Who’s Queen?! A Rat-sized Elizabethan Collar That Actually Works

Tags

animal health, Batril, Elizabethan collar, finding a vet for your rat, Health, pet care, pet health, Pet Rat, Rat, Rat Physiology, veterinary dispensary

I’ll say this for Bluebell: she’s absolutely irrepressible. When it comes to getting a job done that she thinks needs doing, Bluebell’s motto is “never say die!”

An unhappy but fashionable post-surgical Bluebell

As luck would have it, Bluebell the Poubelle (French for trash can) managed to require a rattie boob job on our trip out West! I feared tumors, but in fact, three of her mammary glands were responding to a nearby nursing mother rat’s hormones and developing milk without Bluebell actually having a littler of her own. This is a real problem, as it can lead to mastitis, nasty milk infections you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. So out those glands had to come. In future, I’ll keep nursing mothers well away from non-lactating females in order to keep the latter firmly in that category!

Happily, we were able to locate a nearby vet who treats rats and knows what he’s doing. This is never an easy task (see blog post “Paging Dr. Doolittle”), and we were lucky to find Dr. Cohen – AND to find that he isn’t half way to Tucson, but only a few miles hense. Huzzah!

The surgery was a snap. The recovery process was hell. Bluebell is not a fan of surgical glue, it seems, and had managed to trim all of hers off of two separate incisions within hours of coming out of surgery, thus completely opening up her wounds. Gross.

After this has happened, you can kiss all hope of a sterile incision goodbye, so it’s a bit iffy to close that wound back up, assuming that you can keep it that way when the patient is hell-bent on removing all glue or stitching and has razor-sharp surgical tools for teeth and bodily flexibility a cat would envy. Plan B was to just leave her alone and hope the wounds would close on their own in short order, an event that often happens due to rats’ high metabolic rate. They really do heal from most injuries amazingly fast.

Not this time, though. Two days later, Bluebell’s surgical sites still looked ragged and gaping, and it was time for plan C. The good doc stitched her up internally this time, and his brilliantly clever vet tech rigged up the above pictured Elizabethan collar to keep the Poubelle on the straight an narrow…or at least give her something more worrying to keep her occupied while her stitches set and healed.

Apparently, the device was  fashioned from the narrowing end of a large syringe cover, with the point of contact covered with cloth medical tape to prevent chaffing and discourage her from being able to get her claws under it. The brilliance of the thing lies in the rat’s tendency to PUSH against the cage bars in an attempt to slide the collar over her body and off the back, rather than primarily to PULL at it to get it off. Which, of course, pushes the collar back into place against her shoulders and undoes any progress she may have made in getting it over her ears and head. The tough plastic stood up to a week’s worth of scratching and was simply perfect in keeping her away from her stitches!

She did, of course, develop a full compliment of the expected complications as a result of the lost sterility, hefty seromas (buildup of fluid under the surgical site) that required draining and a small area of abscess. When the abscess opened a section of the stitches again, I just rinsed out the cavity with sterile saline, packed it full of granulated sugar, and hit Bluebell with a round of Batril to prevent systemic infection.

Belly-rat didn’t like the collar one bit, and she never gave up trying to rid herself of it. But she did simmer down after a few days into what was probably as close to resignation as Bluebell will ever come. I spent as much time as I could comforting and petting and making much of her and did quite a bit of hand-feeding since the collar limited her range of movement for eating.  She lost some weight, but could more than afford to, having gotten a bit chunky of late. After a week, we gently removed the collar and allowed such licking as she elected to do in response to what remained of the abscess. It’s been a slow recovery, as her wounds were truly raw and gaping, but she’ll only have a small scar under one arm and none at all under the other.

I highly recommend the Elizabethan for particularly tenacious post-surgical rats. Why doesn’t someone manufacture these things? Huzzah for the excellent vet techs out there who, like Miss Poubelle, never say die!

