The Winnie Memorial Doorway, with Zuzu upstairs, Nelly downstairs (first picture), Zuzu and Nelly together (second picture). This was the first of my Memorial Doorways.

The basic door is 10-mesh plastic canvas. It is on the right side of the cage, leading to the Biggest Aquarium and the entrancing patch of cat-free floor behind it.

Winnie was the second rat I got, but the first to die. She was a big agouti girl, always plump and squashy. But she had an early history of tumors, and died when she was less than two years old.

Miranda, my first rat, the Grande Dame of them all. When this picture was taken she was very, very old— she was three at the end of February 2004, and died in early May. She had three surgeries but still enjoyed life until very near the end: she slept in a big pile with her cagemates, joined in squabbles at the treat bowl, even made her way from top to bottom of the Big Cage.

The Miranda Memorial Doorway. This is the door the rats use most often: on the left side of the cage, leading to the Backup Cage and Zuzu’s ramp.

Harpo, the boy (mostly) of the family. He was neutered so he could live amicably with the girls. Harpo died less than a month before his second birthday, from lung problems that went untreated too long. He died the day after Miranda. It was a sad weekend.

The Harpo Memorial Doorway. It is on the right side of the Backup Cage, facing the main cage. The door required some special structural work so it wouldn’t be obscured by the cage lid.

The Eepers’ Memorial Doorway. It is the only memorial door that is at the front of a cage. I made this one in the Backup Cage for ease of access when spot-cleaning, but the rats soon showed me that it was another good delivery point for treats.

The eepers didn’t live long enough to get names, or even to have their pictures taken. At one point I marked them on their lower backs, so they were Circle Eeper, Triangle Eeper and Square Eeper.

The Story of the Eepers
A woman turned on her oven, whereupon a mama rat emerged and headed for the hills, leaving her two-day-old babies. The woman didn’t know what else to do, so she brought the three little pinkies to the Humane Society. I took them home in my shirt pocket.
They had just gotten the dark skin that showed they would be agouti adults. They were deaf, blind and hairless, but they had whiskers visible from certain angles, and the world’s tiniest claws and tongues.
They lived from two to three days after I took them home. I cried more when they died than I had done for Miranda and Harpo earlier the same month.

Franny should have lived to be over three, like Miranda. She was perky and lively, healthier than Miranda had been at the same age... and then she got liver cancer, and was gone within two weeks after I first suspected she wasn’t feeling well. She was two years and five months old. Franny’s lasting contribution to the mischief was her introduction of social grooming: “Squeak all you like, you will get clean!”

The Franny Memorial Doorway. It is on the top level of the Big Cage, above Miranda’s doorway. The script matches Franny’s dainty face and figure. She was the first in a series of petite girls.

Cinnamon was with me for a shorter time than anyone— six months almost to the day. I still don’t know what she died of; she was gone before I even realized how sick she was.

She had been living at the animal shelter for several weeks when Miranda and Harpo died, so what choice did I have? She had a couple of serious tussles with Nelly— even a bit of bloodshed, so rare for female rats— but they quickly became the best of friends. Mostly. After Cinnamon’s death, it was Nelly who kept the exercise wheel going.

The Cinnamon Memorial Doorway. It’s on the left side of the Backup Cage— a door that Cinnamon rarely used herself, but popular with anyone venturing toward the ramp and sleeping bag. Cinnamon was our homemaker, the one who’d get to work each week, moving up the new batch of shredded paper and fabric strips to make their nest. Booboo has now taken over this chore.

Zuzu (Isabelle), my changeling. She may have looked like a dumbo rat, but she was really the world’s tiniest ferret. She was nimble and agile, with a grip like a fly, whether she was venturing into the sleeping bag— 15 ft from the cage in one direction— or chimney-climbing down into her personal space— 1½ inches between wall and file cabinet, with an overhang at the top.

I thought Zuzu would live forever, but then almost overnight she became an old rat. Intelligent to the end, she chose to move into the Backup Cage, with its shallower ramps and heated basement.

The Zuzu Memorial at the front of the cage. Zuzu’s “official” name was Isabelle, as Booboo’s official name was Beatrice, but we never used it.

Nelly, with Harpo in the background.

I grieved more over Nelly than any of my other rats. She has a page of her own.

The Nelly Memorial, side by side with Zuzu’s. Nelly’s official name was Eleanor. But just as Isabelle was always Zuzu, so Eleanor was always Nelly.

Rocky— officially Raquel— when she was the world’s tiniest rat. She was only six months old when she died.

The Rocky memorial, outside the rats’ main bedroom.

