My daughters still remember what we had for dinner the night I brought home Cinnamon and Pepper on a cold, snowy day in early December, 2007. It wasn’t a special meal–wagon wheel pasta with alfredo sauce, peas, and sausage–and at their age, the last two and a half years represents a large fraction of their lives, but they remember it anyway. It was a day of great significance and excitement in our household.
Cinnamon and Pepper are brothers; male rats from the same litter. Pet rats are a special breed, not the same stock as wild rats. They have been bred for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of generations to be playful, smart, and friendly. Cinnamon and Pepper have never been anything less than outstanding in these regards. The girls loved them, made toys for them, wrote songs about them, and talked about them endlessly, although their attention drifted as the boys got older and the novelty wore off.
Rats don’t have a long lifespan. It can vary quite a bit from one rattery to another (some breeders aim for longevity, others for different kinds of coats and markings, others for specific personality traits). At the beginning of their second year, it was clear that the brothers were slowing down, especially Cinnamon. He developed some sort of tumor on his abdomen, and then slowly lost control of his hind legs. He could still pull himself around the cage and up and down the ramps and climb into the hammock for a while, but eventually he became a prisoner of gravity and confined to the lower level of the cage.
Pepper spent most of his time in the hammock, but eventually it became hard for him to climb in and out of the hammock as well. His favorite hiding spot behind their plastic cubby hole became hard for him to get out of, because he started to have a hard time turning around. Pepper started to lose control of his hind legs, as Cinnamon had already done. Pepper hasn’t lost nearly as much mobility as Cinnamon–he can still climb up the ramp to the top level when he wants to, with a sort of snake-like motion–but it is painful to watch.
By March of this year, Cinnamon was little more than skin and bones, and Pepper was starting to lose weight as well. Our plump little boys were now angular. Holding Cinnamon is like holding an origami rat; he’s so light that it’s hard to not keep checking your hands to see whether you’re actually holding anything at all.
One day, we noticed that Cinnamon couldn’t grasp anything with one of his front paws. He could move his paw and propel himself around the cage, but it made eating very difficult for him because he couldn’t hold his food and gnaw on it the way rats typically do. He could only eat small items; things he could fit in his mouth.
Rats are fragile things. They are usually taken by respiratory infections before this stage of their lives. Most rats have chronic infections that eventually overtake them. We have heard Cinnamon and Pepper wheezing almost all of the time for the last few months.
We never expected them to live this long.
Earlier this week, I found Cinnamon under the water bottle. He was trying to drink, but had a hard time raising his head high enough, because he can no longer use either of his front paws to brace himself against the wall. I noticed that he had sores on his shoulder; there’s nothing left between the skin and the bone and I think that the bones are starting to wear through.
Through it all, Cinnamon has always remained friendly and good-natured. If he has been in any pain, he has shown little sign of it, other than some frustration at not being able to eat his usual treats any more.
But this was different. Cinnamon did not look happy. Ordinarily, when I open the door of the cage, the rats come to the door to say hello and be petted. This time, Pepper came very slowly, and Cinnamon barely turned his head.
I lowered the water bottle as far as it could go, but there was nothing more I could do.
We got two rats because rats are very social creatures and suffer profoundly if they have to spend a lot of time alone. Reputable ratteries will not sell rats alone, but will only allow rats to be adopted in sibling groups. Siblings often spend their entire lives together, and it is often a fatal crisis for the other when one of them dies.
Cinnamon and Pepper have spent their lives together; in the past two and half years, they’ve spent less than thirty minutes apart. They are inseparable.
We will not separate them now.
Tomorrow, they go to the veterinarian together, and they will not return to our home. There will be a void in our household for some time. But they will be together, and that, more than anything else, is what home means to them.
