Sharky and Pixel Died

So, I don't have any rats now. I'm not going to do the same post as I did with Tank but I wanted to write about it because it helps.

Sharky and Pixel had been ill for a while and got much worse over the course of the same week and we decided it was time to let them go together. We were really hoping that Sharky would die at home because taking him to the vet caused him so much stress but we also didn't want him to be hurting more than he needed to. Will went and spoke to the vets about it and arranged an appointment and literally within about 10 minutes of Will getting home Sharky died on my lap, all four of us were sat together and he just went really peacefully. This was about an hour and a half before we had our appointment so Pixel didn't even have to be the only rat left which we knew he wouldn't have coped well with at all. For such a horrible thing, it worked out the best way possible.
We're pretty sure Pixel had said goodbye to Sharky the day before, he just seemed to be grooming him and sitting with him in a slightly different way, he knew it was happening, like we did. I'm glad he didn't have to be lonely rat.

I am so broken by them dying. They were my whole life. We were a family, they meant so much to me, made me a better person and literally everything is connected to them. Rats are magic, they are like us, it's such a mutual connection. It's going to take a really long time to get used to them not being here.
When Tank died it was awful but we had the other two to look after us and to hang out with. This is so much worse.

Going downstairs the first morning was scary, I had to make myself get out of bed at the usual time rather than just laying there and avoiding it. Even on a good day the first thing I'd do is say hello to the rats, tidy up any poo and old food, put in new food and water and recently with Sharky being so clingy my mornings were dictated by whether he needed to come out or not, whether my morning would start with an hour or so of just sitting on the sofa with him and Pixel had been having medicine in the morning that I'd have to sort out. Once they were sorted and safe I'd have a shower and have my breakfast (which I'd share with them). Coming downstairs now I have nothing I need to do except for myself and just getting on with my day. It's a big change. I don't want to start a new routine that doesn't have them in it.

Some things that have caught me off guard because my whole life is them:
Putting away the teaspoons. I've been giving the rats medicine for a long time and I mix it and give it to them on a teaspoon.
I was getting changed and thought "I'll put a cardigan on instead of this jumper because Sharky likes to get in it".
Leaving the house the first time (and second time, there hasn't been a third time yet) upset me. Not having them to say goodbye to, knowing no one was at home. Coming back and them not being there to say hello to and to be said hello to when I got home.

I was going to keep adding to this list but honestly, everything makes me think of them so I'll leave it here. I started writing this a few days ago and I still feel broken. I'm making myself go through the motions of day to day, I get up, I take showers, I eat, I tidy up, I go out, I'm trying to start work again, because I know I should, because how bad would I spiral if I didn't so I'm making myself do these things. It's weird to think from the outside I would look like I was getting on ok but I know how empty it feels to be doing the things.
I feel like I must sound so dramatic but it's how I'm feeling and I know it will get easier with time, I know but right now I'm just so sad and sad doesn't even get close to covering it.

They were perfect magic and they made me a better person and I'm going to work really hard at being that better person as my own little way of honouring them.
They were very special and I miss them so much.

What We Did When Tank Died

Here is the story of one of my rats, Tank, dying.
Writing it down felt helpful to me and I know that this is the sort of thing I would find helpful to read about so maybe sharing it is helpful to someone else.
I know people are a bit funny about death so here's my warning that I'm not funny about death and I don't knowingly use any euphemisms, he wasn't put to sleep, I'm happy to just talk about it how it is. And to be honest the reality of how it is isn't that bad. I don't hold back from what happened but there's also nothing horrible to hide. The physical part of death isn't as scary as we sometimes imagine, it's just the losing someone part that's awful.

In case you don't know, we have three rats, Tank, Sharky and Pixel.
So, last month after a long time with an ear infection and an abscess and just lots of antibiotics and pus nothing was getting better and we had Tank x-rayed. He had a tumour in his ear and there's nothing that could be done about it. We were given lots of pain medicine for him and just had to keep him happy for as long as he could be.
A month later and all three of them went to the vet for a checkup and we knew Tank wasn't doing too good, he still had a great personality and seemed happy but he obviously must have been in a lot of pain.
His tumour had spread into his mouth and was effecting his teeth.

