We received this message from Kingston Humane Society: “44 rats were dumped in a recycling bin on a local trail in a small creek. Seven of them drowned, but we managed to catch and save the 37 remaining. Looking for help to place them.” How could we say no?
Slim is one of the six rats we were able to take in from this group. We had Slim neutered and he was adopted to a home where they had other rats. A year later, Slim and his new cage mates were unfortunately surrendered to a shelter in Ottawa. Our adoption policy states that we will always take our animals back into our care if the adopter is no longer able to care for them. In this case, we didn’t want to take Slim away from his new friends, so we took Slim and his five cage mates in. They had a vet visit and were all given a clean bill of health. Shortly after arriving into our care, it was quite noticeable that not everybody was getting along amicably. Slim and Scruffy were separated from the other three rats, and that definitely helped simmer the frequent squabbles.

Not too long after making him and Slim available for adoption, Scruffy developed a vestibular issue. At the beginning, it caused his head to tilt slightly. He was started on medication, but unfortunately it did not help. He had many vet visits, and different medications were tried, but the tilt worsened. Scruffy started to lose mobility. It got to the point where poor Scruffy wasn’t able to upright himself, and he could no longer eat. We had to make the sad decision to let him go peacefully. His cage-mate Slim was right by his side until the last day.

We’d like to thank Spencer Creek Animal Hospital for the wonderful care they gave Scruffy, and thanks to Scruffy’s family for being there for him until the end.

Rest in peace, sweet Scruffy. We’ll never forget you.