At the start of this week we had to make the decision to say goodbye to Quorra. She’d been slowing down over the last few months — losing weight and starting to look like an old rat — but when she went off her food over the weekend we knew it was time.
When I found a small lump on her ribs at the start of last year we never thought that we would have anywhere near this long left with her. The Galastop kept that lump under control the whole time and, while there may well have been some secondary internal tumours affecting her health at the end, it was old age that caught up with her. She made it to the very respectable age of two and a half; outliving her sister Yori by nine months.
When she joined us she didn’t have any really distinctive personality traits. She wasn’t a jumper or a climber or a biter or a hider; she was just a sweet little ratty (who roaned out her grey and black baby colouring in just a couple of weeks!). And then she got the ear infection which left her with an adorable head tilt and the ability to go round corners like no other rat. Suddenly she was the rat who could escape onto the top of the cage in the blink of an eye, and did so at every opportunity. She took a liking to spiralling her way down my t-shirt, from which vantage point she would often lick my face (going through a phase of sticking her tongue up my nose which was just a bit disturbing) and if she wasn’t licking, she’d be chewing on the neck of the t-shirt.
She grew old gracefully, tolerating the newcomers and putting them in their place with a good power grooming when needed. I will miss that sweet, tilty face.
Mischief & Me 
What a special ratty.