Rat Tip #2A: Additional No-fail No-spill Dish Options

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Camptown Races, Juice, Juicer, pet care, pet food dishes, pet health, Pet Rat, pet rat cages, pet rat care, pet rats, pets, pocket pets, Rat, Ratties

Yep, you guessed it: necessity was once again the mother of invention. A sink full of dirty dishes is an ugly thing when combined with vehement demands for carrot juice emanating from two cages of insistent ratties. And yet sticky orange cages, to say nothing of sticky orange rats, isn’t by any stretch of the imagination “a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.” Yikes! All cigar ashtrays dirty, Arab Spring reenactment imminent…what to do, what to do? A desperate rifling of cabinets produced two alternatives, both of which proved just dandy:

1) LID FROM CANDLE JAR (SANS PLASTIC GASKET)

I can’t stand waste and really love these jars, so I go to the trouble of draining residual candle wax and then use these virtually indestructible containers for storage of moth-ish staples, dried beans, a wee bit of leftover sauce or soup, hardware odds and ends, and what have you. I must have a dozen of these sitting around, and somehow there are always more lids than jars.

Great solution for a small number of rats, in this case three does. Pry off the plastic gasket, which shouldn’t be on the menu. Virtually tip-proof. Since the low sides offer little incentive to tilt toward one’s self when lapping and the center of gravity is virtually at ground level, one can’t really tip, anyway, but can only flip. Which isn’t to say they won’t do so. But why should they when there is sweet, golden orange carrot nectar to be lapped up? Perhaps later….

2) MAMAW’S OLD-FASHIONED GLASS JUICER

I love how these glass gadgets look, and when my beloved Mamaw’s ca. 1948 glass juicer came up for grabs, I grabbed. Since I also have a super-cool levered juicer that is much more efficient and easier on the wrists, though, Mamaw’s glass juicer collects dust.

Not anymore! Six big bruising boys can belly up to this juice bar without anyone having to cue the pianist to play “Camptown Races,” which never seems to break up bar fights anyway, but only make them even more fun to watch. And speaking of fun to watch, there’s something about my boys shoulder to shoulder while sucking up tasty juices and soups from what looks for all the world like a big rat fountain that makes me laugh. Not that Mamaw would approve. She’d be horrified. But she would, I think, be just ever so slightly more pleased that her old juicer is still seeing some use.

Mamaw, my loathsome vermin thank you from the bottom of their rattie little hearts.

Remembering the Fiery Tybalt

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animal health, Characters in Romeo and Juliet, Companionship, Daleks, Death of a Pet, Downton Abbey, Dr. Who, euthanasia, Grief, Grieving for a Pet, James Bond, King John Characters, Mercutio, Neutering, pancreatic tumor, pet care, pet health, Pet Rat, pet seizures, Rat, Rat Physiology, rattie, Romeo and Juliet, solitary confinement, Tybalt, veterinary ethics, William Shakespeare

"What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee."

Ah, my Tybalt, my own personal bodyguard, a fierce heart in a small body. How I will miss the Good King of Cats. Never have I seen a rat with more affection for human beings, matched only by his indifference at best, and at worst, loathing for other rats. This is what comes of keeping a rat by himself, particularly in his first six months of life, when he either learns or does not learn how to be a rat from other rats. It’s an absolute crime, the emotional damage it does to them to be kept solitarily. It gets so that they live only for you and only exist in the fullness of their personalities when interacting with you, which means they spend the vast majority of their days and nights virtually catatonic–or manically frustrated. This is called psychotic dependency in humans–I call it something akin to torture to do it to a rat.