We weren't sure whether we'd have him for another week or not when we went in to the appointment but the vet very quickly told us about his teeth being too bad and it was time to have him euthanised.
She left us for a bit to go sort things out with the nurse and when she came back we had to sign a form and had a bit more time to say goodbye to Tank.
She'd explained before and went over again that they would anaesthetise him and then give him an injection so he wouldn't feel anything, like how he'd been anaesthetised for his x-ray last month.
We gave her a piece of fleece from their cage and she carried him on that. She took him away while we waited in the consultation room and cried and kept an eye on the other two who had just fallen asleep lol.

A nurse brought him back wrapped up in his fleece, she checked we were ok and offered us more time in the room but we wanted to get home.
As we left, the vet met us and said when she'd be in next and that we could call her about anything and that we didn't need to worry about payment now, we could sort it out when we were ready.
The vet and the nurse we saw briefly were really good, I can't talk highly enough of them and how they handled it all.
We live very close to the vet so we walk there, I carried Tank and Will carried the other two in the cage.

When we got home we laid Tank down in the cage on his fleece. He was laying on his side and was still warm and his little hands and feet were adorable, poking out from his big ol' bod.
After we'd had a minute with him we put the other two in the cage. Pixel didn't seem to notice and headed off downstairs for a drink. Sharky sniffed all around Tank and in his mouth and stayed with him.
We brought Pixel back upstairs and he sniffed right in Tank's mouth and then quickly went upstairs, got in the sputnik and fell asleep.
Sharky snuggled up to Tank and sat with him for about an hour then went and got food and came back and sat pretty much on Tank and ate. He sniffed all around him and in his mouth a lot and sat with him for at least another hour I think.
Towards the end of Sharky sitting with him he started sticking his nose right in Tank's mouth and was sniffing all around and seemed to be mouthing at his teeth a bit and then he started pulling on his tongue. We gently moved him off from that because we know rats can try and clear up a body by eating it which makes sense in the wild and while we wanted Sharky to mourn however he needed we really didn't want to see him eat Tank's tongue. Even though he was pulling on it he was being careful so I don't think that's what he was doing but we didn't want to find out. He went back to it a few times, so Tank ended up with a bit of a blep but honestly it really helped. Taking the time to sit with them and watch Sharky go through his way of dealing with it and then watching him pull on Tank's tongue was comforting and then funny. And for the rest of the day we had his little blep tongue to simultaneously laugh about and cry about because honestly I would cry about their adorable little body parts when they were perfectly healthy.

After about 3 hours he was starting to get colder and something I wasn't expecting at all, his tail started to shrink. Over the next few hours it ended up a lot shorter than it was when he was alive. His tongue was sticking out the side of his mouth but it was just a little bit, it was cute not grotesque.
We woke up Pixel again to make sure he'd had chance to realise what had happened and he groomed him a bit and sniffed in his mouth again and then just got back in a hammock.
We had Tank in the cage and sat with them for just over 3 hours and then we took Tank out of the cage on his fleece and laid him on the floor.
I went out into the garden to tidy up around where we would bury him. It felt really good to be doing something, not at all like a distraction, it just helped to be proactive about something I had no other control over I guess.

When I came back in Tank had fully gone into rigor mortis, he was still just laying on his side but when you touched him he was cold and his joints were stiff and if you picked him up he didn't move at all. His flubby tum was still soft though.
While we had him out on the floor before and after he'd started to stiffen we both held him and stroked him whenever we felt like we needed to and the rest of the time we sat and chatted and gave the other two attention and treats and it, I was gonna say it was like a wake but I guess it was a wake. We sat with his body and drank tea and ate crisps and cried and laughed and tried to come to terms with it with as much time as we needed.

Neither of us wanted to cook and Will went out to buy pot noodles. While he was gone I cleaned Tank's nose. He had a small amount of red discharge on his nose and I just carefully wiped it off with a baby wipe.
When Will got back it was dark so we decided to wait till morning to bury him.
We left him on his fleece on the floor and carried on as we were, crying, laughing, watching bad tv and just saying goodbye to him.
Having his body there with us for that amount of time helped so much. Watching Sharky sit with him and go through his little mourning helped a massive amount. No offence to Pixel, everyone deals with things their own way lol but I'm so glad that Sharky sat with him for so long, it really helped calm me down. I'm also glad he pulled his tongue out, just the right amount of humour.
While we sat through the evening we had Sharky on the sofa with us and let Pixel have his free roam time. He mostly ignored Tank but a couple of times as he ran past him he stopped to sniff him and one time he stopped and had a really good sniff all around his head, in his mouth, in his ear, his nose, using his hands to manoeuvre him slightly and then he carried on with his business.

