August
2007
Feeling num.
Having a horrid time here. Went to give Felix and dutch-foster their dinner last night and found Felix laying on his side on the floor. He wasn’t moving at all and his eyes looked glazed over so I instantly thought he was dead, only as I picked the cage up his tail moved. He felt almost cold to the touch so I sat with him in my cupped hands for a while totally expecting him to slip away there and then. Instead he started to warm up and blinked a few times after which his eyes lost the horrible glazed over look and it soon became obvious that he’d had a stroke and couldn’t move. 
Basically to cut a long story short I spent last night propped up in bed with my poorly boy alternating between laying on my chest to keep warm and in a fleece pouch in an open hospital tank next to me. He’d drunk a fair bit of water when I offered it to him soon after finding him and seemed to pick up a little bit after that so I made up a jug of lactol (puppy milk) and kept offering it to him from a syringe throughout the night. At one point he tried to sit himself up and started to wash his nose with one paw but his balance failed him so I had to hold him up. What is etched in my memory though is when I stirred from a doze at about 4am, picked him up from the tank and he started bruxing at me. He took a good amount of the milk, had a scratch, had a wash and then sat and nodded off in my hand as I rubbed behind his ears. After that I hoped desperately that he’d get some more movement back and that perhaps with some steriods he might be OK but unfortunately it wasn’t to be and by this morning I knew I had to make the heartbreaking decision to have him put to sleep. I’ll admit that several times I picked up the phone to make the appointment with the vet and put it back down again - he was sleeping quite comfortably at the time and having battled all night to keep him alive the guilt was horrible but with it having been 12 hrs since I’d first found him by this point I knew he wasn’t going to recover. So we made that last journey together.
As usual I’m sat here now faced with the prospect of burying a much loved mouse thinking that I can’t do this anymore. There are times when all little ones I’ve lost over the years and all the circumstances I lost them in just become overwhelming. Because all my mice are rescues and therefore from unknown and less than ideal backgrounds I think its fair to say that I deal with more illnesses and premature deaths than the average mouse owner and I wouldn’t have it any other way but on days like today it can weigh quite heavily. Fortunately I know the feeling will pass and I’ll start to remember all the positive things as well but right now I need to go say goodbye to my little fighter.