Tybalt did take on a more sanguine approach in his later years toward his cage mates, particularly after he was neutered, and especially toward the end, when I moved him in with the girls to avoid open conflict with his own personal Mercutio,  Young Arthur, who has really come into his own recently as the dominant buck. Tybalt never had any interest in politics. He just wanted to be left the hell alone. Or to be with me. He was jealous of the dogs and puffed and hissed if they tried to get into my lap when he sat on my shoulder. Willow, the Siamese cat, lived in mortal dread of his vicious bite if her nose came too close to his. I do think he could have taken them all in a fair fight. And if you’ve read his profile, you know what murderizing he has done to thieving little mousies that made the fatal error of venturing into his sphere of influence!

But of all the rats in the colony, Tybalt was the most loving and patient with me. He willingly sat on my shoulder, nested in my lap, burrowed under my hoodie on chilly nights, or curled up under my chin for hours at a time, for all the world looking as though he were enjoying a night of beer/pizza/telly. He was partial to British programming–seemed to particularly enjoy Downton Abbey but absolutely loathed Daleks, with their incessant robotic screaming of that horrid word: “EX-TERMINATE! EX-TERMINATE!” Tybalt was not a fan of Dr. Who.

I forgave him that, though, as he was so endlessly willing to submit to “fur therapy,” allowing me to stroke his shiny, silky-smooth fur and tickle his ears for lengthy periods of time almost as a form of meditation, until the cares of the world seemed to slide off my shoulders and I began to feel human again. I thought only stiff martinis had that effect at the end of the day, but there you are: a little rattie love is something to value. I’ll miss Tybs most at the end of long days of editing and teaching, the primary tasks of which my days are constructed. That’s a round-about way of saying I’ll miss this saucy boy every day.

When I got Tybalt, he was in a sorry state. He bounced back into a remarkable health very quickly once on a good diet and after the lice and fleas had been dispatched. Lots of rats are cute, but Tybalt was downright handsome. He was a handsome beast, the James Bond of rattitude, moving through the world in his tuxedo pelt with attractive, impervious disdain and a barely concealed taste for violence. In the end, Young Arthur, sadder but wiser, left the supreme ratcatcher well alone.

When Tybalt’s end came, it came quickly. And thank goodness for that. He seemed to suffer a seizure of some sort while I was holding him one evening last week. There were no symptoms of a stroke when the seizure let up, but he had a massive post-ictal hunger and thirst. He did better after he ate, too, which I found mysterious. My good vet friend, Jenny, was the first to localize the problem to the pancreas, rather than some sort of brain injury, saying that pancreatic disturbances can lead to seizures. She wondered about diabetes. Sczepanski, the wonder vet, fingered hypoglycemia as the likely candidate, probably brought on by a fast-growing pancreatic tumor. I am waiting for a necropsy report will settle the matter.

Be that as it may, Tybs had his first seizure that I know of at about midnight, suffered more closely clustered seizures throughout the night, and was clearly ready to be done with it by sunrise. Choosing to euthanize was no choice at all. It was raining cats and dogs as we left the house, which seemed right somehow. Tybalt and I shared a chocolate milkshake in the car on the way to the vets, and he went under in throws of ecstasy at being stroked and petted and made much of and with a tummy full of chocolate ice cream .

Tybalt. Was ever a rat more properly named? Zounds, he was indeed “a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat to scratch a man to death! A braggart, a rogue, a villain that fights by the book of arithmetic!” He was at the vortex of every fight; never, EVER forgave a slight; and nearly tore the lungs out of any young pup who failed to respect his solitute. He was the very devil, and a complete love, and I shall miss him terribly.

DO NOT KEEP RATS IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. Rats are social creatures that live in large extended families in the wild. They must have the companionship and physical comfort of other rats, or their minds break and they become sociopaths. Tybalt is a case in point. And that’s it. That’s all there is to it. Poor lonely boy. He will be sorely missed.