Our living room is quite cool so I imagine it might be different in different temperatures but he stayed in rigor mortis all night until we were ready to go to bed. When we did go to bed we wrapped him up in his fleece and put him on his own shelf in the fridge.
In the morning we laid him out in the living room again. There was some discharge on his nose again, a very small amount and Will cleaned it for him.
We had our breakfast and when we were ready we went out into the garden, dug a hole, brought Tank out, had some last cuddles and laid him in the ground, carefully covered him up with the soil making sure he was nice and safe and once the ground was level again we put a slab on top. This is so we know where he is and also as an extra deterrent, a cat or something can't just easily dig that soft dirt we'd moved.
I pulled some flowers up when I was clearing the area the afternoon before and I laid them down on the slab.

It was really tough. It was easier to have his body with us in the living room than it was to bury him. It was so strange seeing him in the ground, it was simultaneously the most natural thing and seemed right but also why would we put Tank in the ground, we should be looking after him.
But yeah, that's that. I wanted this to be more about the physical aspects of what we did, I can't really talk about the grief, I'm still in it and also I think you just have to feel what you feel and move through it it's not something that can be explained or tips given for it. We're absolutely wiped though, we were a five people unit and one of us is gone and it's so tiring. I'm just exhausted.

I have cried so much so randomly since he died, my whole face hurts, I miss him so much but this slow process of dealing with it, and as a group too, feels so right and I think it helped a lot. If we'd rushed through it and buried him straight away or left him at the vet I don't think we would have had as many calm moments. Sometimes I looked at his little body and cried but equally sometimes I looked at him and didn't, it just helped me come to terms with what had happened even if I was simultaneously wishing it hadn't happened.

I'm not saying this is the one right way to do things, I'm just sharing what we did. Although, I would recommend letting your other rats see the body. I've never had to deal with it myself but I imagine a decent vet would let you take them home for a couple of hours and then bring them back for cremation. Rats are such a unit and can grieve, I think it's important to let them process what happened for themselves if you can.
The few days since it happened Pixel has seemed very out of sorts. He was always very attentive, if they were ever apart for any amount of time he'd go round the cage and stomp on everyone to say hi and check they were still there and go back to sleep, he's very nosy and keeps an eye on everything. When Tank had his x-ray Pixel went with him and all the nurses and vet mentioned how he'd been looking after Tank. He seems to be taking it quite hard. Sharky seems ok, his behaviour is pretty much normal except that he's sitting with Pixel more, I think he's comforting him. Hopefully they can readjust soon.

These three are our first rats and this is our first rat death and it is hard. The only bad thing about keeping rats is their short life expectancy, it's so unfair that someone with such character that can bond with you so much only lives a short time. It's so tough but it's only so tough because it's so worth it.


*update* Pixel seemed to mourn for four days, barely ate, super lethargic, no interest in anything, total opposite personality and on the fifth morning it was like a switch went and he was back to himself. I was so worried about him but he seems to have gotten over it ok 💜

From the past week or so...

I loved packing this order and was very grateful for how many things they bought ^-^

I'm still always so amazed when someone wants to own something I made, I think I always will be. I know it's a cliche but I make art because I can't not, the fact that other people see anything of interest in it is a really sweet extra💜

I've had a tough brain week this week. So has Sharky. After our last vet visit we tried stopping giving him as much "not rat" food because he's been losing weight and the vet thought giving him extras might be stopping him from eating the rat food that has everything he needs in it. For a week or so we stopped giving him his extras and we're pretty sure he's a brat and that actually made him stop eating the rat food as some sort of protest. Yesterday I tried crushing the rat pellets into some baby food so he can have his treats like the brat he his and we know he's also getting the nutrition from the pellets. I'm pretty sure when we give him the stuff he wants, he also eats more of the pellets and this way he gets even more of the pellets because they're mixed into the treats. Such a spoiled baby lol. He's almost two and not very well though so at this point I'm happy to do anything to keep him happy.

I finally bleached my roots. This is how I section it so I don't miss any bits.

It's still just bleached now though because I can't decide how I want to colour it. I'm not too keen on it just bleached but I prefer it to the roots. I'm sure I'll just chuck some colour on there soon.

