a fit today :( She came through it fine as usual but afterwards she had a little trouble holdng her food. I pray it was just that she was a bit squiffy and not anything lasting or a sign of things to come. I'm so very aware that at 8 years old, with all her problems, every day is a miracle really.

Spike and Beaker seem better. Well Beaker does definitely but Spike is still not himself. There is no sign of any illness though so I think it is just grief.

Anyway I'll let you know how things go with Nads