1343: Melancholy Contemplations

Lara, one of our two pet rats, is not very well, and I’m very worried about her. Earlier in the week, she started losing her balance somewhat, with her head tilted over to the side. She was obviously finding it difficult to judge distances and maintain her balance on things, and looked rather wobbly and unsteady when climbing. She has never been the most graceful rat there was — despite her name coming from her being “the climby one” when we first got her and her former cagemate Willow (who was “the shy one”) — but she’s always been happy to leap halfway up the cage  and clamber around, particularly when there’s the prospect of food involved.

The situation continued for a day or two, so Andie and I decided that it would be a good idea to take her to the vet. I don’t mind admitting that the cowardly part of myself was worried about this for the prospect of getting some bad news or, worse, having to have her put to sleep. Fortunately, the prognosis wasn’t awful — there was the distinct possibility that it was just either a chest or ear infection, and so we were given some antibiotic medicine to give her twice a day, which will hopefully clear it up.

We’ve had surprisingly little difficulty giving her the medicine — turns out Lara likes breadsticks enough to not care when one end of them is covered in drugs — but, as antibiotics are wont to do, they seem to have upset her stomach somewhat. It may be my imagination, but it seems like her balance might be slightly better — albeit still not perfect — but her insides are obviously struggling a bit with the antibiotics.

I know that realistically speaking, she is quite an old rat — well over a year old now — and, consequently, probably not much longer for this Earth, but that doesn’t make the prospect of potentially saying goodbye to her any easier, particularly when I don’t know whether or not she’ll be there to greet me in her cheerful rat-like way each morning when I look in on her in the cage. I don’t want her to die. I know that she will, eventually — possibly sooner rather than later if her illness doesn’t improve — but that doesn’t make thinking about it any easier.

Death frightens and disturbs me, you see, whether it’s a person or a small furry creature we’re talking about. (Spiders and daddy long-legs can fuck off, though; they get put up the Hoover. Yes, some lives are worth more than others to me.) I have had relatively little exposure to death over my life, and as such I haven’t quite figured out how I’m supposed to deal with it. I haven’t even been to many funerals — one, to my recollection — and the only dead bodies I have ever seen in my life were that of my family’s first cat Penny, who died in her sleep one night after very obviously saying goodbye to us, and Lara’s former cagemate Willow, who left us well before her time.

Perhaps death and loss gets easier to deal with as you encounter more of it. Perhaps it doesn’t. I don’t know one way or the other yet, and that in itself worries and scares me.

I hope you get better soon, Lara. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to you yet. You are a precious and beloved part of this household, and life won’t be the same without you.

Sorry for the morbid post. This has been rattling around inside my head, though, and I needed to get it out, more as a therapeutic exercise than anything else.