Cherry, one of my dumbo eared girls passed away this past Monday. When I woke up, she had already passed sometime during the night.
 
Cherry & Belle were adopted from Star's Rat Rescue of South Dakota last August. The girls traveled 1,500 miles to reach Philadelphia PA, thanks to a lot of great people that volunteered for the rat train. Cherry & Belle were born in the rescue on Christmas Day 2011.


Both the girls are elderly now, and both had mammary tumors. Cherry had two tumors, the one on her hip was getting quite large. But she was too frail and old to survive a tumor removal surgery. She was getting around okay on their one level cage, until she passed away the other morning.

Belle is now living with Buttercup, Baby Rat, Pumpkin, and Toffee after some intro's this past week. Buttercup was very territorial and that is why the dumbo girls never lived with her before.

 

*Krazy Candle is no longer open* 

I've blogged a few times about Krazy Candle before and I've also held a giveaway. Krazy Candle makes all natural soy tarts and they sell warmers for their tarts. They also make all natural soy candles, in many different scents. I've ordered about 4'xs from Krazy Candle and  I've tried many of their scents. (My Favorites: Pumpkin Crunch, Birthday Cake, Lilac Mist, Lavender, Summer Breeze, Apples & Maple Bourbon, Hot Cocoa).

One of my very favorite things about Krazy Candle, is even though they sell bigger 2oz tarts, packs of tarts, mixed box samplers; They also offer single .99 cent tarts of ANY scent. This is great way to sample a lot of their different scents, so later you can buy larger packs of your favorites. This is definitely one thing that keeps me coming back for future purchases.

Krazy Candle is holding a fundraiser this month. Every purchase made on Krazy Candle during November, they will donate 15% of each sale to Star's Rat Rescue in South Dakota. I've blogged many many times about SRR. I've adopted 9 rats from SRR over the years. Currently, I have 3 rats from Star's Rat Rescue; (Aspen, Cherry & Belle). 

Christmas is coming and I know people are starting to shop for gifts, so please consider trying out Krazy Candle and making a purchase that will benefit Star's Rat Rescue. There are so many pet rats in need of a forever home. If you've read my blog, you know I've owned pet rats since 2007. (And if you want to know Why Rats?! Click here!). This is also a great time to support an American Small Business!

Krazy Candle Photo: Hot Cocoa Cups

• Krazy Candle Facebook
• Krazy Candle Etsy
• Krazy Candle Twitter

• Star's Rat Rescue Facebook
• Star's Rat Rescue Twitter 

Star's Rat Rescue is now a registered 501c3 non profit organization. All donations made through Star's Rat Rescue are tax deductible. 

Disclaimer: I was not paid for this blog. This is my heartfelt opinion, after being a customer of Krazy Candle, and adopting 9 rats from Star's Rat Rescue over the years. All links either link to older blog entries or websites/products mentioned in the above blog.

 

My girls finally came home last night! I adopted two black self dumbo eared girls from Star's Rat Rescue in South Dakota. I've adopted from SRR two times before.

The 1st time I adopted 3 girls, the 2nd time I adopted 2 girls & 2 boys. Though my boys are the only ones still living and they are now 2 1/2 years old.

This rat train had 2 phases to get the girls all they way to Philadelphia. (1,500 miles from South Dakota!) The 1st part of the train was on July 28th. When my girls and some of the other rats being adopted traveled to Chicago IL. The 2nd part of the train was tentatively scheduled for August 4th. My girls had to be fostered for about a week in Chicago until we filled some of the other driving legs to get them to Philadelphia.

Then, Thursday morning- Brittney; my friend & owner of Star's Rat Rescue, texted me that she was in the hospital. (She is still there as of today, the hospital was running tests to determine is she needed surgery, she was in a lot of pain. I don't have any other details. Please keep her in your thoughts & prayers. She is trying to keep me updated best she can. I am posting any new information I get on the SRR Facebook Page, for Brittney).

(ETA: Brittney is now home from the hospital).

We were still lacking a driver for the very last part of the trip, so it was uncertain if the girls would be coming home Saturday. Luckily, I was able to get a hold of our friend Adam. Who helped with SRR drives before. He agreed to drive out to Somerset PA (About 4 1/2 hours from Philly), to meet one of the other drivers and get my girls! 

With Brittney still in hospital she was unable to contact the drivers and send out the email itinerary as usual. So late Thursday evening she texted me everyone's information (4 drivers) so that I could call and email everyone to confirm Saturday's plans. I had to make sure everyone had talked to each other before leaving Saturday morning.

Saturday morning things went off just as planned. Each of the drivers checked in with me when they passed the rats off to the next driver, and I kept Brittney up to date. At 9:45pm we met up with Adam outside a Petsmart near us so we could finally pick up my two girls and bring them home! It was definitely an adventure for them!

