3.05.04: Thelma ‹ Blog « Without-Feathers.com

Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
Walter Benjamin

Thelma

March 5, 2004

[Note: This entry was written over a period of four days, which is why I’m posting it late. And yes, I’m still sad.]

She’s been sick for the past day and a half. She is lethargic, sleepy-eyed, slow-moving. She’s had days like that before, but they seem to pass fairly quickly. And she’s been eating and drinking and stealing her sister’s treats, which is always a good sign. But she isn’t getting better, and it’s been a little longer than normal. I’m keeping an eye on her. In the afternoon I take her out of the cage and cuddle her; we watch TV together, and I talk to her, and she sits on my shoulder and plays with my hair. She likes the company, I think. She’ll be fine. If she’s still sick tomorrow morning, I’ll take her to the vet, but she’s looking well enough that I might actually get through the night without having to rush her to the vet after hours.

It’s 10:10 when I hear her squeak, a sound unlike any she’s ever made before. All I hear is pain!, and I’m out of my chair and at the cage, heart thudding in my chest. And she’s down. She’s lying on her side and she can’t move, she can’t move, she’s trying to get up but she can’t so she’s dragging herself down the cage ramp in a desperate attempt to get back to her nest, and there’s blood. I’ve never seen so much blood from a rodent. Oh, god. I lift her out of the cage and hold her with both hands, panic-stricken. She’s bleeding from the mouth and nose; it comes in spurts, like a faucet, and she’s gasping and heaving with pain. I think she’s going to die right in my hands. I cradle her in my fingers and talk to her, trying to keep my voice calm even though I can feel my fingers getting slippery with blood. The rodent carrier is up high on a closet shelf; I can’t put her down to get to it, and my husband should be home by now but he’s not, he’s not, where is he? I wrap a Kleenex around Thelma to catch the blood, and I watch it turn red at a frightening rate.

I call the vet at his home, the emergency line. He sounds fully awake when he answers the phone, as opposed to the last few times I called with a rat emergency. I tell him what’s wrong, that she’s bleeding and in pain. “Sounds like a lung problem,” he says. “Could be a blood clot in the lungs. There’s not much we can do, in that case. The important thing is that she doesn’t suffer.”

I know what that means.

“I’ll be up there in ten minutes,” I tell him, hoping that my husband will be home by that time. It’s fifteen after; where the hell is he? Oh god, I hope he hasn’t been in an accident. I can only handle one crisis a night.

The plastic rodent carrier is high up on a closet shelf; I can’t reach it with Thelma in my hands. In desperation I open a paper grocery bag and put her in it for a few seconds while I get the carrier down. “I remember when you came here,” I say to her, hysterically cheerful. “You were in a bag, just like you are now, only you were so little. Mom and I held you, and you were so calm, didn’t try to bite or anything...” She’s not bleeding as much by the time I put her in the carrier, and she seems like she’s not in as much pain. Louise watches us from the cage, looking worried. She knows what’s going on. “She’ll be okay,” I promise Louise. “You’ll be okay, Thelms.” I mean it. I’ll give her mouth-to-mouth if I have to.

I sing to Thelma while I get my coat on, and then I perch on the edge of the coffee table, carrier on my lap, waiting for my husband to get home. Five minutes later I’m seriously considering walking out to the street to meet his car. I settle for going out to the apartment building’s lobby and watching for his car.

He comes a few minutes later, and I swirl into the car and tell him to drive to the vet’s. Tony stopped for tacos on the way home; there’s a bag in the back seat, the scent wafting warmly and temptingly over my shoulder. What a sweetheart, I think, and, simultaneously, why tonight, of all nights?

The vet isn’t as cranky as he usually is when we rush a rodent to his office—which is good, for his sake, because if I got any lip from him tonight I might slug him in the jaw. My baby’s bleeding and in pain, and I do not want any crap from anyone tonight. The vet takes a look at her and pronounces it pneumonia—some kind of bacterial pneumonia. “It’s fairly common in older rats,” he says. She’s two years old, and she’s an old rat. I know rats don’t live long, but still...

Armed with antibiotics and a feeding syringe, we head home, $89 poorer and very much relieved. The vet said the prognosis was “guarded,” but he also said that a lot of rats recover from this, and she’s grooming herself in the carrier, which is a really good sign. At home, I give her a few handfuls of Kleenexes for her carrier, and she busies herself making a nest. We’ll keep her away from Louise tonight, even though the illness isn’t contagious; if Thelma has another attack, I want to be able to whisk her right back up to the vet, without having to wrestle her out of her cage and into the carrier. Tony and I watch her for awhile, satisfied with her hourly improvement, then we go to bed.

