December 2008

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It's all about money (Sunday 21st 2008)

This feels like it's been a busy month. We've had another couple of neck abscesses in the same girls' cage. I've decided that I'm not going to add any rats into that cage until we've got this sorted because it's obviously something infectious that they're passing between themselves. Rosie had hers surgically removed and we sent the gunk off for testing. It came back as streptococcus, but they couldn't get it to grow enough for the sensitivity tests. I was sort of hoping that we would know what it was and could treat all the girls in the affected cage. That cost me eighty quid for the op and another thirty for the tests, but the NFRS is going to pay for the testing.

Edie, one of the black rehome girls, had a mammary lump removed. There went another £72 down the pan.
On top of that we had to spend most of our savings on a second replacement car of the year because the first one died four months after we got it.
The washing machine has been dying for the past month, both the controller and the bearings are playing up.
AND the vacuum cleaner is slowly going to the great carpet in the sky.

Of course we planned to do our Christmas shopping late after OHs December pay came in, then I got the lurgi and my chest is still full of marbles.
The rats had boiled eggs to play with and Diggory has cut his foot on the shell, so now has a swollen foot with a nasty abscess.
Eldest has come home for Christmas bringing two geriatric rats, one of whom has a very smelly preputial abscess so is on Baytril.
Five more rat sit boys turning up on Boxing day.

I can't believe Christmas can be so stressful, why do we bother when we don't even believe in the purported cause of it all? I feel like I'm standing on that railway track in the dark, with the train horn blaring and the brakes squealing as Christmas approaches, but there's no way to get out of its path.

The thing I'm looking forward to is breeding our second litter of Brandywine babies. Originally I was going to breed Grace to Barnaby, but Grace didn't seem to be coming in season and having looked at the idea of mating Blythe to Barnaby I decided I preferred it. Blythe is three weeks younger than Grace, but she's bigger and is coming into season regularly. She will make a fantastic mum, I'm sure. Hopefully we can mate them up over the Christmas holiday and have a mid-January litter.

Merry Christmas (Thursday 25th December)

Mixed day today. I started off late last night by getting chomped by Misty again. I've been keeping my hands away from her, but I was sitting with my arms crossed and she dug under my arm to get to my hand. It's the worst bite she's given me, a couple of cm long and deep enough to see the tendon inside my hand. I've always thought I wasn't that queasy, but that gave me a fit of the vapours and I had to lie down until the world stopped turning orange. Being Christmas Eve, and as none of us was in a fit state to drive to A&E, we stuck it together with plasters and I went to bed.

I was worried that I'd missed Blythe's season, as I've been testing her with Barnaby each evening. (As soon as I decided it was time to breed from Blythe she stopped showing her seasons as strongly). Anyway, it was all fine as she came in season this evening. Babies should be due on 17th January.