General Updates

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.