greenstorm | (no subject)

So last night I had all these plans for the weekend. Even this morning, I got up, first thing I did was come write, sorta muddled, but there were things on the go. I was going to have breakfast with Bob, go to the farmer's market with CrazyChris and posse, start chicken soup, drop off a rat downtown, watch West Wing into the night-- you know, plans. I was going to do some rat cages before breakfast.

Thing is, we've had this bad air warning from all the forest fires lately. The air's been disgusting. And I have a lot of elderly rats with respiratory infections. The thing about rats is, they're smart, they have feelings going on, and-- like people-- they care about stuff. When I got home last night Corn Pops was dead. I'd known she was on the way out for awhile.

But-- last night another one went, and Heat Lightning and Olympia are both in bad shape. I'm pretty sure that last night that particular rat was just waiting until I got home and said goodnight to die. When I'm particularly close with them they've been known to do that, I am particularly thinking of Gabe who was boarded at Lizzy's and waited till I showed up, waited till I picked him up, then died in my hands within half an hour. He was a very old man.

Four is a big toll for one week. Olympia might still surprise me, as might Heat Lightning, but... I've had a fairly smooth stretch so far. It's just time. And it's just not easy. It sneaks up on you, something with a lifespan of a couple of years, because that time passes so quickly and then suddenly the young breeding girls' cage has all had babies and the oldest girl in the cage is coming up on 2 and it's... time to say goodbye.

I really don't care about my weekend plans anymore. I'm not going for breakfast; I need to clean cages so the cagemates of the dead ones can get on with it; I always scrub down the whole cage immediately after a death, and who wouldn't? The internet is a weird and fragile medium, it's just words and words and words. Right now it makes me incredibly angry to get those thin signals next to the intense reality of the life and death things I am engaging in, even just next to the smells and feels and sounds of the rattery. That's not the world and I don't want it right now.

Back to the rats.