My lovely ratty, Svik, has passed on today. He developed cancer, and when we took him to the vet, the vet basically said to let him live while the cancer was benign (I guess it could not be operated on without a 99% chance of killing him). We did. We spent a lot of time down at our friend's apartment (can't have animals in college dorms) making sure that his last few months were wonderful.

Svik was the best rat I have ever known. He was smart, trained in so many different things... my favorite was the command 'kiss': he would lick whatever you offered, be it your finger, nose, cheek, lip. He was a sweetheart, my shoulder buddy, and just generally 100% pure awesome.

We noticed on Monday that he was starting to get rather thin really quickly. We figured his cancer was malignant now, and we made the appointment to get him checked out and possibly euthanized. Tuesday he took a very bad turn, and went down into pure emaciation by the end of the night. I told him that it was okay to let go, to die... I knew Svik was the type of pet that was so loyal that he would not just go easy for fear of disappointing his owners. When I woke up this morning, he was dead. He died in his sleep at the foot of the ramp in his cage, curled up in a little ball.

Svik... I will always miss you. You were a rat so intelligent that I swore you were a human trapped in a rat's body. I hope there is a little ratty afterlife for you where you are being fed lots of honey, ritz crackers, potato bread, and all those foods I would catch you snacking on when you somehow managed to escape from your cage.

Kisses, buddy.

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