Rat Tip #2: The Winston Churchill Spill-proof Food Dish Solution

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a woman scorned, Baccarat crystal, boef bourguignon, Cigar, cigar ashtray, cigar pleasure, cigar rituals, James Cagney, pet care, Pet Rat, pet rodents, rat cage accessories, Ratties, revenge, Tobacco

About the 907th time I had to mop up overturned soup, pureed peas, yogurt, tomato juice, oatmeal, and the like, it suddenly occurred to me to devote some cognitive activity to the task of thinking through the problem. Either that, or I ran out of little side dish bowls and grabbed one of my cigar ashtrays off the shelf in sheer desperation to get breakfast on the table for a cage full of vermin vehemently protesting their cruel treatment and impending starvation. That’s a long row to hoe for a fat squishy plop-osaurus like Henslowe or the dumpling twins, Antonio and Sebastian, but the little blighters manage it. First thing in the morning, I just want to get them fed and get some coffee in me before that day’s fresh brand of hell gets fully under way. Yep, not a morning person. How’d you guess?

Regardless of the source of inspiration, be it deductive reasoning or sheer laziness at NOT having run the dishwasher the previous night, I came up with the idea of feeding wet and potentially messy foods out of large, heavy, tip-proof, and inexpensive cigar ashtrays. Ok, I admit it: not always so inexpensive. I sometimes use a rather attractive Baccarat crystal ashtray that otherwise gathers dust in my china cabinet, a gift from a former dusky paramour. But you know what? The bastard ran around on me; his gift has now proved more serviceable a selection for me than he ever was [smutty inference entirely intentional]. He was a complete rat in the old-fashioned, James Cagney-esque sense of the word. Since he had the vulgarity to make it clear this gift was a reward for particularly memorable services rendered, and since he feared and loathed the beloved rodents–a sure sign of depravity in any man, dusky and well-endowed or otherwise–it seems an appropriate gesture. I hope he’s stalking my blog right now. >:- ]

Dear former dusky paramour, did I look like a cheap gangster’s floozy to you, really? In which case, for the same price I’d rather have had the always appropriate traditional chorus girl payoff, the diamond bracelet, and continued using my perfectly functional $5 Walmart ashtray.

What (you might well ask) are you doing with cigar ashtrays lying all over the place, Dovey?

Well, the truth of the matter is that I occasionally enjoy a good cigar, particularly on the front porch or in the garden…keeps the mosquitoes away a hell of a lot better than toxic, smelly citronella candles, I can tell you. And the oral pleasure of a plump, soft, lightly-fermented roll of tobacco leaves between the teeth is not to be underrated, not to mention the heady experience of roiling sweet smoke over the palate and all of the delightful rituals that surround cigar smoking. I may only smoke half a dozen or less a year these days, but when I do, I don’t intend to spend all evening searching high and low for an acceptable and aesthetically pleasing ashtray, nor do I want to go picking up cigar butts all over the garden.

Note to the reader: you are not my mother, and the task of upbraiding me for “that unhealthy, disgusting, expensive habit” belongs exclusively to that good lady. No comments from the militantly non-smoking section, please.

$5 is significantly less than a good food bowl goes for at Petsmart: no need to pull out the Baccarat unless it just tickles you, as it does me, to feed your rats out of a “breakfast bowl” that cost a certifiable jackass significantly more than a grand, as some sort of  perverse metaphorical revenge when he probably doesn’t even remember what was so damned erotically memorable to begin with. Bitterness is not a pretty thing in a woman, but as a woman scorned, I’d feel better if I felt worse about it: the ratties seem to appreciate their posh dinner service, they couldn’t tip one of these babies over with a bulldozer, and their velvety tongues playing over the smooth surface of that 4 lbs. of hand-blown, lovingly polished crystal perfection pleases me beyond reckoning. Pleasure is a hard enough commodity to come by before noon for us theatre folk.

And I’m not kidding about the $5 ashtray at Walmart. It’s actually very simple and pretty, and I keep one on hand in my potting shed as well as in the vicinity of the rat cage. Try one, yourself. They save a heck of a lot of time and unpleasantness…have you ever tried to get dried-on boeuf bourguignon out of a Berkie’s white belly fur? It’s not a pretty process.