I'm still trying to paint more. This day was a bit of a bust brain-wise so I just drew flowers from a book and then painted them whatever random colours. I'm trying to not beat myself up for spending time on things that aren't sellable items. I think in reality I have enough shop stock and make things often enough, it's a bigger audience I need so I need to focus on things to share and building that just as much as I need to be coming up with new stock. It all counts.

I'm working on a weekly vlog at the minute and used these photos of a painting I did as a title card for the day and thought it'd be a cute gif. I'm conflicted with gifs, like, does there need to be something glitching about on every page shouting for your attention while you're trying to read things but also I love gifs.

And then yesterday I actually left the house for the first time all week and since some time into the last week too. This photo is actually from the garden but I went into the city with Will for the library book sale and then we went out a second time in the afternoon but that was just to the supermarket.

I always have Teleprompters by The Uncluded in my head because I really do need to get out more. I am snail under pressure. I'm working on it though ^-^

Tank Troubles

So, Tanks's cyst/abscess (don't worry I won't go into detail)(unless you want me to, I'll happily reply to comments about it, bodies are so weird and interesting) had some sort of hissy fit and the vet decided the best thing to do was to open it up and keep it clean while it heals in the hopes it won't just fill back up again.

WOW IT'S HORRIBLE!

Not in a gross way, like, it is gross but a gross that Will and I don't mind at all. It's horrible because Tank hates it so much. Obviously. He has a hole in his neck and we're holding him down and wiping it out. The poor little thing screams his heart out (and poos up a storm). He has always been a crybaby, you don't have to even touch him sometimes and he'll squeak at the anticipation of you doing something he doesn't want but these screams are so awful. It breaks my heart and wears me out and we've only had to do it twice so far out of a twice a day for probably at least a week.

The other side of the stress is that he's such a sweet boy. All he does is scream. I can't believe he hasn't tried to bite us. He's so good. And it feels awful to be abusing his trust like this. I know I've said he cries a lot and that probably makes him sound anti-social but he really isn't. He's so cuddly and will groom all along your arm while you're holding him and we're doing this awful thing to him that he doesn't understand. It's for his own good and we have to just do it but it's tough and wearing.

The rats are the best things, so when something is going wrong with them it is the worst thing.

Some Good Things

I've been using the Wysa app and finding it really useful and one of the options I have set up is at 4 o'clock everyday it asks me what I'm grateful for. It's a small thing but taking a moment to focus on what is positive can help teach you, over time, to focus less on the negatives that are so easy to dwell on.

Most days they're tiny, regular things but this week a couple of things have happened that have made me feel really lucky and grateful and I thought it'd be nice to share them here.

To start, here's a lesson about just being honest.

In college I wasn't so great and one time I skipped a psychology class that was going to be a mock exam. The tutor took me out during the next class to ask why I hadn't come to this test and I just told her the truth, I hadn't studied for it and didn't see the point in just sitting there for an hour not being able to write the essay anyway.

I think prior to this I would have had an instinctive reaction to make something up, just make up an excuse in an attempt to not get in trouble. For all the lessons we're taught about honesty when we're little I think this "just try and get away with it" mentality is actually more prevalent in what we learn from society around us and especially as a teenager you don't want an adult to tell you off, you want to get away with stuff.

But guess what? She appreciated the honesty. She obviously explained to me that I was being kinda stupid and I wasn't making the right choices but the fact that I was honest about it meant we could just have a conversation with no one getting angry and defensive. It was much more constructive and I think about it a lot.

Allowing yourself that moment of honest vulnerability can feel like something you shouldn't do, power moves and tricking people to get what you want is often celebrated but it's not healthy for you as an individual or good for us as a whole.

Back to this week, I had two instances this week where people wanted me to phone them. One for some invoice/payment info and one for an account being hacked. After the anxious gremlin in my head told me to abandon getting paid and to just let the account be lost forever I remembered my little honesty lesson from college and reminded myself to not be controlled by the anxiety gremlin and I emailed both of these people and just explained that I have really bad phone anxiety and I was hoping the issues could be resolved in other ways and both of them said it was fine.

I love to be unashamedly honest. It feels so good to just tell the truth and I think more often than not people respond well to it. It isn't just some other trick to get what you want, I fully expected these people to be like "nah, you need to phone" but at least we'd have all been on the same page. And as awful as people can be I think that's learned behaviour and at our core we naturally want to help each other.