(Thank you to all the drivers and adopters, because we couldn't do these Rat Trains without you all!) 
The girls were born on Christmas Day, 2011. So they are about 7 1/2 months old. I renamed them Cherry & Bluebelle (Belle for short). Cherry has white front paws, she's also a bit bigger and her dumbo ears are set farther back. Belle is smaller, and she has more rounded full dumbo ears. They are both Black self.

Cherry in the hammock, Belle below.

Cherry

Bluebelle "Belle"

 

Awhile back in early 2011, my office wanted to interview people that had bizarre or unusual pets for an article in our campuses monthly newsletter. I contacted them, but the idea got put on hold because our campus relocated to Center City Philadelphia.

So, in February I was contacted again by one of the reporters that work's on the newsletter. He really wanted to do the story, but use my pet rats (I had 12 when the article was written, I now own 10 rats) as the feature story. What really intrigued them, was that I had adopted 7 rats from Star's Rat Rescue in South Dakota and that the rats had traveled 1,500 miles.

I was interviewed about my own pet rats and about rat rescues in general. 5,000 employees at our Philadelphia Campus will be able to read the article. It just came out in our April newsletter & I scanned in a copy to share with you all. I was super happy to get Star's Rat Rescue & our local rat rescue in Philadelphia, (Rat Chick Rescue) mentioned in the article! This was a great opportunity to share about pet rats & pet rat adoption in a positive light!

This has been the most difficult week... I've had four losses... Hazelnut due to old age & a tumor on 2/12. Rosie who passed during a spay for a prolapsed uterus on 2/13. And now Fern (2/22) and Clover both to pneumonia... this sucks...

Clover was adopted from Star's Rat Rescue in South Dakota in August 2010. She always loved running around on the floor and exploring. She never liked to sit still, she was always too curious.

I really hoped Clover would get better... she drank some water on her own earlier today, but she had stopped eating. I tried giving her antibiotics in baby food, ensure, etc in an oral syringe, but she did just not want it. When I came from work today, she was doing very poorly, she did not even want to move much. I wrapped her in a baby blanket, and cuddled her and pet her head until she passed away...

It has not been a good month for me. I already lost my Hazelnut to age & a tumor and my Rosie during an emergency spay for a prolapsed uterus just last week. Fern contracted pneumonia. She's been having respiratory issues since she's getting a little older. Fern was somewhere around 1.5 years maybe 2? I'm not really sure.... she had been doing very poorly the past few days, not taking her medicine in baby food, so I would have to try and get it in her mouth with the oral syringe. She stopped eating... I knew it did not look good. Fern passed away yesterday evening around 5pm...

My spunky girl, I adopted her last April from SRR, along with her sister Olive (RIP). Fern was shy, but she was spunky and territorial in her own cage. She lived with her other SRR sisters. She was my short little pudgy girl.

The sad thing is... Clover, who is already 2 years old, has been getting frail also and I'm pretty sure, contracted pneumonia from Fern. They were both ill, so I had them set up in a hospital cage together and have been giving them their antibiotics in baby food and Ensure, etc. Clover is stronger, but she's barely eating at all during the past 24 hours... which is not good....so please keep Clover in your thoughts, it has been a tough month...

It's not been such a great 24 hours... very early Sunday morning (1am or so) we discovered Rosie had a prolapsed uterus. (It looked a lot like this picture). Unfortunately the vet wasn't open until Monday.... so I had to wait until then to call & make Rosie an appointment.

Also this past weekend Hazelnut wasn't doing so well either. Her tumor had been getting larger and she wasn't as energetic anymore. I had a feeling she would be passing soon and Sunday evening Hazelnut passed away. She was one of my Star's Rat Rescue girls and she traveled 1,500 miles back in August of 2010. Hazelnut was already around 2 years old. She was a very curious girl who always loved getting off the bed to run around and explore. And she loved sleeping in any kind of cardboard box or oatmeal tube that we put in her cage. ♥


Rosie had her appointment at the vet this afternoon. We decided she would go in for an emergency spay. I was pretty nervous already to put her through the surgery considering she would have been 2 years old around June/July. But the only other alternative was having her put to sleep, because her uterus was coming out and the tip of it was already badly infected. So we left Rosie at the vet to be spayed. (I had a female rat, Cinnamon spayed years ago but she was only around 6 months old). Unfortunately, I got a call directly from the vet himself a little later in the afternoon.... Rosie passed away during her surgery. The vet said her uterus was in really bad condition. Sadly we had to go pick up Rosie from the vet. We dropped her off at my parents house to be buried with Hazelnut...

