Before I go on with lighthearted fooling around and wasting my time on another journal Meme I have a bit of sad news.  My beloved pet rat Cheza is in slow decline.  My best guess on a diagnosis would be that she is suffering from Spinal Stenosis.  It's a narrowing of the spinal column due to arthritis in her back.  This puts pressure on the spinal chord.  She has slowly started loosing coordination in her lower body, causing her to tumble when she tries to descend from the top of her cage.  We have put water bottles and food dishes on every level to make it easier for her, and try to keep her on the lower level.  She can no longer hold onto my shoulder like she once did and has instead become placid and content to sit on a lap or in the arms, bruxing away happily if a little more slowly than before.  When she goes to use her lower limbs to scratch at herself it is much slower than it once was.  Her eating has become much sloppier and seems to take her longer.  I'm supplementing her hard seeds and pellets with much more soft breads, greens, and veggies as well as meats and cheeses in small amounts.  Her eyes are getting crusty often as she used to be an obsessive groomer, even grooming us compulsively.  These days she rarely has the energy to clean herself the act of which usually results in her tumbling over onto her back in a helpless sort of way as she washes her fur.  Her eyes get crusty and I have to wash them with a damp cloth, a treatment she shows her appreciation for by bruxing.
  She spends at least half the day outside the cage being held and gently petted, as has always been the case since she was little though the first few months when I first got her she was to be found in my clothes and sharing my bed more often than in her cage.  It's hard to imagine she's over four years old now, which is doing quite well for a rat.  I feel bad for my little sister having to see this happen, but it's teaching her about old age and mortality.  When these things first started showing themselves she thought it was an acute problem to be fixed.  It took a few days for her to be slowly and tenderly convinced that this was not something to bring her to the vet for, but just a part of her getting old.  She can barely walk, her back legs sort of drag behind or splay out under her leaving her to use her front legs for mobility.  My little sis is convinced that she has years left to live, and maybe she's right.  I'd care for my pet if she needed to be fed through an eye dropper, but I'm sure nature will take it's course before that becomes necessary.  I'm battening down the hatches of my heart to get ready for the inevitable and to be there for my little sister.

She's been a good rat.  She may have bitten when she was too little to know any better, and with her poor eyesight she's mistaken fingers for food.  Her greatest love as far as I can tell by her happy bruxing was to be with us.  When I first brought her home she had a strong preference for being held by me but soon learned that others could be trusted, and would show her love with warm tongue baths and bruxing.  Being blind her whole world was carried to her by her ears, nose, and whiskers.  I remember the times I tried to take her out for exercise in the grass.  If she knew where I was, she would come bounding towards me, desperate just to be held securely again.  I could trust her to share my bed at night and she would leave only to use the bathroom, and one time to drag cheese wax back under the sheets and get the wax all over me while she ate it.

She no longer scurries.  She no longer fidgets.  She no longer climbs up and down over the bare skin with her little claws.  She no longer chews the bars of her cage or bounds around it demanding attention late at night.  She no longer does a lot of the things that used to make living with her slightly inconvenient, and I miss all those things already.  I feel like I've gone on long enough about this, it's hard watching her candle burn low.

Furry Meme.  I have tried to fix some of the grammar here, it was hurting my soul not too.

1. (x) Have you ever howled at the moon?
2. ( ) Have you ever barked at someone?
3. (x) Have you ever found yourself drawing or scribbling furry art when you were supposed to be doing something else?
4. (x) Have you ever worn an animal costume or tail as a child and pretended to be an animal?
5. ( ) Have you ever eaten out of a dog bowl?
6. (x) Have you been to at least one furry con? (I have been to a meet)
7. ( ) Do you like to look at furry porn all the time? (I filter my FA account so it be clean of all the grossness.)
8. (x) Do you RP or play second life as a furry character?
9. (x) Do you own a fursuit or at least a tail? (I only wore a tail once while drunk and the tail was a gift.)
10. (x) Do you know what all these words mean or have used them at least once? (I would assume that means all the words within the furry lexicon.)
11. (x) Do you have at least five videos of yourself acting or doing something furry on youtube? (If you count my nature documentaries from Costa Rica and a few others that are certainly fur oriented.)
12. (x) Has your anthropersona/character been drawn pornographically? (and well too I might add)
13. ( ) Are you well known in the furry fandom?
14. (x) Do you have dreams that are in any way what might be called furry? (Often.)
15. (x) Would you transform into your character/fursona if you were given the chance to live like that for the rest of your life?
6. (x) Have you ever worn a collar?
17. ( ) Do you own more than twenty art badges of your fursonas or characters?
18. ( ) Have you been to more than twenty furry cons in your lifetime?
19. ( ) Do you think that deep down you have the spirit of an animal within you?
20. (x) Do you enjoy hanging out with other furries?
21. (x) Do you think we should have a furry run for president of the USA? (Already have.  Just look at Taft.  He was SO a fanboy.)
22. (x) If you ever became rich would you own a room in your house to have a furry decorum and display furry art and or fur suits?
23. (x) Is your best friend furry?
24. (x) Do your furry friends call you by your furry name in public? (It's happened and it took me aback.)
25. (x) Have you been in the furry fandom for at least five years?
I scored 18.  Hard to say if this means I won or lost.
1 to 5 = Furry wannabe.
6 to 10 = Furry newbie.
11 to 15 = Furry.
16 to 20 = Hardened Furry.
21 to 25 = Hardcore Furry.