About 20 years ago I had a sweet little pet rat named Freda — last name Katz. Freda was one of the most affectionate, loyal and intelligent critters I have ever had the pleasure to meet, and this is Zeke’s human saying that, and Zeke set the affectionate loyal and intelligent critter bar pretty damned high.
I got Freda as a young thing from the East Bay Vivarium, where she was being sold as snake food. I paid a couple bucks to rescue her from that less than salubrious fate, and then about thirty more for cage and litter and food bowl and water bottle, and brought her home, where she was an immediate hit with my housemates.
Rats sold as snake food are often inbred, the rodential equivalent of puppy mill progeny, and they have a tendency toward less robust health than do rats in their wild state. Freda, for instance, developed a whole series of benign mammary tumors, all but the last of which were removed surgically. Those tumors are common among many strains of domestic rats.
That’s what did her in, eventually, when I just couldn’t face the thought of putting her through yet another surgery. Until then, though, in between visits to the vet, she was a happy little thing. She moved in with Becky when I did, and she adored Becky. She even leapt on a snake once to defend Becky. This was a bit awkward. The snake was Becky’s pet. We kept them separate a bit more diligently afterward. Freda’s cage was on a desk next to our apartment’s front door. She never tried to jump off the desk, and eventually we just left her cage door open at all times so she could roam around the desktop. We’d come home and Freda would be at the door, waiting for us, standing on her hind legs to greet us. Every now and then she’d sneak things into her cage that were not precisely hers. I cleaned her cage once and found a few dollars she’d taken out of my wallet, which I’d left on the desk sometime earlier. They were still folded, and still immaculately clean. I used them to buy her some fruit. It seemed only fair.
One day I was sitting on the couch with Freda on my shoulder, and reaching up to pet her I noticed she had a little abscess on her side. She got them every so often. They weren’t usually all that big a deal, but this one had gone undetected for probably a couple of days. She winced when I touched it. Her vet had showed me how to treat the abscesses, and that’s what I did: we went to the bathroom to get a warm, wet washcloth and some peroxide, then went back into the living room where the light was good enough for us to work. A minute of examination, with Freda being remarkably cooperative, and I found the tiniest little spot where the abscess had leaked just a bit. I scratched at it with a fingernail and it started draining.
The lower pressure made for less pain, which made Freda very happy. She relaxed while I worked to make sure her abscess drained completely, palpating her side gently and talking to her the whole time. The plan was to get as much of the discharge drained as possible and then daub the area with peroxide. Before I was halfway through, though, the phone rang. It was my mother.
“Hi Chris,” she said. “Whatcha doing?”
“Squeezing pus out of a rat,” I replied.
There was a very long silence at the other end of the phone.
I’m a little surprised that your mother hadn’t come to expect things like that by then.
Freda sounds like she was a real pal. It’s amazing the connections that can be made between humans and other animals if we just take the time to understand them.
It appears I have overlooked rats as a potentially valuable friend.
Bill:www.wildramblings.com
i used to keep rats as pets before i got sick; it wasn’t a home without a rat.
so thanks for this.
In every life, there is a defining moment when we discover what the name of our autobiography will be.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to say that to my mother ...
Hank, that’s one of the funniest things I’ve read on this blog. :)
Dang, what a story! Made my day a little better to read this. Thanks for sharing.