Rocky was one of a litter of eighteen whose mother “dried up” early, so the babies went out for sale younger than usual. She weighed only one ounce, and was supplemented with human baby food and formula until the day she turned up her wee nose and said “I’m not a baby, you know!”

Later she became an explorer, venturing into the water-heater cupboard and from there into the spaces within the walls and above the ceiling. At last came the time she was away from home for three days, letting me catch only glimpses of her before she took off again. When she decided to come home she went straight for the water bottle. The next day she wasn’t feeling so well; I put it down to a slight injury in one front paw. The next morning she was dying. I rushed her to the vet, but IV fluids and an incubator couldn’t save her.

The Booboo memorial, near the top of the Backup Cage where it helps screen the upstairs bedroom from light and drafts.

I gave the rats the bag from a bakery-shop cookie. After they had dealt with the crumbs, Booboo found yet another use for the bag.

Booboo was a Rex, with lovely soft curly fur; I called her my half-rex because of her half-long tail, the feature that made me buy her at the pet store. She grew to be a big squishy girl, as plump and soft as Winnie though without her motherly nature. As time went by she also became my dark horse: because of her build, I always expected her to die young, like Winnie. Instead she hung on for two years and eight months, longer than anyone but Miranda.

Malcolm followed Xena to the sleeping bag, and made it his own. Near the end of his life he became partly paralyzed, as elderly male rats often do. But he made it plain that he had no interest in retiring to the snug, heated backup cage; he insisted on staying in the hammock with the girls. Luckily Leela was an inveterate stasher, so he always had food, though I had to give him the occasional fluid injection to keep him bright-eyed and happy.

The Malcolm Memorial. Malcolm was my second neutered boy, also adopted. He was a year old when he moved in, but always had a youthful face. The shape of his hood made it look as if the rat factory goofed and didn’t line up the material properly.

The Xena Memorial Doorway. Long after the other rats had gone on to free-hanging memorials, I held this doorway in reserve for Xena because the actual door was cut out for her benefit, two and a half years earlier when she was a shy little rat who liked to hide behind the Big Cage.

Xena grew into a big strong girl, matching her namesake. During her second year of life she had one respiratory infection after another; they cleared up just long enough to let her have two tumor surgeries, removing three tumors. The next year she had more surgery, finding a total of eight small tumors. In spite of this, she remained stout and strong, weighing in at close to a pound, and made it to two and a half.

Susanna (left) and Thomasina (right) as babies. Even then, Susanna was a little bigger than her sister. They picked up their names faster than almost anyone: because they came right after Rocky, I knew they had to be S and T.

I named her Thomasina to avoid calling her Thumbelina. Over time her size difference with Susanna got bigger and bigger. Then I started noticing her water intake, smelled her acetone breath… and had her blood sugar tested. More tests followed: she turned out to be an “insulin-compensating diabetic”. Call it Type X. It would not help to give her insulin because she was already making plenty— but her diabetes was there from the beginning instead of coming on in portly middle age. She barely made it to six months.

Susanna got to be a big girl, close to a pound. Like Zuzu before her, she chose not to read the section in The Book about dumbos’ personality traits. Instead, she was the most venturesome and inquisitive of the rats— and the one most likely to grow into a cat-terrorizer. For a time, she and Annabelle seemed to be well on their way to demolishing the handy secluded area behind the Big Aquarium on its enclosed stand.

Leela (bottom) and Nyssa (top) as two-ounce babies.

At first I called them the Little Noses, because that was all I usually saw, peering out of the igloo at the bottom of their cage. When they finally told me their names, Leela came first in the alphabet because her little nose usually poked out before Nyssa’s.

Later on, they grew… and grew… and grew. Leela topped off at 1 pound 4 ounces, Nyssa— always a little smaller— 1 pound 3 ounces.

Similar but not identical, they could never get away with “It wasn’t me! It was my sister! Can’t you tell us apart?”

Leela on the left, Nyssa on the right. Notice the coincidental “L” pattern on Leela’s back? Nyssa had a tiny star on her forehead, and a band of dark fur around the base of her tail.

It always seemed as if Leela was the more dominant sister— but it was Nyssa who decided when a new rat would be allowed to sleep in the pile with the others. The cage was her domain.

Sadly, Leela and Nyssa’s phenomenal size was accompanied by horrible tumors. Nyssa responded so badly to surgery that after the second time, I knew I couldn’t risk it again. She died the night after I’d decided it was time to have her put to sleep. A month later, Leela had to be sent on the same one-way trip. Their memorials hang side by side at the front of the Big Cage.