A Rat-astrophe! --Written on: Thursday, Oct. 16, 2003 ~~ 19:50
One of my babies is sick. Last night Jeff noticed that Muffin was looking very abnormal. Abnormal meaning that she had a lump somewhere between the size of a pea and a dime protruding from the left side of her face. It was very grotesque. The strangest part about it was that when both of us saw her earlier that day, between 1 and 3 PM, she was fine. Suddenly, by 11:00 she has a growth.... Very strange. The good news is, you wouldn't think it'd be a tumor with it having sprung up so quickly.So luckily we got her into the vet this morning. It turns out, she had an abscess. Apparently, Zelda must've bitten her at some point either playfully or competitively (they squabble over food sometimes), and it ended up getting infected and forming the abscess. The vet had to knock her out and then cut it open to drain it, but she's supposed to be okay. I guess the kind of bacteria that rats are prone to getting in these abscesses is a bit more difficult to clean out than your average, run-of-the-mill abscess so there's a chance it might come back. We've got antibiotics that I have to give her, so hopefully that won't happen. She looked so unhappy.
According to the vet, it was a really deep wound... All the way to the jawbone. I'm not real happy about that, but I don't think there's anything we can do to keep it from ever happening again, other than maybe house the rats separately from now on. But the whole reason for having more than one rat is so that they can keep eachother company. I really think (I hope, at least) it was just an accident; they get along so well most of the time.
Stay tuned...
Before And After
Would I get a discount if I birthed the baby in the store? - 5/16/05
The end is near? - 5/13/05
The progession of me - 5/10/05
Cleaning update - 5/7/05
Pre-nesting - 5/7/05
