Natalie is dead

[igenlode]

Natalie wasn't anyone special to most people — just a pet rat, and a sick one at that. She was ill in July, and had probably never really recovered from that: when she died, she had been on antibiotics for two and a half weeks and off them for the last four days, after the vet and I agreed that she hadn't shown any improvement during her last course of Baytril, and was probably already as well as she was ever going to get, now. I don't think stopping the antibiotics made any difference, as the damage to her lungs had already taken place. She was bright-eyed and wriggly, but she was often short of breath and sometimes had choking attacks.

She had another attack last night, and when I came in this morning I was intending to see if she needed to go back for another check-up at the vet's surgery. But she was already dead. She must have died some time between 8am and 10.30am on Friday, October 5th 2007.

Natalie was always my favourite among the rats. She was a pretty little 'agouti', which means a rat-coloured rat with boot-button-black eyes and a shaded coat of reddish-brown, beige and black. She had little pink feet, and cold ears that I used to lick for her, because she used to lick mine. When you picked her up she would turn her head and nuzzle your hand, and she liked to climb up trouser-legs — inside and out! — or nibble people's shoelaces. In the last few weeks, while she was ill, she would climb up into my lap and use her long nose to lever up layers of clothing until she could curl up on my stomach and share body warmth: I used to call her my warmrat.

I don't have any pictures of Natalie, and rats aren't particularly easy to draw at the best of times; but here is a picture of her namesake, darkhaired and shy. This is the image from which Natalie was christened.