Rat Tip #1: ratties go gaga for cow hooves!

Tags

Chew Toys, Cow Hooves, Home, pet care, Pet Rat, Rat Care, Rat Toys, Ratties

Our Hero

Ah, the heartache of chew toys. The edible hut or tunnel is chewed to bits in an evening, and what’s left smells like rat piddle for the rest of its days. The extra-special and extra-pricey genuine apple wood chew sticks and other posh solutions are unceremoniously ignored.

But not so one’s angora sweater, which one oh-so-foolishly hung on the back of the door next to the rattie cage and then swung open on one’s way to class, dangling the sweater a tantalizing four inches from our wily, resourceful friends. That, dear readers, was a sad, sad day, requiring many a shot of better than average bourbon to take the edge off of one’s grief.

Alas, neither let us not dwell on the fate of the research paper that foolishly came to rest on top of the cage “just for a minute” when the bed and desk were too covered with books to afford it room. Oh, the horror, the humanity….well, anyway, what a mess. Makes them really hard to grade, too, sorting through all those little drifts of literary toil. Got a rat? Then you’ve got a document shredder.

The truth remains: rats will chew something. They must. Whenever possible, it will be something not created for that purpose. Often it is something weird–the mystery lipstick and the hand spade incidents come to mind.  Occasionally it is something dangerous–an electrical cord, a toxic plant, sub-standard paint from the cage bars: the mind reels.

Our only hope to avert disaster is to jump into the fray and provide ample options for chewing that, though intentionally “placed” by us, do not broadcast our hidden agendas. Rats resent being “managed” and perversely refuse to cooperate whenever they detect mendacity or condescension. I’m convinced of it.

If you doubt it, try taking a rat’s picture. She’ll sit there posing for you oh so prettily and nibbling daintily on the cream cheese you are using to keep her still, and then ZOOM, just as you snap the photo, she’s off like the blur that will be your picture.

Yes, the task of engaging a rat in a productive activity is very much akin to sneaking vegetables into recipes when preparing food for kids.

Or like my Mamaw’s “tricky sandwiches.” That sainted woman, who wouldn’t tell a lie to save a kitten’s life, perpetrated gross fraud on generations of grandchildren by turning the heel slice of a loaf of bread inside out when making peanut butter sandwiches, so that her victims wouldn’t know they’d been handed a sandwich that was, quite literally, ALL CRUST! Monstrous. I suppose living through a depression will do things like that to your character.

So right. Angora sweaters aside, you can spend a fortune on chew toys, only to have your little darlings destroy them utterly in a night, or worse yet, ignore them altogether and turn their attention in destructive directions. The trick is to place things in their paths that are interesting, in and of themselves, but to do it nonchalantly, as though you couldn’t care less whether your rats find the objects engaging and decide to chew on them or no. Rats like to chew on interesting things, things that pose questions and present a challenge. They love to puzzle over objects: What is this marvelous thing? Does it smell funny? Where has it been? How might it feel between my teeth if I take a little nibble just so? Can I take it away from Violet without her beating the crud out of me?

These are interesting questions to a rat.

I once had a rat who needed, for reasons both diplomatic and expeditious, to live alone for a period of time, to lay low, as it were. To keep him occupied and stimulated while I was away, I would place things on or near his cage on purpose–a head of lettuce from the garden, a cardboard shoe box, an entire hard-shelled winter squash, a deflated leather basketball, a full-sized bath towel. How the little devil managed to get these items through those skinny bars and chew them to smithereens in the time it took to teach a two hour college course is beyond me. He was so busy with his demolition tasks that he gave up, altogether, his heretofore favorite pass-time of baiting my dogs and then biting their noses viciously through the bars. Eventually, the dogs no longer found him to be interesting, either, and went off to torment the cat.

