Famous At Last

I opened the door to go to work this morning and taped to the door with duct tape was a note. It said:

My rat is very sick. I don't want her to suffer. Please call me at blah blah number.

Since when did I become the apartment complex vet? I don't know how to diagnose a sick rat. I mean, I could tell if they had an upper respiratory infection because we've had plenty of those here at Chez Insanity. I could probably clean out an abscess, but I wouldn't like it. I can sort of tell the difference between a tumor and a cyst. But that's it. So I called Bruce The Pedophile, who is the owner of the sick rat, back tonight and left a message. Bruce hasn't called me back which might mean rattie went to heaven. I hope not, even though I'm not really crazy about the idea of visiting a known felon's apartment to look at his rat. Stay tuned for more developments in my burgeoning career as a small animal vet. Or call 911 if you don't hear from me in a couple days. I'll be dead in apartment #8.

Am I getting blog mileage out of my rat collection, or what? Here's Celeste, the Naomi Campbell of rats. Lovely to look at, mean as a cornered rattlesnake. That's our girl. Celeste is what rat people call "overly hormonal." Female rats go into heat every five days or thereabouts. I'm pretty sure Celeste is in constant heat. She has been the bane of my existence since the day I brought her home.

One night I came home and she had a piece of fleece from her hammock wound so tight around her foot that her foot had swollen up like a balloon. I had to CUT the fleece off. She ripped LilyAnn's ear in half. She's chewed two very large holes in the base of my $100 cage. She's drawn blood on more rats than I can count. If I hear screaming coming from her cage it's because she's got someone pinned to the ground. She pees on me every chance she gets. And yet, she's still here. Is it possible to be codependent with a rat?