The other, more massive, more brilliant thing that happened this week is about Tank's face. Last week we noticed a lump on his cheek, under his ear and we took him to the vet and she said it might be an ear infection so he had some antibiotics and to come back in a week for a check up. After a week the lump was still there. It had changed, I think there was an ear infection but also there's a lump. So we took him in for a check up and it didn't look good. We were told about biopsies and surgery and how it's dangerous and a bad location for nerves and rats have a high risk under anaesthetic and we came home feeling pretty shit and upset. We talked over all the options and decided to have the biopsy, at least we could try and find out what it was.

We took Tank into the vet at 8.30am the next day and left him there to have the procedure, we've never come home without one of the rats before and it was horrible. We were expecting him to have to be put to sleep to have the biopsy done, a needle into the lump to take a sample, and we'd be phoned about lunchtime when he was ready to come home. Lunchtime came and pretty much went and early afternoon we got a phone call.

He was fine! He was a really good boy and hadn't needed the general anaesthetic, he just sat there being a good boy AND the lump wasn't a tumour at all, it's just a cyst! The relief was incredible. There's no tumour, he's just a beautiful gross cyst face boy! We had to wait another three hours before we could go and pick him up (which was torturous) just because the nurse had to discharge him to us and they were out on calls and we went in and got him and it was amazing and the best feeling and I just feel so lucky. He doesn't even need a check up, we just will keep an eye on it. He didn't need the general anaesthetic and it's just a cyst!

Having to deal with Tank was really difficult and having these phone call requests coming in at the same time was really stressful but being able to stop and think "maybe I can just ask them about it" rather than panicking and feeling all "woe is me" turned it all around and made it go much smoother and I'm really grateful. I'm grateful to myself for trying, to the people for not making me phone them and mostly for Tank's beautiful, gross face being gross not deadly ^-^

Relax and Ephemera ~ 3/7

Had a quiet day. I was planning to work on and hopefully finish my patches but the eczema in my elbow was playing up and I didn't want to make it worse by having my arm all bent working so I spent some not very productive time doing nothing except worry and feel guilty about the idea of not working. Then I sorted myself out and started reading a book I got out of the library last week and had an actual day off type of Sunday. I read while Will played playstation, we had naan bread pizza for tea and then I hung out with the rats (after they'd had a lazy day too, all their days are lazy though). It was suitably chill and now I'm ready for Monday. I like Monday's, I always feel productive and ready to get on with stuff on Monday :)

An extra thought: I love it so much when I find things in library books, even if they're super mundane it's like finding a little treasure. Ephemera is one of my favourite things. I don't know what it is about little scraps of paper but I get a lot of joy from them.

10 Years Old

I made my first post on this blog 10 years ago today!
I love blogs. They've changed a lot I think because of how many places there are now to share online and maybe because it became something that could be a job. I don't post as much as I want to because I worry about repeating myself across platforms, because it might be off-putting to people who follow me in more than one place but also because is it a waste of my time to upload things and talk about things in more than one place and then I should probably share where more people are looking if what I'm sharing is somehow linked to work. And I think most of what I have to post now is linked to work because I also wonder if at the minute I'm actually a bit more boring than I used to be and don't have much to share! Or maybe I've just lost the knack for it and I need to find it again. I don't know but I do know blogs feel special and I plan to keep having one.

I think maybe blogs having a smaller audience will help let me just have a place to share and ramble without worrying too much about it and it can be more and more like when I very first started blogging, even before this one, when there weren't established ways for a blog to be, people were just doing whatever they thought was cool. I think it's more common now for people to try and have an "online presence" that fits into certain rules of "successful" (to attract sponsors maybe) and these blogs seem to be easier to come across but don't tend to interest me and it seems harder to find personal blogs because I guess people just use instagram or twitter or tumblr because it's easier?
I wonder if it also has to do with more people being online. I feel like the internet used to be more for the weirdos and now it's for everyone and the average person is not a weirdo so there's going to be more stuff that I find boring and it's just harder to find the thing you like if it's mixed into a bigger pile of stuff than before.
(I'm using weirdo in a very broad sense, covering a variety of weirdo types. I'm not articulate enough to explain myself any better!) (And I'm not saying that if I find it boring it's bad, that's just personal taste.)

I'm not complaining, things change and that's fine. I'd love blogs to have a comeback though, they give me similar feelings to zines. Zines and blogs aren't quite the same but they do have that aspect of being able to just share whatever you like without it being attached to a load of other stuff. How you feel looking at something on a feed is going to be influenced by the other thing you saw a second ago and the thing you're already seeing next, whether you notice it having an influence or not. How you would connect with a post on a blog and the same post on a feed you're scrolling through is different and it's just something interesting to think about.