Rosie was so laid back and special. She was my nap rat. She loved taking naps with me. She loved laying near your feet. She was cuddly and would give kisses occasionally. She was such a friendly little rattie and I'm so sad to have lost her so suddenly...  ♥

I adopted Olive in April of this year. She traveled with her sister Fern, all the way from Star's Rat Rescue in South Dakota. Olive was a feisty adventurous rat. About a week ago Olive started having some slight balance issues. She kept tipping over. She was on antibiotics for about a week for treatment of a possible ear infection. She seemed to be getting better and was more active but still having balance issues. She also was losing weight.

Then she took a turn for the worse. I'm pretty sure she had a pituitary tumor, like my rat Spice had years ago. She was very weak the one night when I came from work, she could only hobble a little bit and she would tip over. The next morning she couldn't walk at all. She would lay on her side and move her legs like she wanted to move, but she just couldn't. She stopped eating & drinking. It was so sad because she would lift her head up and stare with her dark eyes and look at you like she wanted to get up and run around, but her body wouldn't cooperate. Olive passed away in the late afternoon yesterday... I only had a very short time with, but I will miss her so much...

Fern & Olive when they lived at SRR

Olive & Fern after arriving from their long journey from SRR

Honey & Olive

Olive the morning before she passed away.

Please meet sweet little Violet. She's a baby PEW. ♥ We got her today. She was a curious little rat with her paws up against the glass staring at us. ♥



I've updated My Pet Rat Page with some new pictures.

Also, Star's Rat Rescue currently has 50+ rats in the rescue, they need help with donations to buy food & other necessities. I've adopted 7 of my rats from SRR. So if you can help contribute please click on the Chip In below to donate! 



You can also join us at the Star's Rat Rescue forum. We would love to have you there to chat about your rats!

I had been a part of the Rat Chatter forums for almost 4 years. I joined back in October 2007 when I got my first two pet rats Sugar & Spice. Eventually, I became a moderator and got to work with a lot of amazing people, like Brittney from Star's Rat Rescue.

Sadly and unexpectedly the Rat Chatter Forums closed on May 5th, 2011. We have still not heard from our good friends that ran and owned the forums and we hope they are alright.

I mentioned to Brittney it would be a good idea to start a forum for her rat rescue, somewhere to connect with adopters and our friends from the RC forums who we had gotten to know over the past 4 years. It took a few days, but the Star's Rat Rescue forum is now up and running. So rattie lovers and SRR Adopters are welcome to join us over at the new forum!

It's been exactly 1 week since my SRR rescue ratties arrived from South Dakota.

Aspen & Curry were introduced to my boys last Monday evening. There was some "wrestling" but no really bad fighting. My boy Fennel is still a bit pouty that he has to share his cage with 2 more ratties, he's such a spoiled boy. My nakkie rat Barley is always pretty laid back so he wasn't too bothered by new brothers. The boys were all living together within 2 days with no issues.

Curry & Aspen

It took about 4 days to introduce my 2 new girls Olive & Fern to the group I have them living with in the bottom half of the Ferret Nation cage. I had to do a few nights of supervised play times with all of them. My girl Iris is territorial and so is Olive so there was some fighting for a few days. As of last night, Olive & Fern are now living with Ivy, Iris, Jasmine & Daisy.

Olive & Fern

For intro's there are a few tricks I do. First off I introduce the new & old ratties in a neutral place, a bathtub, table, chair. I will rub vanilla extract on all of the ratties. I will take bedding and swap it around so the ratties get used to each other's new scents. When I do supervised play time in the cage, I will take out all igloo's, boxes, etc where a rat can be cornered. If I need to, I will also give the most territorial rats a quick bath because it will distract them. Sometime's intro's will be very quick and other times it can take up to a week before you get your new rats living with your current ratties.

Curry in a cardboard tube.

Our Easter was a bit uneventful. My whole family has a really nasty bug going around so F.B. & I had to cook our own little Easter Dinner. We had Tofurky & gravy, corn, green bean casserole, cheesey garlic mashed potatoes & cranberry sauce.

Tonight we picked up my 2 boys and 2 girls from our rat train driver in Philadelphia. Our Star's Rat Rescue rats traveled 1,500 miles from South Dakota to Philadelphia. Brittney the owner of SRR along with 4 other drivers helped get them here! 

My husband and I were out doing errands waiting for our rat drivers call to say when he would be at the Petco to meet us near our house. We just happened to be at the dollar store in that same shopping center when our driver called to say he had arrived.

We picked up my two boys Aspen & Curry. They both look like tan berkshires. They have small circles of white on their bellies. Curry has a broken toe from an injury he got before he was adopted.


My two girls are Olive & Fern. Fern is black capped and Olive is a hooded agouti.


We also picked up another adopters rats for her, we are meeting her tomorrow evening at a Petco in Philadelphia to drop her two girls off to her and finish the SRR Rat Train.


After we got everyone home, we cleaned out their cages, gave them new baby blankets and food and some yogurt peanuts. In a few days we will try moving the boys in with my two boys and my new girls in with my other girls.

Thank you to all the drivers who helped!!!