But at last, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Best chew toy ever. No more $20 wooden houses to piddle on or oh-so-precious prissy-ass chews to ignore. The cow hoof has arrived, providing a solution both elegant and economical. Cow hooves, designed as dog chews, are tough, no-toxic, small enough to be carried around and scuffled over, cannot enter or leave the cage without your direct assistance, and can be washed in hot soapy water. And best of all, they smell interesting.

Hell, they smell fascinating! At least to a rat.

Cow hooves last forever. And when the rats start to get a little bored with their hooves, I switch the boys’ hoof to the girls’ cage, and vice versa. Diabolical! Tricky! Mamaw would be so proud. Those hooves become interesting all over again, redolent of mystery, danger, and the opposite sex. Rats who’ve never showed the slightest interest in chewing anything but water bottles and suede jackets suddenly become worshipers of the sacred cow. All night long, I hear my ratties gnashing away at their beloved hooves. That distinctive sound, along with the soft whisper of a Wobust Wodent Wheel wotating through the night, makes up my lullaby. Less squabbling, more peaceable and cooperative chewing–it’s heaven.

My dear cows, trust me: your sacrifice has not been in vain. “It is a far, far better thing that you do, than you have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that you go to than you have ever known.”

Bovine, I salute you.



The Pet Poem Made Palatable

Tags

Literature, pet care, pet poetry, Pet Rat, pets, poem, Poetry, Rat, rattie, TS Eliot

The poetical rat reads a defense of pet poesy

Oh, how I do hate pet poetry. Pet poems tend to go down like vast mouthfuls of granulated sugar that must be swallowed in one go. Bleh. That “Rainbow Bridge” thing makes me want to toss up every time I run across it, which is every time I go to a vet’s office anywhere in the United States. Pet poetry = gag me with a spoon. Even T. S. Eliot’s pet poems sucked the great wazoo. I mean really–have you sat through a production of “Cats” as an adult? Lord Jesus take me on up to heaven now, before someone gives me tickets.

But here is a poem on the subject of pet ownership that I rather like, courtesy of the ever-excellent Rat Guide. The cosmic metaphor is a bit much, but the ideas and sentiment are both subtly rendered and satisfactorily profound. Read on, my equally jaded friend:

You Are My World
My small life is in your hands.
Every drop of water I drink, each morsel of food I consume, every
word and touch is delivered by you.
(You are the sun in my sky)

My daily safety is in your hands.
It is you who provides my companions, controls my environment,
determines the quality of my care.
(You are the moon above me)

My entire destiny is in your hands.
I offer in return loyalty, love, companionship, and my complete trust.
It is all I have to give.
(You are the stars that shine down)

Not bad, eh? That’ll make you meditate on whether you’ve been changing the bedding and refreshing the water bottle as often as you ought, won’t it? Well done, Rat Guide poetry editors. Food for thought without a mouthful of sugar. Well done.

Candy for Your Babies: doxycycline medicine balls for your pet rat

Tags

doxycycline, Medicine Ball Recipe, mycoplasma, Peanut butter, pet care, Pet Rat, pet rats, Pneumonia, Ratties, treating sick pets

 

Peanut butter doxy balls are an excellent and economical way to get bitter tasting doxycycline down your rat’s throat, whether for treating respiratory distress or daily as a prophylaxis to prevent future flair-ups.

Far and away, my rattie’s favorite time of day is “CANNN-DY TIME!” Each night before I go to bed and just as they are getting up, each and every rat over the age of six or seven months gets a delicious treat in the form of a flour-coated peanut butter ball about the size of a garbanzo bean, cleverly laced with doxycycline. The daily dose helps prevent outbreaks of mycoplasmosis or pneumonia. It has not failed to register that my recent loss came at the end of a week in which I had run out of medication and was not diligent about replacing it quickly.

