November 02, 2004
Olie 20 September 2002 - 2 November 2004
Abita came home early today, and found Olie had died in his sleep. He was curled up with Leather, in the little house in the cage.
I mentioned a few months ago we though he had hemmorhoids. When I noticed a smell of infection and some pus coming from his anus about two weeks ago, a trip to Dr G returned a diagnosis of cancer (either colon or rectal). I decided not to do any surgery because of his advanced age; Dr G also recommended against it. He had been a seemingly happy and active rat all through his illness, and to be honest I thought one of the other rats would pass on before he.
Leather to the left, and Olie to the right. Picture taken on the 24th of October.
Again, Leather to the left and Olie to the right. Schwartz is the pillow (picture taken two days ago).
At this time last year we had seven rats that had all been born within a month of each other. Right now, four of those rats are still with us. One of them has a very large tumor, two of the others are obese, and only Leather has no obvious health problems. We knew we would probably lose those seven in rapid succesion...but realizing that doesn't make it any easier.
Posted by Publius at November 2, 2004 08:16 PM