Well. She wasn't a dog, but she was darn special. I wrote this memorial for the rat forums I'm a part of, but I figure I may as well post it here as well. If nothing else it will hopefully make some people who maybe didn't previously think of rats as anything other than a pest...think of them as something a little more. It's long, and I know I can't expect anyone to read it all, but there it is.
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Where to even begin? It would be impossible to wrap this rat's existence into one little post...the depth of her soul extends far beyond any borders I can imagine. I suppose the best I can do is write her a proper memorial.
I was thinking earlier, how it was purely chance that I happened upon this rat. My boyfriend of the time and I were lying around my house, bored stiff, and asked my mother for suggestions for something to do. "Well, you could go visit that animal shelter in Dedham, they have a nice pet cemetery there that you could look at." Well gosh, what a wonderful way to spend a day, no? So off we went. We got horribly lost on the way and almost turned around and came back home, but we persevered and finally made it there. We walked in the doors and there she was, right in front of us in a little cage all by herself, curled up on the top shelf. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I went over to her cage and said hello and she woke up and hopped over to the bars to stick her sweet little nose out. The lady at the desk could tell I was a rat person and casually said, "hey, feel free to take her out and play, she's been here for two weeks," so I did. She was remarkably calm and affectionate, content to wander around on my arms and sniff my skin. I was in love from the very beginning. I put her back and we visited the rest of the shelter, but my mind was still with that baby girl. It didn't make sense for me to take her; I had three boys at home in a big cage and I'd have to ask mom anyway. So we left without her. That was Friday.
The whole weekend I begged my parents...just one more rat. I had a small cage I could keep her in. She would be alone, but wouldn't it be better to be alone in a loving house than at a busy shelter? My parents caved. I went back Monday with my mom and to my delight she was still there. We readily paid the $15 adoption fee and the woman there explained that she was dropped off by a teenage girl who was going off to college. To this day I wonder if that girl was as in love with her as I was, if she cried her heart out leaving her there, knowing she was doing the best thing for her. I will never know. As we stood at the desk I realized I'd have to find a suitable name, always a chore. I glanced at her cage again and for the first time noticed a little tag on it. "Cinder." It was
perfect.
From that day on, Cinder and I were just about inseparable. I discovered that, unlike your typical hyperactive female, this wonderfully soft little thing wanted nothing more than to sit in my sweatshirt sleeve or on my shoulder for hours on end. She bruxed, she licked. She was absolutely the sweetest rat I had ever met. She sat with me as I browsed the rat forums, watched tv, and rode on my shoulder when I went outside. She even came to the movie store with me once. The first thing I did when I brought her home from the shelter, actually, was put her on a chair and take pictures of her. What a superb model she was! Her movements were not jerky and spastic like so many other girls'. She took excellent pictures, every one was just beautiful.
We played games, her and I, on a regular basis. We had our kissy game, where I would sneak her a peck on the nose and she would pretend to be annoyed and shove me away, only to follow my retreating face with her own, trying to slip me a kiss on the lips before I got too far away. We would do it over and over again. To this day I still get giggly thinking about her little paws resolutely shoving at my face with mock irritation.
She loved to explore my mouth, it was a cave of wonders for her. She would, especially as she got older, get very serious on the matter. She would take her little paws and force my mouth open with the determination and skill of any dentist, and stick her entire front end in for the most efficient inspection. Once she had determined that there was no food in there, she set about giving my mouth a thorough cleaning. Her front paws perched on my lower teeth (or sometimes even on my tongue O_o), She would methodically lick every one of my teeth and my tongue until she was properly satisfied with my oral status.
Cinder loved to be loved. The was truly at her happiest when we were snuggled together on the bed, her resting on my chest or curled up next to me. I would stroke her all over, she'd start to brux. I'd start rubbing her cheeks and her eyes would boggle in delight as she turned her head to the side to provide me with better access to her favorite scritch-spot. She'd grab my hands when they got within reach of her little front paws and lick them vigorously.
I could put her to sleep at any given time by simply kissing her forehead repeatedly between her eyes. She
loved it. She would sit there and brux and boggle her heart out and after a while she'd drift off to sleep in my lap, totally blissful and content with the world. Once she was asleep I would gently inspect her all over, marveling at the wonder of her tiny paws which she didn't mind my holding, at her ultra-soft fur that she loved to have stroked. I swear she was the softest rat I have ever known. Her fur was like silk, much finer than any other rat I've had. And the most gorgeous color. Everyone who meets her or sees her pictures comments on her beautiful coloring, a perfect mixture of tan and gray. Rat enthusiasts would call it "mink-dilute" (though no one ever knew for sure). I call it perfect.
