Booboo surprised me one day. She took a flying leap from my lap back to the cage— but didn’t realize that it was glass, so she couldn’t jump in. She slipped and caught hold of the bottom rim of the tank, and made her way along the edge until she reached the adjoining shelf. But the shelf had a pile of fabric on it, and when Booboo tried to climb up the pile slipped. I thought she would land plump on the floor, but by some amazing acrobatics she scrambled her way up and to safety.
Booboo— officially Beatrice— really is turning into my dark horse. She is a big, squashy rex with a half-length tail (maybe congenital, maybe an accident in early infancy). I’d always expected that, like the similarly plump Winnie, she would not be with us long. But as I write this, she is well on her way to the two-and-a-half-year mark. She sleeps more than the younger girls, and refuses to get upset about cat activity on or near the cage. She is also an assiduous stasher. At treat time, the other rats benefit from her trips up and down the ladder.