Snowball and Rumpajer
by Ruth
(United States)
My rat, Snowball, was an albino fancy rat. We thought she was a male when we got her because she was still a baby. We put her in a cage with my brother’s male rat and… four weeks later, we were blessed with ten little ratlings! I found a home for all ten, and we kept three. Rumpajer and Snowball were mine, and Titus and Cheerio were my brother’s males. (They were in separate cages then.) My girls got tumors almost two years into their lives, and my parents decided to put them out of their misery when they got so bad they couldn’t really move, and my Snowball had gone blind. It was the hardest thing ever for me. We didn’t have money to go to a vet, so my dad had them in their tissue box that they played in, put them in a plastic bag, and whacked them against the wall outside, like you are supposed to do with mice that you find. I was on the other side of the house, in my bedroom, when this happened. I will always remember the way the sound of the two whacks against the wall pierced my heart. I will always love my little babies.