She had the most heart-wrenching way of showing her affection. Lovely little licks are one thing, and are most certainly touching and sweet, but Cinder went above and beyond. At times when she was overcome with pure happiness, like after an hour of watching a movie and she would be snuggled delightfully into my sweatshirt, I would reach down to give her some absentminded pats, and she would clasp my fingers in her tiny paws and nibble my fingers. Never biting hard enough to hurt, she would scrape her little teeth gently across my skin, inserting a few licks here and there. Every time she did it my heart would break just a little for her.
Cinder touched everyone who met, or even saw, her. My family, who are all at least rat-appreciators but not rat-"lovers", fell deeply in love with her. My friends all loved her. I got so many wonderful comments on the forums about how special she was - how gorgeous, how sweet she looked in the hundreds of photos I posted. I was always immensely proud of her to no end. I still am. Always will be.
She was fairly healthy her whole life, had very few respiratory problems. She had one minor choking incident and then another horrible one. The first she just choked on a piece of pizza crust when she was younger - I didn't realize she was choking at the time, she was just lethargic and drooling, but I rushed her home (we were at a friends' house) and put her in her cage so she could relax, and left her alone for a while. I couldn't hold back my tears that night, but she was fine a few hours later. When she was about two she had a more serious choking incident. By that time I knew what the signs of choking were, and I knew what to do...which was nothing. And it was the hardest thing in the world. I wanted to hold her, comfort her, tell her it was ok, that everything would be all right. But I left her in her cage so as not to stress her more, and she flung herself violently about, gasping for air, ears lurching backwards, pouring saliva down her chin. Ratsicles and BarnAngel helped me through that horrid time, helped calm me down and see things rationally. Eventually she calmed down, seemed a bit better. It was late at night, or early morning I guess, when I went to bed. I brought her with me and set her on the bed under the covers and stroked her. I let her sleep in the bed that night, and when she wasn't there in the morning, I panicked. I ripped apart my room, only to finally find her snuggled deeply in my covers in the hammock-like part where the covers tuck under the mattress. She was groggy, but much better.
I was constantly worried about her health, though unnecessarily so. The thought of losing her petrified me and I would panic the moment I noticed anything odd about her. Once, for a while, she acted funny - like she was scared of something. Listening all the time, hiding under things. She looked slightly different when she slept, her sides more sunk in. I was so frightened she'd gotten some odd disease so I brought her in to the vet and paid $120 in exams and xrays to be told she was healthy as can be. I went home relieved that day.
At age 2.5 she developed a tumor right above her right knee that grew quickly. I knew she was probably nearing her end, but I couldn't bear to have a tumor mar her happiness or her pretty side. She and I were at college together with Jane and Brackle, but my wonderful mother brought her home and to the vet for the surgery. She and my father nursed her back to health in that unhappy time afterwards of body casts and stitches. They kept her in a cat carrier in their bedroom. My mom fed her and tended to her incision, my dad kept her company by letting her sleep on his chest every night as he watched tv. When I finally got my baby back to school I could tell she'd deeply lodged her way into my parents' heart. My mom was always more tender when speaking about her and often asked how she was doing. My dad talked to her as if they had some silly secret they were hiding. As if the two of them had their own separate world from the rest of us. It touched my heart so see my parents treat her like that.
Around that time, Cinder's hind legs had started to give out. I first noticed that her walk was different, more flat footed in the back. She'd sit with her hind legs splayed out and toes curled. My baby was suffering from hind leg degeneration. It was a hard blow to take and I knew she was getting old.
A little while after her surgery, I noticed a large scab on her back the size of a penny. Odd, indeed, but I figured it was an old wound that was healing. Boy was I wrong. A friend was in my room one day and suddenly pointed to the cage..."uhh I think Cinder has a hole in her..." Sure enough, there was a gaping hole in her back clean through the skin all the way to the muscle. As usual, I panicked. I got a hold of Britt/Ratsicles on the phone and panicked to her a bit where she administered the verbal equivalent of a motherly pat on the head and told me it was simply an abscess and that it would be fine. She was, as usual, correct, and under her instruction and guidance I tended to her wound and it healed up nicely and never came back. But not before I made a fool of myself and sifted through my entire dorm hunting for someone who had sterile saline for a rat with a hole in it's back. Someone, oddly enough, did.
