We are very sad to say we had to have our sweet girl Tulip put to sleep this morning. She had been unwell for awhile, and we were forced to come to the difficult conclusion that it was best to say goodbye to her.

Just over a month ago we noticed that Tulip was looking a little round, at first we thought maybe she was getting a bit fat, though deep down we knew it wasn’t true. As the weeks passed the roundness in her tummy kept getting worse, it didn’t stop her getting about and enjoying her play time, though it she did begin to alter her walk to compensate for her roundness. A few times she showed real signs that something was wrong and we’d find her laying flat out in a plastic tube, with her feet behind her not responding to us. These bouts usually passed very quickly and she’d be back to her old self again.

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It was always planned that Tulip was going to move into Sugar, Pearl, Smudge and Muffin’s cage, but we wanted to wait a few weeks to be on the safe side.  Not only would this be quarantine time, but also it was also meant to give us time to get to know her.

However, Tulip had other ideas and she managed to chew a hole in her water bottle.  The bottle was on the outside of the cage, but Tulip is fairly small and the bars were obviously wide enough for her to get her nose out.  She chewed quite a large hole in the bottom of the bottle, causing it to leak in her cage.  I was already quite frazzled with all the worry about one of my rat boys, Pepper.  So, rather than just clean her wet cage out and give her a new bottle, I picked her up and plopped her in with the other girls.  There was a bit of scuffling at first, but then it all settled down and everyone found their own place to sleep.  Tupil’s was high up in a plastic tunnel.

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The RSPCA called us last week to see if we had room for a female rat that had been brought in who needed an experienced home. She was a little bit nervy, with a tenancy to nip and seeing as we had adopted a problem rat from them before, they thought they’d give us a try.

We thought long and hard about it and decided that because she was alone we could squeeze in another girl and so we went to meet her. She was called Venus and when we saw here we were happily surprised to see she looked very much like our sweet girl Petal. Venus had been brought in by an RSPCA inspector. Her previous owner had been keeping her in a hamster cage and judging by her timid nature she hasn’t been played with very much at all.

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