Bye Bye Pepper

i had to have my lovely little girl rat pepper pts last night. i had noticed that she had lost weight the weekend before last when i did the rats´ monthly weigh-in and thought this was down to her being a bit timid and the others barging her out of the way at food time so i started to put the rest of the group in the run at dinner time and leave her in the cage with the food so she could have first go at it. friday just gone i got them all out to do my weekly cage clean and she didn´t appear to have lost any more weight and was running round happily with the others. sunday i got them out for free-range time on the sofa and i was nearly sick! she had lost so much weight and looked like a skeleton. i instantly weighed her and she had lost 30g in a week - most of that in the last 2 days by the looks of her!! she was also very unsteady on her feet (much like koda had been with his brain tumor) so i took her to the vet yesterday and found that she had a tumor in her spleen / kidney area. the vet said there was nothing he could do to remove the tumor and it was just sucking the life out of her :-( we only got her from the rescue in july and she was such a sweet natured little girl. i will miss her terribly.