Cinder bounced back to relatively good health after that and we finished up our year at school happily and bid a tearful goodbye to college life for a few months. We weren't home a month before I started noticing that something wasn't quite right. Her back legs were getting progressively worse and she had developed two odd tumors - one under each arm - that didn't make sense. They would be large one day, and small the next. They didn't feel like normal tumors, more squishy in parts and grainy in others. But they weren't hurting her or growing quickly or even terribly large, so I left them be. But then over the span of a week, her ability to move plummeted. She kept trying to climb ramps in her cage even though I moved all the necessities to the ground floor. One day she took a small fall off of one of them and got her foot caught and sprained it. Not badly, but enough to make her limp a little for a few minutes. That was the last I saw her climb a ramp.
Before I knew it, her front legs were not normal as well. By now her hind legs were almost useless and she would drag herself unhappily around her cage. At first I thought she was just trying to stave off the boredom of sitting in one place, but after a while it dawned on me that she was doing circles continuously. When I brought her out and put her on a chair she would drag herself in loose, but definite circles. She lost all concept of edges and often fell off chairs to my horror. She had long lost her ability to perch on my shoulder. I realized she wasn't giving kisses anymore, that she couldn't. She would scare me daily by falling asleep with her front end slumped in her food dish...I always thought she'd died mid-meal. She didn't wake up until I touched her back. Never reacted when I opened the cage door, and upon closer inspectinon, her ears never twitched at small noises like the other girls' did. She was deaf, and had been for who knows how long.
It only took a few days from the time I realized she was suffering a pituitary tumor to get to the point where she could hardly move. She couldn't coordinate her mouth enough to eat properly, and she got very thin. She would "head-bop" when I patted her on the top of her small, bony head, another sign of pituitary tumors. Her eyes were constantly lined with porypherin, which I was perpetually cleaning off. Her brain was completely addled, I'm fairly certain she couldn't think straight. She acted confused and disoriented all the time. I knew her time was coming, and fast. I predicted she wouldn't make it through the week and I sat with her for hours every day, drenching her frail body with my tears. She could do nothing but lie there and brux her little heart out. When I put her in her cage she would struggle and thrash her little legs about miserably. It brought tears to my eyes. I would bring her out again and hold her, kissing her forehead repeatedly as I had in the old days, and true to form, she would drift off to sleep. I expected her to die at any moment...I can't even count how many times I checked her to make sure she was breathing. But she kept going, and I began to wish she wouldn't.
I was terrified of the thought of bringing her into the vet clinic to have her put down. I wanted her to pass quietly in her sleep so she wouldn't have to deal with the stress of the vet. I snuggled her every night and told her it was ok to leave if she needed to. She never did. She got more and more miserable and I grew more and more upset about it. I knew I was keeping her too long, I was failing her. She needed to leave before it got worse, if it could. My mom was just as devastated as I. She's seen me go through rat deaths before, but it's never been like this. She was in tears every time she saw Cinder and that touched my heart. We set up an appointment for the next morning to have her put to sleep. My mom stroked her and told her how beautiful she was, that she was the most beautiful rat in the whole world. I brought her to bed with me that night and stayed up late talking to her deaf ears, telling her how tomorrow she would be all better, free to move around as she wanted, free to see and think clearly, to hear all the wonderful sounds of the world again. Free to run and leap and lick and brux and boggle to her little hearts' content. We snuggled up together and feel asleep.
I got up this morning feeling oddly serene. Yes, she was going to be killed, but her suffering would be over. We were going to make it all better. My mom came into my room tearfully to let us know we should leave soon. We got our things together, I wrapped Cinder in some fleece, and we both cried the whole way to the vet, occasionally taking turns telling Cinder how special she was. We were led into a nice room that was made for the purpose, a room for relief and endings. There were comfy couches and heartbreaking portraits of elderly animals on the walls. We settled down on a couch and poured our tears over my little bruxing rat. The vet came in and gave her a shot to sedate her and make her sleepy, and then left us with her to say goodbye before giving the final shot. Mom and I gave her some love scritches while she continued to brux, and I showered her forehead with kisses and tears. The vet came in, I gave her a final forehead kiss, and the needle was inserted. She struggled a little but it was over soon. The vet left us again and we pet her as she slipped away. It was strangely calming to hold her lifeless form. I knew her pain was gone, and though I cried, I was relieved as well. No more struggling, no more humiliation and frustration at not being able to walk. No more confused circling and inability to eat. No more lack of coordination to even give kisses, her favorite thing to do.
