Rat Runt (babies)

by Judi on Feb 11, 2008

Originally uploaded by madaise.

Sunday morning, Em came rushing in to my room and started shaking my foot.. wake up! come quick! I was soooo tired, having slept so poorly the night before.. Why? I asked…

There’s babies!

Just the night before we had something get into a bag of trash that was on our back porch.. so my first thought is babies.. raccoon babies? on our porch? what in the world!? I woke up enough to ask what *kind* of babies…

Rat babies! Otis (momma) and Geraldo had babies!

5 plump little rattlets.. er.. pups.. er kittens.. or well, babies.

Quickly had to separate the momma and babies from the daddy.. and now Em will need to get another sizeable cage to be able to home females in one and males in another.. In about 3 weeks, we’ll have to separate the sexes with the babies.. so early!

Rats, btw, make the sweetest of little critter pets. My kids ask for a hamster, I say “get a rat”.. how about a guinea pig.. “get a rat”… a chinchilla? .. “get a rat”… (though I did not win that argument when it came to Olivia Hedgehog.

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Olivia Hedgehog - self-anointing

by Judi on Feb 11, 2008

Originally uploaded by madaise.

I’ve been making soap and my hands smell nice and yummy… Olivia came out to play and had fun licking my hand.

One of the funny things hedgehogs do is a sort of contorting and twisting, foaming at the mouth and licking their quills.. called “self-anointing”.

This is usually triggered by a new, unusual smell in their home or on their handler.

Olivia must have liked the yuzu scent on my hands… Oh.. take note of her dirty little piggies… how she manages to get that dirty, that quickly boggles my mind.. but it’s definitely time for a bath!

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Enzo and Crohn’s Disease

by Judi on Jan 11, 2008

Originally uploaded by madaise.

I was just going to introduce Enzo our newest addition to the family (as of October).. he’s a 6th month old italian greyhound… he’s my little love, my little snuggler.. he’s a thief.. full of energy and orneriness.. loving, caring… and he’s best known around the house as the “pooping machine”.. ( (you see.. iggy’s are notoriously difficult to house train.. adding insult to injury, Enzo cannot eat anything other than dog food (and don’t even think about switching up the dog food!), otherwise, his poor system gets all out of whack and we end up with 20 piles of nasty poopies in about 6 hours time - that’s TOO much! - oh.. sorry.. did I share too much?… it’s gets better..) )

Just as I was about to share Enzo (altho if you are a semi-frequent visitor here, you have probably seen his picture in my flickr bar).. I started to get sick (as in toss my dinner)… Now.. my whine.. I was diagnosed with crohn’s disease about May 2006.. but I started getting very sick around January of that same year.. so sick, I was losing weight (20 pounds - know me in person? I can’t afford that!), in so much pain.. but without insurance, it’s hard to get much done.

Thanks to my mom, I got the main test done to confirm that yes, I really have crohn’s disease (and apparently it was pretty bad - according to the dr, as if I didn’t know that, lol).. so now I’m on meds (that cost a fortune!).. but over the holidays I switched (per dr) to a different med, one that is much cheaper.. within just a few short weeks I was feeling like I did last January.. so much pain.. and now it’s taking time to get back to where I was around Thanksgiving time…

My whine tonight was feeling sorry for myself.. I hate feeling so sick.. I hate this pain.. but I’m not going to whine.. I’m ok. I haven’t shared much about the crohn’s in the past year.. I don’t know why. I will, I should, I guess?

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Aussie & Whippet Life - Dog So Smart

by Judi on Aug 8, 2007

Sky dog… whose name change of “missy” did not take (we decided she does know her name, but like the whippet, has selective hearing - or rather, selectively comes when she feels like it)… has blended into our family nicely… a few bumps along the way, but overall, it’s been a piece of cake.

Sky is a protective dog and has claimed us, and the house, as “hers”. Not only is she protective, she’s also possessive, namely, it seems, of me… when Bean comes close, Sky hops up (quickly!) and slides right under my feet or chair (tag - I’ve been claimed). The first few times, this came along with a low growl… a few times of telling her that wasn’t OK and it seems to have done the trick, as I haven’t heard any growling towards Bean at all. Of course, it probably helped the other day when Bean snapped at her as if to say “look, I didn’t ask for you to get in my face, step back”… Sky listened.

Whippet Bean and Maggie Cat have taken Sky in stride… a little timid at first, tolerant of Sky’s possessiveness… and a little hissing and spitting from the Cat… all is good. While each party wouldn’t yet claim the other as a ‘friend’, I’d say we’re on our way.

As an aside, take a gander at Dog-So-Smart for dog breed information, adoption, rescue, and just being dog owners in general.

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