My sweet Louie...

My little man lost his battle at 11:05 last night due to a pituitary tumor. I held him in my arms after I got home up until he took his last breath. It's killing me. I miss him so, so much. He and his brother Leo that passed earlier this year were honestly the sweetest rats I've ever met in my entire life. I've never been as close to rats as I was to them, and because of that my sister and I will probably never own rats again. We get too attached and they just don't live long enough. We're going to spend as much time with Merle as we can to keep him happy. I'm just done with rats. Their short lives bring endless love and happiness, but too much pain in the end. 

I love you so much Louie, I will probably never love a rat the way I loved you.

2014-2016

Keeping my mind off of the obvious...

So, LaVaughn and I went to Poplar Bluff today. Mainly because we wanted to get out of the house for a while, but also to keep our mind off of losing Leo. We did our usual run - Hastings, Petco, food, then home.

We got Carl and Injured Daryl from Hastings -- they're part of series 4 of the POP! Vinyls, now we just need the other 3, which are extremely expensive, go figure. After that we headed to Petco where we got a new rat. There, I said it... we got another rat. We weren't doing this for ourselves, we were doing this for Louie.

I've researched and talked to numerous rat owners and literally everyone said to get another rat. Louie will get depressed and end up mourning himself to death -- that's what Evan did, remember? So we did it, we got one.

We said we would only get one if there was one that stood out. Long story short, there was. Even the guy at the store grabbed the rat that we were eyeing. So yeah, it was meant to be.

And might I say that introductions went EXTREMELY well!

Welcome to the brood, Merle. You'll have the best life we can possibly give you while you're here.

Everyone say hello to, Merle:

I love fat Louie.

The size difference is insane.

Some glider cuteness:

And lastly, our new Walking Dead POP! Vinyls:

No time to say goodbye...

Oh gods, days like today are days that I dread the most. Last night before bed, LaVaughn noticed that Leo was breathing really hard and semi lethargic. We were all out of Doxy, so I gave him a nice sized dose of prednisone and went to bed. When I got up today around noon, he had deteriorated even more. He was moving around the cage quite a bit, which made me feel a little better, but he was still in really bad shape.

I got him out, wrapped him in some fleece and fed him half of a yoggie. That's really all he would eat. After I woke LaVaughn up, she helped me get a Baytril pill down him, but it never really went all the way down. He mainly just held it in his mouth. I was waiting to hear from the vet on whether we should meet her at the clinic tonight, or wait until tomorrow.

I sat in the living room, holding him in my arms for about 5 minutes. That's when he started open mouth breathing -- this is when they're in extreme respiratory distress. It wasn't two minutes later that he started really gasping for air. He was opening his mouth and really throwing his head back, it was awful. At that moment I knew I had to prepare myself for what was coming next.

I started back towards the bedroom, barely able to see due to the tears I was shedding. I didn't even make it to the bed before he drew one last breath, then he stiffened up and stopped moving. I was hysterical at that point. LaVaughn rushed into the bedroom and asked what was wrong, which I began to tell her. She lost it after that and the two of us held him and cried for another 30 minutes.

They may just be rodents or "nasty" animals to most, but to us they're sweet, loving, gentile, and kind animals that we call our babies. I'm still at a loss and can't honestly believe that he's gone.

I'm not going to be much use for anything other type of content in this blog, so I'm going to end it here. We're trying to spend as much time with Louie as we can.

-Megan

RIP Leo...

November 2014 - April 2016

Here are some pictures of Louie, getting lots of snuggles:

A "how to" guide to short stories...

A guy contacted me in Instagram around a month ago and asked me to join his Walking Dead Facebook page. Since I'm obsessed with TWD, I happily agreed to do it. I even bought some comics from a guy in the group within a week of joining - so worth it.

Well they held a little contest that would allow for 10 winners. All 10 prizes were donated by the members in the groups, most were custom toys, bags, signed pictures by walkers on the show and so on. The rules were simple; create a short (zombie) story using no less than 300 words. They posted this on a Sunday, with a 1 week time limit. Stupid me, I didn't get my story finished until the following Sunday with 19 hours left in the competition.

Most of the stories that were submitted were hardly short stories at all. I'd say 7 out of 10 were all one messy, bulky paragraph without proper punctuation. Surprisingly enough, these were the stories that got the most likes. Lucky for me I had just enough likes to tie in 10th place with 3 other people. It came down to guessing a number and whoever was closest won. I don't know how, but I guessed just under 50 shy of the actual number and won.

Everyone had already picked all the good prizes, so all that was left was a custom mini made by someone in the group. I welcomed my winnings with open arms, considering I barely entered in the competition long enough to win anything. Had I submitted sooner, I think my likes would have been slightly higher.

In other news, our fleece came today. It's all so gorgeous -- I'm starting to covet it already! If only. We still didn't get two different yards, only because they were out of stock, bastards. I'm ordering more tonight so that I'll have something to pair with the ones that matched the ones that didn't arrive. Lets hope they all arrive in one piece.

I guess that's all for now. Until next time...

Love & Peace

-Megan

Playtime with the boys last night:

My Walking Dead winnings:

And lastly, fleece from Hancock Fabrics:

Keeping busy with JustFab...

We didn't have too many pouches to finish cutting, so I decided to do that today among the cage sets that I was cutting out. No telling how long these pouches will sit here before they're sewn. Sigh... We need new pouches BADLY, like really badly.

In other, non-glider related cage set news... We finished the boys stuff today and completely decked out their cage. It looks AWESOME! I know it's only a matter of time before they completely destroy it, but as of now, it's gorgeous and I'm proud.

As of right now we're wrapping all of LaVaughn's shoes that she got for Xmas. Long story short, mi madre gives us money to buy Xmas gifts with and we then have to buy things for ourselves from her. It's been like this for years -- she has no idea what we're into or what we already have, so it makes sense. Of course, LaVaughn wanted shows, well boots, actually. I'm not sure what I'm getting. Considering a 35mm 1.8g, but I don't know.

Well I guess that's all for now. I suppose I should get back to wrapping. Until next time...

Love & Peace

-Megan

Pics from today:

(this is mainly the cats)

And some ducks...

And chickens...

And more cats...

My favorite picture of Bart right now.

My fleece and pouch mess...

Cage sets to sew tomorrow.

Finally, the rats decked out critter nation cage...

Our festive Xmas tablecloth...

Pouches everywhere!

Wrapping shoes...

So pretty! I love wrapping boxes!