Cheddars Vet Trip

I recently welcomed five rats to the rescue to keep as personal pets, opening up the possibility of fostering others and eventually having some rats available for adoption. I took in two from an ad on Craigslist who was fostering them after rescuing them from a neglect situation. They are bonded females, an albino dumbo ear, and a black dumbo ear, both of them are ten months old and are very healthy, (minus the albino one having sight issues). 

I also took three in from someone selling them as feeder after their pet rat from the pet store had babies. They are female augoti dumbo ears, and one of them has some rex in her! again, all very healthy, at least we thought they were... 

After having them for around a month and a half we noticed that Cheddar, an augoti dumbo ear, developed huge lumps on her abdomen within 48 hours. Immediately we feared she was pregnant, and checked everyone she lives with confirming they are in fact all females. We weren't sure what to do next, either they were tumors or babies and neither made sense to us. We decided we would wait 24 hours and see if she happened to have babies, it could have been possible she had gotten pregnant the day we got her, and then had a weird late pregnancy. 

Overnight we noticed her doing what we associated with bearing down, and being visibly in pain, and we were seeing no signs of pregnancy or labor aside from gross runny poops and heavy labored breathing. So the next morning we called in and made her an appointment for 8:30am on January 8, 2021. We brought her and her two cagemates in, just to get them all sexed by a professional. 

The vet decided to do an x-ray on Cheddars abdomen and look for babies or tumors, but there were neither. She didn't see any babies, and couldn't be sure if anything looked like tumors near her GI tract. We opted to do an ultrasound to see if we could get a better diagnosis, and we did. In her abdomen, surrounding her organs, was infected liquid and puss. They aspirated her abdomen and got three mls of blood and puss out, a whole lot for a little five month old girl. 

They decided to put her on Enrofloxacin for two weeks to see if the infection would clear up. Almost immediately we saw a huge change in her behavior, she was acting like her normal self again. We also noticed her droppings returning to normal, and her lumps slowly getting smaller. 

She has a follow up appointment on Friday the 22nd, and hopefully the infection will have cleared up. 

Ill make sure to keep you all updated! 

-Eva