Brian the rat passed on last night. He had suffered some sort of injury near the base of his tail. We’re not sure what it was, but there was a lot of blood in his cage when we found him. He stuck around for several hours but was clearly in shock from the blood loss, and it was only a matter of time. Unfortunately I woke up this morning to Logan walking down the hall towards my bedroom crying, and knew what had happened.

Brian was the last of our rats; Sniff the rat also died a few weeks ago. As much as they were smelly, dirty animals, the rats were also wonderful pets. They’re very affectionate and gentle, and genuinely intelligent. We all really enjoyed them, particularly Brian. From a very young age it was clear Brian was the more adventurous of the two. He was never afraid of us, and always wanted to come out of his cage to play. He would gently lick your hand when you held him, and would even give you a kiss if you let him. If you stood three or four people in a row and held out your arms, he would run from one person to the next across their shoulders and down their arms. We tested him on this many times to see if he could use this technique to make it back to his cage, and he always did. There was clearly thought inside that little head of his. He bit Logan once, but as Logan says “it wasn’t his fault and he wasn’t mad at him for it”. He even had the common decency not to go to the bathroom on us while he was out, something I can’t say about Sniff.

We’ll be burying him outside later today.