Goodbye to Tiny

Tiny helping at clean out time

I am very sad to say that our sweet, shy boy Tiny has passed away. We first noticed something was wrong about a week ago. Derek and I had sat down to eat tea with the boys, Derek sits in an armchair, which the boys can easily climb onto if they want so see him, and I sit on the floor with them and feed them bits of bread. Panda and Polar came charging out as usual, but Tiny was a little reluctant. He was always a bit of timid rat, but this was different.

After a bit of coaxing he did come to where his brothers were being fed, but instead of having some bread he lay flat out on the floor. It was difficult to see him like that, but there was nothing we could do, and fortunately he didn’t appear to be in any distress, so we waited. Eventually he got up, as if nothing had happened, and started scoffing bread just like his brothers. We told ourselves it was just one of those things, but sadly the next morning it became apparent Tiny wasn’t well.

As he had no real symptoms, other than not being quite himself, we decided not to take him to the vets. Tiny was well over two years old, and we felt the stress of taking Tiny to the vet would be detrimental to him. So, we kept a very close eye on our sweet guy, and gradually over the week his energy levels and appetite decreased. We started feeding Tiny baby food, but as the week progressed he got to the point where he would only lick baby food from our finger tips. On his final day it became obvious he was slipping away. He had been fine with his brothers in their cage, but he had become very still on that last day and his two brothers weren’t being very careful around him. Rather than leave Tiny to get a bit trampled and shoved around by Polar and Panda, they didn’t understand that Tiny didn’t want to play or cuddle up to sleep, I kept him with me. I wrapped him in a nice soft towel and he seemed very peaceful and I knew he was safe. It was mid-afternoon when he gently passed away.

While it is never easy to say goodbye to any little critter, Derek and I took comfort in knowing he slipped away peacefully, and we were able to be there and care for him right up until the end.