Beplagued.

I promise that I will give you a holiday rundown soon, but I am currently just posting to let you know I'm still alive.

I have some sort of plague, but I'm sure it'll go away soon. I'm hoping it'll leave by tomorrow, so that I can make it to a Hogmanay party, but I suspect I'll be too living-dead for that. Again. The couple of days before Hogmanay always see me ill for some reason.

So, dressed in the giant pink PJ top Nettie sent me, and the giant tartan PJ trousers that Amber gave me, I am snuggled on the sofa with a blanket.

I have a terrible cough, my throat feels like I've been gargling throwing stars, my head and neck ache something fierce, I get dizzy when I move my head (which feels very heavy, for some reason), I'm tired and shaky, and all my muscles and joints hurt. Oh, and after eating some soup, I threw up.

On the bright side, the fever's gone for now.
Back on the shadowy side, I look terrible.
Blech.

I hope everyone had good holidays.

On Saturday morning, we had two rats.

By lunchtime, we only had one.

Hobble had twice had incidents where she had choked on food over the past couple of weeks. Both times, she'd had a sneezing fit which dislodged it.

Saturday morning she started choking again. This time, she didn't sneeze. We tried putting a little ground pepper in front of her nose, but to no avail.

We managed to get a little of the obstruction out of her mouth, using a round-tipped hair slide, but couldn't do any more than that for fear of hurting her.

We called for an emergency appointment at the vet, and got a taxi up there. By this point she was going into spasms.

The vet said that, as rats get elderly, they tend to get this condition wherein their throats sort of collapse, leading to this choking. We didn't have any choice but to get the vet to put her to sleep.

I'm devastated.
But she had a very happy life with us, and was one of the most cheerful pets we've ever had.