How I Convinced Myself My Rat Was Dying A Day Into Owning Him

Potato silently laughing at me

Rats are pretty small in the general scheme of things, so it’s not terribly surprising that they can suffer from some pretty terrible conditions. Okay, so, in reality, size has very little to do with things, but, generally, smaller things/creatures/etc. come across as more delicate and that’s where I’m headed with this. To make a long story much shorter, in their (far far too) short lifetimes, many rats will suffer from tumors, respiratory illness, or both. Oh, and cancer. Today, though, I just want to focus on the respiratory infection deal since that’s the one that I’ve been the most affected by and it’s the one that I heard about the most about when I was doing rat-related research in my first few months of ownership.

So, yes, rats have very sensitive respiratory systems. That’s why it’s usually frowned upon to keep them in a cage with solid walls – they can get sick from breathing in the fumes from their own urine. Yes, I know, now you just want to frantically clean your cage immediately because that is both an awful and scary thought. It doesn’t help that almost all rats are born with a respiratory disease pre-installed - Mycoplasma Pulmonis is a genetic disorder that can cause quite a bit of distress if it goes untreated (also, hearkening back to the insurance discussion, medication and treatment related to it probably aren’t covered by pet-insurance since it’s something they’re predisposed to). It can be pretty serious, so I highly recommend reading up on it; there is a very thorough write-up about thedisease, symptoms, and treatment here.

Now then, the reason I’m telling you about this is because I was positive that Potato was already suffering from this illness when I brought him home. He was super sneezey and I had no idea what a large porphyrin build-up looked like, but some was present, so that was enough for me. In my mind, he was already on death’s door. Of course, I could have just brought him back to the pet store, but that was just too cruel in my mind, so to the vet we went. We don’t have a specialist in my city, as far as I know, but my usual vet has treated rats before and would just have to do. Anyway, he gets a good once-over and I have to answer a bunch of questions about their food and cage and bedding. After all of that, Potato has never been happy with getting picked up and there wasn’t actually anything really wrong with him, either. He just sneezes a lot for no apparent reason. It’s weird, but I guess it’s better than any other outcomes. And, now that I know it’s not life-threatening, his sneezing’s actually pretty cute.