There are probably loads of active blogs that I would love, I just need to figure out how to find them! Please share yours if you have one! Or point me towards any you like.

Most of my posts on here will be broken now because I was using flickr for hosting my photos and they made changes recently and will have deleted most of my stuff :(
I went through my hard drives though and put together a little 4 x 4 for each year because I love a look back at photos and an anniversary is an obvious time to indulge in it ^-^

Thanks for reading to the end :3

A Sort Of List

I have been reading so many comics (21 already this year!) and this week I read Bee and Puppycat vol1, Fruits Basket vol9 and Yostuba&! vol6. I love them all.
Bee and Puppycat has qr codes so you can listen to the music boxes in the story! It's so precious.
Fruits Basket has a new anime coming out this year and it looks beautiful.
Yotsuba honestly makes me think about how I approach my life. She may be a fictional 5 year old but I try to be more like her. Things are hard, I want to spend my time seeing the good and being excited.

Sharky had his check up and has been given the all clear!! It's a chronic condition but for now he's good, which is very good. (I've never used the blogger video uploader before, I wonder if it'll work...)

I drew this PS Bun. Maybe the best pun I will ever come up with.

The weather was really nice today and I was going to go out on my bike but I managed to let all the air out of my back tire and can't figure out how to make the pump work. Never mind, I'm sure there'll be other nice days for bike rides lol.

I'm feeling like a boring little house goblin lately and not in a good way. Need to sort that out.

A Sick Rat

February didn't start great and has so far just been super stressful and very tiring. Right at the start Sharky got really ill, fast. It was so awful, I thought he was going to die. He's still ill but he's so much better.
He was breathing really fast, his sides were sucked in and he'd stopped eating and drinking. His behaviour was strange too, he seemed confused and he basically refused to be in the cage, he spent a few days just sitting on our necks/shoulders.

So, back to the beginning. On Sunday evening I thought he seemed a bit off but wasn't sure because I'm super paranoid about them and sometimes think something is wrong but they're just asleep. On Monday morning it was obvious something was really wrong so we made an appointment at the vet. We saw the vet, got home and just knew something wasn't right. It felt like we knew rats better than her, it just felt wrong. It didn't feel like he'd really been seen and all she did was re-prescribe what was written on his file from last time he was in, we only got the anti-inflammatories because I asked for some. We had a lot of trouble getting Sharky to take his medicine and Will phoned the vet to ask if there was anything else that could be done for him, he was in such a bad way. She told us no, they don't do exotics. !  Thinking about it makes me so angry. She didn't tell us that she basically didn't know what she was doing and then tried to tell us they couldn't help us full stop.
Will went back on Tuesday and there was a different person on the desk and a different vet on duty and they told us the person we'd seen isn't trained for rodents, we never should have been given an appointment with her and booked us in with the other vet.
I can't understand why the first vet didn't just say "here's antibiotics to get you started but you should come back tomorrow and see someone that knows rats". I'm so mad. I'm really happy with our vets in general but this was awful.
Anyway, Tuesday we saw a decent vet and she checked him over so thoroughly and talked us through everything. She even gave him an injection of the anti-inflammatory to get us started and a bit of fluid because he wasn't drinking. She counted his breathing rate and told us to count it at home so we would know if he was getting worse and to come back if he did. She was just super helpful and we went home feeling much better. Sharky might still have been really ill but at least we knew we were doing everything we could for him.
By Wednesday we'd got him hooked on cucumber. We wanted to get him re-hydrated and he wouldn't drink but he loved cucumber. Then he started to perk up, he started drinking and eating and eventually spent more and more time back in the cage rather than hiding on us.