According to the excellent Rat Guide:

The prognosis for rats with pneumonia is very grave, and will require long term antibiotic therapy. Due to the belief that Mycoplasma is probably never eliminated entirely from the airways in rats, and because it is a contributor to the development of pneumonia, it often becomes necessary to use pulse antibiotic therapy (long term, intermittent, dosing), or a continuing maintenance schedule of antibiotics for rats with chronic Mycoplasmosis.

I don’t think that pulsing really gets the job done for rats with a tendency toward mycoplasmosis. Call me a reactionary war-mongering Texan, but I’m for bombing the little bastards into a parking lot and keeping them that way. I’m all about daily dosing, which has worked wonders on my troops. Fear not: for whatever reason, rats don’t seem to develop immunity to doxycycline over time the way humans do.

Medi-balls are easy to make and are so tasty that they make rats literally jump for joy. It’s worth it to mix up peanut butter treats even if you aren’t medicating them, and I do so when I have rats that are too young for doxycycline, a drug which can adversely affect bone development in rats that are still growing. Otherwise, the babies feel left out.

There are several recipes on line, but mine’s the best and the easiest. I will be mixing up a batch as we go along to make sure I don’t forget a step, such as “mix in medicine.” Forgive the stream of consciousness style of my instruction. I’m nearly as tall a Julia Child and will, for the amusement of my dogs, cat, and rats, all of whom are looking on, use my “Julia” voice whenever it seems appropriate.

YOU WILL NEED:

• A small bowl or ramekin for mixing
• A fork or tiny whisk for blending meds w/liquids before forming dough
• Optional: a pastry cutter for ease in mixing flour into peanut butter
• A sharp knife for slicing up properly sized balls before rolling them in your hands
• Snack-sized zip lock bags or very small containers for storage of balls in refrigerator
• Powdered doxycycline in capsule form (100 mg per capsule is the most economical)
• An ounce or so of water as needed to activate doxy powder and keep peanut butter mixture wet enough to work with
• A few drops of vanilla-butter-nut flavoring (optional but tasty!)
• Smooth peanut butter (I prefer the ultra-tasty Naturally More brand, which I eat myself and which contains loads of additional goodies and nutrients. Available in normal grocery stores)
• White flour for mixing into the balls and also for dusting the rolling surface and the finished balls (How much? Your peanut butter mixture will tell you.)

TO MAKE DOXYCYCLINE MEDI-BALLS:

RECOMMENDED DOXY DOSAGE: 2.5 MG PER KG OF RAT (Up the dosage to 5 mg per kg of rat if you are treating an active case of respiratory distress.)

1) Plan to make enough balls for a 14 day supply. Carefully separate the top from the bottom of the capsule and allow powered medication to spill into the ramekin.

2) Add about an ounce of water to medication and use a tiny whisk or a fork to thoroughly blend medication with water. Take care that all of the medication has completely dissolved in the water.

3) Add a cap-full or so of the vanilla-butter-nut flavoring, which will somewhat lessen the medicine smell of the mixture and turn it (insert “Julia” voice here) a lovely saffron color.

4) Use the fork to mix any separated oils back into the peanut butter in the jar and lift a big glop into the bowl of medicine. How much is a “big glop?” Well, that depends upon the strength of your medication. If you use 50 mg capsules, you need less; 100 mg capsules, which will make twice the number of balls, require more so that the balls are not too tiny to easily work with. Remember, we’re shooting for garbanzo-sized balls. Blend liquid and peanut butter until you can sleep the sleep of the just knowing you have blended the medication in evenly and thoroughly.

5) Put the lid back on the peanut butter jar before you leave to answer the door, so that your pernicious little fox terrier bitch does not eat up half the jar by the time you get back. Damn and blast.

5) When you’ve blended all of the liquid into the peanut butter, stir vigorously, which will thicken the mixture to roughly that of room-temperature cookie dough.

