R.I.P. Pokey

Ready or not, here I come!
Pokey - 2004 to 2006

My daughter, Junket, was working at a pet store when she started bringing home rats. Not the ugly, snarly, sharp-toothed, nasty-tempered sewer rats we see in horror movies. No, these were pet rats, in a variety of pretty colors and coat styles.

I don't know how Junket got around my policy of "absolutely no more critters will be brought into this house!" She must have worked on me for weeks, but eventually Sniffy, a brown agouti rat, came home with Junket one day. She had a ruffly, brown/gray coat, sparkling, fiery eyes and tiny pink ears. Her long tail made me instinctively react with aversion, but when I saw her holding a bit of cracker in between her tiny, star-shaped paws and nibbling at it resolutely, I began to fall in love.

Sniffy's long, twitching whiskers, constant lithe movement and comic antics won me over eventually, and I didn't object too strongly when Snowflake and Hambone came home to live with Sniffy. (Rats are social animals, and they need cagemates, preferably from the same litter they were born into.) Some time later, Sprinkles and Pokey came home as well.

When Junket had her own apartment, the first three rats went with her, but I kept Sprinkles and Pokey. (Rats only live from three to five years, and all of Junket's rats eventually succumbed to mammary tumors and old age. It was hard to lose them.)

Sprinkles, our bad luck rat, had been lost for two days in the pet store, attacked and severely injured by one of her sisters after she came home, removed from the original community because of aggression and suffered a bout of "head tilt" last year, which is a common rat ailment resulting in sometimes irreversible circling, off-balance movements. Sprinkles is perfectly healthy today, having recovered almost completely from the illness. Pokey was not so lucky.

Pokey was a sleek, soft rat with a gentle personality. Unlike her naughty, 90mph, always-in-trouble sister, Pokey preferred to climb up Mr. Pseudonym's chest and get petted and fussed over while she chewed the buttons on his shirt. She loved cornbread, melted ice cream and watermelon. After her snack at exercise time, she would sit on a convenient human shoulder and groom herself fastidiously, washing her face with her little paws, licking and smoothing down the fur on her flanks. She wasn't the smartest rat, but she was photogenic and totally cuddly. She was a little doll.

About four weeks ago, Pokey slowly developed the classic symptoms: an awkward, slow, circling movement with the head tilted to one side, falling over frequently, having difficulty eating and difficulty keeping herself clean. By the time she saw the vet after we realized what was happening (and after a holiday weekend), she was far advanced in the illness. The vet did not know if she could be cured, but she prescribed antibiotics and told us to hope for the best. We helped Pokey eat, bathed her and administered her medicine, but she went downhill steadily. By today, she had lost a lot of weight and her fur was sparse and matted. Her left eye was halfway closed and she was showing symptoms of blindness. Unable to clean herself, she was dragging pureéd food and feces all over her cage. It was time she was given rest, since it was apparent she would not recover enough to lead a normal, active life.

I fed Pokey some ice cream, sponged her off and held her close before she was put down. As I rubbed her head, she closed her eyes and ground her teeth--a sign of affection or contentment. I said goodbye to her and wished her well in her next assignment: give back to the Earth what was given to her, nourishing the lifeforms who could use her body and transforming into all she could become.

I feel honored to have known Pokey.