We're still having to syringe the antibiotics because the first few times we had to syringe it into his mouth because he wasn't eating and he got such a taste for it that he can smell it in anything we put it in and he refuses to eat it. We are managing to hide the anti-inflammatories now though so at least that's one less syringing he needs.
Syringing the medicine is so stressful. It took a few goes to get the hang of it (it's weird to shove something so much in his mouth) but he's also learning how to avoid it. Most of it is going in now but he does end up with a wet chin which he rubs all over the sofa first chance he gets. It's for his own good but I feel so sorry for him he must be so confused, why are we doing this horrible thing to him. He's such a good boy though, and aside from trying to spit it all back out he does really well at it.
We're just over a week into the two week course now and his behaviour is back to normal and his breathing has slowed down a bit. We're going to get him back into the vet soon to see how he actually is and what needs doing next. Hopefully not much, hopefully he's magically better. She talked of x-rays and I just don't even want to think about it.
And me, I'm really fucking tired lol. The stress is wearing me out, we're getting up earlier to give him his meds and staying up later to keep an eye on him so am tired and being so tired and stressed is making me all crazy negative and thinking bad things about myself and my work and then that stresses me out even more.
I'm actually not feeling as bad today, hopefully I can ride it out without too much damage. It's at that point where every tiny thing adds onto it and it just feels like everything is happening at once and can't we catch a break and oh my god the mushroom bag broke and there are mushrooms everywhere, has anything this bad ever happened before, how will I survive!!! And yeah, I'm tired lol.

Rats Basket

I have three rats and I am OBSESSED with them. My three specifically but also rats in general. It's a problem, they don't live long enough for me to love them this much. It's worth it though, they're perfect.
I started reading Fruits Basket (ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshiloveitsomuch) I'm not very far in but every time there's rat characteristics I lose my shit. The first time this happened was when we find out that Yuki has breathing problems. It's super common for rats to have breathing problems. Two of my rats have breathing problems! And then last night there was this panel of all these other rats turning up.

Rats are so cosy and caring and sociable and seeing them all flock to him is just so right.
I also love love love how she draws them, how their arms and legs just kind of droop in and out of the body like the adorable little bags of cute they are. This manga would be one of my favourites anyway but ohmygosh the added rat-ness is just too much.

On a not rat related note I love the author notes things (do they have a name?) that come with each chapter. Is it a shojo thing? I remember really enjoying them in So Cute as well. It's an opportunity to see the mangaka geek out or just generally share something about themselves and I love it so much (because I'm a nosy bastard), it's almost like a little blog post or something.
I was thinking earlier, I bet you could pick a good manga based on these little additional bits. I reckon if they're full of geek excitement about video games and idols there's a good chance it'll be a manga really worth reading. I'll have to keep reading everything I can get my hands on to test my theory ^^

Tank and My Beech Tree ~ This Week's Things

Tank is on his fourth day without pain medication and is still doing absolutely fine. I think it'll take me at least a week to calm down about it, I'm still paranoid there'll be something wrong with him but he is happy and bouncy and so happy to be back in the big cage, he's been so snuggly with everyone after being alone for a whole week :)

I've always had an interest in that good witchy shit but was put off trying to make a connection with it when I was younger because everything I read talked about needing a coven. It's been getting more popular lately and so I've been thinking about it again and with age I've realised I don't need to worry about how other people do things, I'm not interested in it in any sort of a religious way, I don't even care if what I'm looking at is completely fictional.



I got these books out of the library about witchcraft and magic, mostly for the pictures and I've been reading The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic this week. It's not really about witchcraft so much as how other groups of people saw and dealt with witchcraft which is disappointing but does have some good illustrations in it that I think I'll use as reference for some of my inktober this year. I also have had a green man tree oracle that was gifted to me years ago and I was reading through it and turns out the beech tree we have at the end of the garden is a pretty nice tree to have because among other cosy things "slivers of beech wood and leaves were once carried as talismans to bring good luck and increase creative energy" so surely sitting under it and getting hit on the head with beech masts can only be good for me :) (I haven't read all the tree descriptions yet, I bet they're all good, trees are good). I've had the cards out and I'm thumbing through them every now and then and looking at my beech tree. I love cards, thumbing through trading cards is super relaxing too. I love the idea of having little objects to hold that are attached to particular thoughts or goals or general "have a calm down" feelings.



I finished my pigeon zine! I'm so proud of it and the stickers to go with it. I made a video showing it all off which is here and the listing is here :)

Other things this week: Some zines I ordered from Gemma Flack arrived and I'm so excited to read them, I love their work. We tried a sainsburys vegan chocolate bar, the crispy milk choc one, thumbs up from me plus it was cheap. I made a necklace with a lot of colourful plastic beads and a Snufkin charm and I also finished painting my spotty cardigan. I should wear it out and try taking some outfit photos, I don't think I've ever really done outfit photos? Good to try new things. The nintendo direct happened. I already very much wanted a switch but oh my gosh I want one even more, I do have a 2ds xl though so I'll just concentrate on all the games I haven't played that I can get on there! One day tho...