In the middle of the night (5:00 AM, according to the bedside clock), I hear Tony say my name in the voice that means something small and furry is on the loose. “Thelma’s out,” he says, and immediately I flash back to the dozen other times I’ve felt this same panic—the time the baby bunny I was caring for got loose in the apartment, the time my gerbil escaped the Lego maze I made for him, the time Thelma and Louise both got out of the cage and ended up huddled together under the ottoman. I scramble out of bed and head for the living room. She was on top of the kitchen counter; how the hell could she get down from there? I’d forgotten that this is the carrier with the loose lid; I hadn’t thought she would have the strength or agility to push and climb her way out of the carrier and onto the floor, but apparently I was underestimating her. I get down on all fours to peek under a chair, hoping that Piper’s long-dormant hunting instincts haven’t come back, that I’m not going to find some little mangled mess somewhere. I call for my rat, making little noises with my lips, chattering noises like rodents and whistling noises like birds.

“She’s behind you!” Tony says suddenly, and I turn (carefully, don’t want to sit on her or anything) and see her right behind me, waiting expectantly. She doesn’t even run when I swoop down and scoop her up, and she looks very pleased with herself, as escaped animals always do. See what I did? beam her little beady eyes. See how strong and smart I am?

I’m giddy with relief. My baby’s doing all better; she’s looking hale and hearty, and she’s walking and eating like normal. I hold her for awhile, then put her back in her carrier. “She’s going to be fine,” I tell Tony. “She’s going to be just fine.” I load the top of the cage down with heavy books, set it on the coffee table, and we go back to bed.

Tony’s already been up for awhile when I get up later in the morning. As I sleepily kiss him good morning, he tells me that Thelma’s been acting great, she’s been bouncing around in her cage playing with the tissues. I go over to kneel down next to the carrier and take a look.

And I know.

Years of pet ownership have made me paranoid; I’m always watching for the fluttering sides that show the animal’s breathing. Her sides aren’t fluttering. I watch them for a few seconds—maybe she’s holding her breath? Her eyes are wide open, and she’s lying absolutely still, curled on her side, facing the plastic wall. My little baby.

Carefully, quietly, I open the plastic lid and reach in to touch her. “Tony?” I say, and he looks over and gets a funny look on his face when he sees my expression. “She’s gone.” I stroke her sides very gently, as if she can still feel my touch. She’s still warm, and still soft. There was a time when I would never have dreamed of touching a dead rodent, but when I look at her now I don’t see a dead rodent, I see a friend, and I want her to know she’s loved and missed and that we’re going to take care of her, even now. “God,” says Tony, looking shaken. “She was just hopping around. Just a minute ago.”

I lift her gently out of the carrier and take her over to the cage. Louise is up and scurrying around, and I lift the top up and put Thelma in. I want Louise to have a moment with her. I want Louise to know her sister’s dead, so that she gets some closure, so that she doesn’t spend the rest of her life wondering where Thelma went and if she’s ever coming back. Louise is confused; she sniffs Thelma’s muzzle (there’s blood there, lots of blood, I see that now) and licks some of the blood off, then licks Thelma’s staring eye as if to wake her up. Then she skirts the body and goes downstairs to groom herself vigorously. She knows, but she’s in shock. Even in a rodent, you can see that kind of emotion. “I’m so sorry,” I tell Louise, and I’m crying now. I honestly had not expected this, not now.

I cradle Thelma in my hands as I look for a box to put her in. I’d wanted a shoebox for her, but we don’t have one; all we have is an empty fortune cookie box, which doesn’t seem quite decent, but which will have to do. I wrap her in tissues and slide her solemnly in. It’s strange, really; I’ve never believed in the sanctity of dead bodies, but I find myself treating Thelma’s body with gravity and reverence, as if she really is just asleep and I’m trying not to wake her. I’m not sure where this instinct comes from; not from religion, certainly.

I call the vet and arrange to have her cremated. Later, I will wonder how many people have their rats cremated; don’t most people just put it in the garbage instead? That never even occurred to me. All I knew was that it was snowing so hard I couldn’t bury her outside, so I’d have to do it the other way. And no, I didn’t get her ashes back. The bodies of animals are burned in mass cremations, so the chances of my getting my pet’s ashes alone are pretty slim.

When we get home, Louise is in her tissue box nest, looking stunned. I stroke her head, but she doesn’t want to be touched; she’s never liked the feel of the human hand the way her sister did. She turns away from my fingers into the darkness of the nest, and for a long time afterward I see her black eyes glinting in the dark.

I will miss the way Thelma sniffed my hands, and the way she took treats from me, and the way she let her little sister boss her around. I’ll miss the way she made her nests, the slow and gentle way she followed her sister’s path around the cage. Thelma was the gentle one, the sweetheart, the one who was always happy to be taken out and held. She never bit, never scratched, never even crapped or pissed on anyone—she never complained when we gave her medicine, and she went through surgery and recovery without so much as a peep of protest. She was a true little trooper. It’s amazing, how much a person can love a rat, and how much a little rodent can be missed…