In some of the more rare carte de visite photographs, owners posed with their pets. These are a few CDV & cabinet cards with animals that I've collected. 

Cabinet Card. Photo circa 1870-1880. Posing with her dog.

If you were ever curious of the size difference between a Cabinet Card and a Carte de Visite, you can see here how much larger the Cabinet Card is next to the CDV. 
 

Hey there, blogging world. Thought I would check in and say hello. And remind you all, I'm most active on Instagram these days. And if you're not on Instagram, I do share posts over to Twitter, so you can interact with me over there too. :)

As for life, I'm still obsessed with nail polish, true crime everything, (follow me on goodreads)... and my new favorite obsession. Tea! (Particularly DavidsTea & Teavana!)

We also added two new boy ratties to the family in January. (Check out my Pet Rats page). Some photos of the current gang below. Ruby, Ben, Waffles, Chester, & Dobby.

I'm behind on my pet posts, so you get two blogs today! :)

The weekend before Memorial Day, I had been wanting to bring a few boy ratties home for T.J.

With Jasper sick, and with his hind leg degeneration he had to be kept in a smaller one floor cage (which we call our hospital cage). That left poor T.J. all alone. I wanted to get him some brothers so he would have companions again. So on May 22nd, we brought home Waffles & Ben! My husband named Ben. And I named Waffles.

My pretty little Molly girl passed Thursday morning. She had all the symptoms of a pituitary tumor. She would have good days, and bad days, but pituitary tumors are inoperable so eventually her health declined. :( She eventually couldn't eat with her hands because of the paralysis from the pituitary tumor, so we would have to feed her soft foods, baby food, ensure, yogurt.

We brought Molly home in August 2013. She was the sweetest little rat ever. Molly loved to give kisses constantly, she was very affectionate, and curious. I loved her white blaze marking. Her left ear was missing the tip when we brought her home, but it gave her a cute quirky look. Molly even got her time in the spotlight on my friend Kirby's, blog; The Mercurial Magpie: Fairy Dust All The Things. RIP Molly...

So last Thursday evening we brought a little girl rattie home, who we named Ruby. :)

She has a little mask because she's in mid coat change. I'm thinking she is Cinnamon. Her markings are Berkshire. We think she around 3 months old, not older than 4 months. She still has those translucent baby teeth.

So, end of September my girl Toffee (who is about 14 months old), started getting a mammary tumor under her right leg. (Tumors are common in females rats). Usually it is my older or elderly females who get mammary tumors, and they are usually too old to be put through the stress of surgery. Usually it's just a quality of life decision I have to make. But, Toffee is youngish, very energetic, and active. She is only the 2nd female I've owned who got a tumor quite young. So we made the decision to have the tumor removed by my vet. (Which was $400 altogether). If we didn't get it removed, it would just keep growing and getting larger.

The past 24 hours have not been so great... we lost Pumpkin, Tuesday morning. She had passed away in her sleep. She had been ill for awhile with a respiratory infection which she got over, but because she was over 2 years, she was having a hard time bouncing back. She was very frail, still being fed by oral syringe, and was having balance issues this past week.


Buttercup has been energetic, even yesterday she was excited to get a yogurt peanut. She would have been 3 years old around Nov/Dec. She had a golf ball, and a tennis ball sized tumor. She could still get around pretty okay, though we had her in a 1 level cage. This morning she was having some breathing issues, and didn't want to take any food. Which is unusual for Buttercup... she eats everything/anything. She did have some water by herself, and I decided to put her back in the cage to rest because her breathing was better. Not even 10-15 minutes had passed, when my husband checked on her and we found she passed away... was not expecting that at all...


This post is going to be a bit picture heavy so after the jump....

Emile passed away late Tuesday night, while I was asleep. He had been struck with a lot of health ailments in his old age. In January he either had a respiratory infection or pneumonia. He also had seizures during that illness. He was so ill we had to feed him with an oral syringe every few hours, but he ended up recovering fully.

Then he recently lost the use of his back legs, which happens with a lot of older male rats. (Degenerative osteoarthritis). We had moved him to a smaller "hospital" cage, where he could pull himself up to drink & eat from the bowls easier. He was so frail before he passed away and he had stopped wanting to eat or drink the day before he passed away, so I knew he was going to pass away soon...

We brought Emile home with Remy in December of 2012. Emile was a really laid back boy, and always happy. He loved to be pet and scratched and would occasionally cuddle up next to me. He developed an obsession for carrots in his old age, he loved eating raw carrots. (Most of my other pet rats hate carrots, lol). Last summer he ended up losing a finger during a fight with Teddy. His nicknames were "Emilio", and "Stinky Nacho".



And he was silly... like this time he got his head stuck in the M&M's wrapper. :-p

This morning we had to take Violet, "Baby Rat" to the vet to be put to sleep. She had a tumor growing near her bladder/rectum area for quite a few months already. It was an inoperable tumor. It was getting larger and ended up getting a scab on it last week- which got infected and turned into an abscess that ruptured this weekend. I feel so bad for waiting, I should have had it done last week... Baby Rat went peacefully at the vet, she was a fighter and her heart kept beating for awhile... I pet her until she passed away.

When we brought her home at the beginning of August 2011 she was just a tiny thing. She was so small she still had an umbilical scab... which ended up getting infected but healed eventually. We named her Violet, but we always called her Baby Rat. She was very spunky and adventurous. And even up to her last days never acted like she was in any pain, though she was slowing down. She would have been 3 years old this coming July. ♥