That'll teach me

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

...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

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

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

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!

:(

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

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!