Cinder is gone. I feel I've shed enough tears for a lifetime, but they just keep coming. Her pain is over, but her body is still here in a fabric-lined basket, curled in a pleasant little ball with her eyes shut, arm wrapped delicately around a sprig of rosemary and purple flowers. I can't stop looking at her. Though sick, she is still the most beautiful rat I have ever seen. Even up to her last days I couldn't stop taking pictures of her sweet, sweet face. Every time I looked at her I would be struck with her deep eyes, delicate whiskers, and round little ears and would have to take a photo to remember them by. Even on her death bed, you could hardly tell by looking at her face. It was still as perfect as ever. Her face hardly aged a day the whole time I had her. Her coat is still soft and silky, her paws, though limp, are still so small and beautiful. As my mom said, "I'm going to miss her little paws." Her body is a work of art in my mind, and I'm having a hard time with the thought of covering it in dirt. But dirt is organic like she is organic, and Nature, even dirt, is beautiful, just as she is. Her empty shell will be laid to rest this afternoon in the soil and every year hereafter her grave will burst forth with bright and blooming flowers, a tribute to her colorful soul. I think I will bury her in a different place than all our other animals. I want to put her right outside my window, visible from my bed.
I know this was long, and I'm sure most won't read the whole thing, and that's fine. Maybe I just wrote it for myself really. I will probably read this in a few years and be glad I spent the hour or so writing it. By then I will have other rats that will have wormed their way into my heart. But no rat will take the place Cinder had. Cinder was something special, and everyone knew it. My parents, my friends, the vet. They all said the same thing, "this rat is special." I've known it her whole life and I know it now. There will never be another Cinder. She reminded me what it is to have a bond with another being that strong.
The love of a rat is something unique. Possibly because we're not
supposed to love a rat, at least not in this society. I read an article in the paper today about the new movie Ratatouille which my friends are taking me to see tonight. The author commented with some surprise and disgust that the movie made him actually feel some emotion for a
rat. I read his words as I cradled my "mere rat" in her final hour before her release from a dying body. She didn't feel so "mere" then. She was so much more than "just a rat". They all are really, none of them are merely rats. The few of us that realize it have found a pot of gold that is worth more than all the money in the world, and worthless to the rest of the world. But that's just fine by me, I'm content to enjoy my gold without the help or approval of Johnny Q Public. He doesn't know what he's missing anyway.
Cinder's death has ended an era for me. Life will go on, but she won't be in it. In less than a week I'll be the mom to a new baby girl and I will love her to bits. Will she have the impact on me that Cinder did? Well who knows. Maybe she will, maybe she won't. Does that make her any less of a rat? Certainly not. But I will love her just the same and we will spend time on my bed together with Jane and Brackle, watching a movie, whether she chooses to snuggle next to me or explore the exciting recesses of my blanket. And I'll love her until the day she dies and forever after that. Just as I will all my rats, forever.
Well this is it, my love. Goodbye Cinder, my wonderful, gorgeous, happy, beautiful, softest of the soft, bright eyed, whiskery-faced, loving, bruxy, boggly, licky, nibbly, pretty-faced, camera-magnet, table-colored rat. Here's to an unforgettable three years...I miss you already. Be free, be happy, run again, brux some more, kiss everyone you meet. Go find Chinchilla and Blaze and everyone else. Heck, go find Harley and Dr Ovaltine. And never, ever, EVER suffer again. I love you, girl. <333
These next few pictures were taken in her last few days, snuggling with me in my bed.
Sleeping in my bed this morning...
And you can choose whether or not to view this next one, it is a picture of her after she passed, but I think it is comforting to see because she is at peace now and certainly looks it.
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http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j72/nikkiburr2/Rats/CinderDeath.jpg]http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j72/nikkiburr2/Rats/CinderDeath.jpg[/link]