ocelot

Poor Matilda, the rattie, isn't doing very well. I'm not sure what's wrong. I'm thinking perhaps she had a stroke, since she seems largely unaware of her left paw when not paying attention to it, and seems to be having some difficulties getting around.

I gave her some yogurt, peanut butter, and wet cat food (in separate piles, not all mixed together), since she seems to be having some trouble eating due to not being able to properly hold anything, and she was in heaven. With the peanut butter and yogurt, anyways - I haven't seen her touch the cat food. I don't think I've ever seen her so happy to eat anything. It's created a terrible mess, especially since she has stuff all over her left paw and doesn't really notice, but that's easy enough to fix. I think Gwendolyn is jealous - she was in the other cage, and kept sniffing around for the food, but she eats just fine on her own.

I hate having rats. I like the rats themselves, but they're unobtrusive enough that they don't get nearly enough attention, cage cleaning, etc. Fish and plants are bad for the same reason. On the good side, it seems to be an upward progression. The rats are doing better than the fish did, and the cats, who have much more ability to make their needs known, are pretty darn happy and healthy considering their pre-existing health conditions, so presumably the baby will do just great.

But really, the only thing that keeps me from feeling entirely guilty about the rats is that if we hadn't got them, they most likely would have suffered a torturous death by snake long ago, as that is the most common usage for non-fancy (ie. cheap) rats.

The cats are horribly gassy and stinky. I think we need to get back in the habit of nightly wet food, even if it is expensive and annoying.

One of the cats threw up a few minutes ago. As I was trying to call him out from under the table to get him outside and figuring out how to clean it up given that we'd just run out of paper towels, one of the other cats came up and started eating the vomit!

Yuck. I've seen cats do that with their own vomit before, but not with someone else's.

I got them both outside, and ended up using toilet paper. He was nice enough to vomit partially onto a pile of napkins to begin with, so it wasn't that bad.

Now I must read the second half of Jane Eyre before tomorrow. Why did I start another book (actually, several others) while reading this, knowing that I have a deadline and the other books can wait? I don't know. Something to do with wanting/needing mindless brain candy.

The problem is that if I read, I'll most likely fall asleep within 20 pages, and I have a lot more than 20 pages to read. I suppose I could always read till I fall asleep, and then, when I can't sleep tonight because I took a late nap, I can read some more.