Hope you're doing alright. To end my week I'm going to make a crumble using some apples someone up the road was giving away for free ^_^

Tank's Leg

I don't have any exciting things to share this week, it's been a bit of a weird, stressful one. On Tuesday afternoon at about 4pm we noticed Tank wasn't using his back foot at all. We luckily got him into the vet on the same day (despite some massive and varied fuck ups on behalf of the taxi there and back, well we didn't let the second taxi take us back. I don't want to talk about it but I'm very anxious about taxi's now, yay) and long story short he has to spend a week on his own in the little cage so he can't use his leg too much and he's on some pain medication and beyond that we have to wait and see.

The vet seemed really worried about him but he's doing much better than she thought he would. An hour after the first medicine he was using his leg and since Wednesday morning you wouldn't even know there had been anything wrong with him. Hopefully he'll still be using it fine once he's off the medicine and in a bigger space but we'll have to just wait for now. I feel so sorry for him, he mostly just sleeps all day but every now and then he'll look at you and get all excited because he thinks you're going to let him out and we can't and it breaks my heart. He must be all lonely and confused :( But it's what's best for him at the minute, if it is a fracture or something he'd be making it a lot worse if he was in with the others.

I moved downstairs to work so I could keep Tank company/keep an eye on him (we've been taking it in turns to sleep downstairs too because they're most active at night and we love him too much) and I'm almost done with my pigeon zine. I'm working on some stickers to go with it, I'm pretty excited about it. I'm making some sticker sets myself but I have plans for a fancy additional sticker that I'll be getting printed. Hopefully people will like it, I've been working really hard on it. (and I need money for vet bills (ﾟωﾟ；) heh heh... *wipes sweat from brow*)

I hope your week has been a lot less stressful and had more sleep in it but if not, we're still here right? Look at us, coping and stuff ^_^

Here's a little webcam video of me and Pixel.

New Year (Birthday) Goals

Having a birthday got me thinking and it occurred to me that it's odd that with the new year comes resolutions and goals and reflection but with birthdays not so much. I mean, it's not really odd, everyone goes through the new year together so there's the companionship (or social pressure) of everyone making goals at the same time which probably helps a lot of people (and makes us hear about it) but I thought a birthday would be a good chance to reflect and focus and junk.




So my birthday goal this year is a good simple thing that I think will make my life better. I'm going to be more chill. It sounds stupid but it's not. I'm a stressed mess and I explain myself too much out of insecurity and I hold myself back in so many ways and I have a nice life and I'm letting it slide past while I think about what I need to do better or what I don't have and while I still want to work towards better things or new things I want to have actually done each day because that's all we've really got.




Everyone has problems and I don't think anyone should be comparing others or themselves in terms of better or worse for anything but I am really lucky. I'm lucky to have been born where I was, I'm lucky to be keeping a roof over my head, in the grand scheme of things I have a safe life and sometimes I feel like I've been wasting it. I just want to fully appreciate what I've got and enjoy it. I want to be more chill. I still want to get angry about injustices, I don't want to be detached from things that are actually important but sometimes things seem important and they don't need to be. I want to be happy and I want to save my energy for where it's needed, whatever that might be.



I want to just live and do whatever I want (in a not selfish way)(ok it's maybe a bit selfish but not like in a harms anyone else way). I care more about being true to myself than about what other people might think. I want to be more chill. This is my goal for my new year ^_^

Squishy Cosy Rat Faces

Some squishy ratty faces to brighten our day. I can only get focused, not blurry photos of these guys when they're cosy. Once they wake up they are too zoomy for photos and/or so interested in the camera that they aren't in the frame anymore.







This hammock action also features in this vlog ^_^

May There Be Rats

Some ratty goodness from May. I often find myself thinking about how typically people don't like rats and how crazy that is. I've always liked rats but actually having some has elevated it to new heights. They're just so lovely and smart and playful and they have LITTLE HANDS!!! Someone asked us once if they bite and the answer is lol. I literally poke them in the mouth and they just let me. Maybe I am a bully but still the point stands that they are amazing ^_^







Here's some footage of Tank hanging out on my lap under my desk. I'm sure he gets bigger every time I look at him. I don't know how well it shows on camera but he is a big ol' rat, my legs are not small legs and he fills them up pretty well ^_^