Sunday 29 November 2015

Saying goodbye.

Today I had the second of my three pet rats put to sleep. That's two within 3 weeks. We also had to have our cat Harry put to sleep less than two months ago.
When you become a pet owner you know it's not forever, you understand that you will out live these animals most of the time by many years but it doesn't make it easier when letting them go.

As I have been left with a solitary rat, D'artagnan, I have decided to try and re-home him with another owner who has multiple rats already. Rats are group animals and require constant support and interaction with others. Had he been old I may have considered keeping him alone but he could live another year and a half and it's just not fair to make him spend that time on his own.

I do have the option to get other rats to keep him company but I'm not sure I'm in the right position in my life to get more. They are an expense, if I'm being honest I didn't spend enough time with the rats I had and it would be wrong to get more, plus I'm hoping to move out of my parents house sometime in the future and rental properties rarely allow pets and I wouldn't want to give up multiple rats just to move. So I'm going to try and find him somewhere to live that will mean he gets a nice, clean home, an owner that handles him regularly and lots of other rats to keep him company.

I never expected to go from 7 pets to 3 in such a short amount of time .... it's been pretty heart breaking and all around shit. But that's the deal you make when adopting pets, it's your responsibility to do your best by them and accept the pain of letting them go.

x






2 comments:

  1. Hey Sara,

    Sorry to hear about your losses. One is already hard, but so many at once must be terrible. I know it's not the case with you, but it's not uncommon for some owners to unknowingly do things that harm their pets, so I ended up writing an article on it for my work. If you ever wanna check it out, let me know.

    Keep your head up,
    Julian

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    1. I didn't know whether to reply to this or not but first of all thank you but secondly not sure this is the most appropriate post to let me know about yours on people harming their pets. I'm always up for reading other people's work so under other circumstances I'm sure I'd love to have looked you up. However this was a really hard time for me and having someone suggest I read something that might hint at all this being my fault isn't really what I needed to see.
      Thanks for the comment and maybe in the future I will read some other bits of your work.

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