6) Add as much flour to the mixture as you can mix into the dough without making it crumbly, first with the fork (or a pastry cutter, if you prefer), and then by kneading with your hands. Remember, flour must be thoroughly and evenly cut in before you start kneading, so that the doxy will be evenly distributed.

7) Role dough into a ball. You will know you have used enough flour if the dough ball is not noticeably oily and yet not so dry that it cannot be easily worked. If it is too dry and crumbly for the little bits at the bottom of the bowl to be easily worked into the big ball, spread it all out in the bowl again, add a bit more water, and re-blend. Crumbly medi-balls are a problem.

8 ) Give yourself a headache while figuring proper dose per ball based on the weight of your rats, and then mathematically computed number of balls you ultimately want to end up with, depending upon the strength of the medication and the number of capsules you emptied into that ramekin. It’s probably a good idea to do this before you start. Um, yeah. Next time.

9) Having forgotten how many capsules you used for this batch, sort through disgusting kitchen trash until you’ve counted up empty capsule shells. I used two 100 mg capsules this time, apparently.

10) Note: there are two points in the process of making medi-balls that involve a certain amount of “fudging,” and this is one of them. My smallest doe, the diminutive and whip-smart Bluebell, weighs a mere 400 grams (.88 lbs) at eight months of age, while my largest buck, the porcine Henslowe, tips the scale at a whopping 720 grams (1.58 lbs). Merciful heavens, what a fatty! Right. So fudge #1 is to split the difference and decide upon an “average” weight for dosing purposes. Fudge #2: don’t sweat it if some balls end up larger than others. I make “doe balls” and “buck balls,” which are about a third larger than those I make for the does. So here we go: two 100 mg capsules at 2.5 mg/kg of rat, figuring an average rat weight of 500 grams or .5 kgs (because it’s easy to equate), means I should get 28.5 (let’s say 28 so I don’t have to shoot myself in the head at this point) balls per capsule, which means I need to end up with 56 balls when I’m done. Piece of cake.

11) Recover from splitting headache from trying to figure out the dose and proceed to form the dough ball into two, three, or four equally sized smaller balls as needed to work with more easily. If you’re OCD, you can use a gram scale to compare sizes of dough balls, but I just go with a visual check and how they feel in my hand. Opinions about proper dosing for rats varies somewhat, anyway.

12) Place one of the balls onto a lightly floured surface and roll into an evenly sized log with your hand. Slice the log into the correct number of evenly sized chunks. Form chunks into balls by rolling in your hand and coat each ball with flour so that they don’t stick to each other when stored.

13) Put floured balls into a ziplock bag (the smaller the better–too many balls create too much weight and press together into a floury mess). I always put a few tablespoons of flour in the empty ziplock and toss the balls like shake-n-bake as they go into the bag, so that each is liberally coated with flour and will not stick.

BON APPETIT, RATS AIMÉS!

NOTES:

♥ Doxycycline balls will keep up to two weeks in the refrigerator. Make enough for two weeks when you make them so you aren’t having to whip up a batch any more often than necessary.

♥ MAKE CERTAIN that each rat eats his or her own ball entirely and that no thuggish cage mate (Bluebell!!!) mugs another for her treat. If a rat can steal a medi-ball, a rat will steal a medi-ball.

♥ Do not give doxycycline to rats that haven’t finished growing unless they are seriously ill, and then only at the instruction of your vet. I start rats on the doxy regimen at somewhere between six and eight months of age.

♥ You should include yogurt containing active cultures in the diet of any rat that is on an antibiotic regimen to keep the gut flora healthy.

♥ Explain to your vet that the doxy prescription is for prophylactic care and ask for refills on the original prescription. You shouldn’t have to call the vet each time you need a refill. Conversely, don’t purchase more doxy than you can use in a year, and be sure to check the expiration date carefully on your drugs.

♥ Dose ratties at the same time each day, or close to it, for maximum drug efficacy. Your rats will soon begin “reminding” you each day that it’s CANNNN-DY TIME, never fear!