Good news, bad news

Wii Sports did exceptionally well at the BAFTAs, ringing up a total of six wins.

From Variety:

LONDON — Nintendo's "Wii Sports" took the lion's share of the kudos at BAFTA's Video Games Awards on Tuesday.

The sports simulation vidgame came away with six awards, including gameplay, innovation and strategy.

I don't think I'm familiar with the other games mentioned in the piece but Wii Sports is one of my favorite games, despite the fact that I despise sports. That's just how awesome Nintendo is.

And in the bad news department, Cam's other beloved rat, called Karma, developed a tumor in the last couple of days. For some reason my last post about her sister Paws vanished so I'll try and reiterate, although it's a painful subject.

We got these girls last year for Cam's birthday in May. They were about four months old and their owner was headed to Costa Rica (Peace Corps maybe?) and needed a new home for them. Paws was an albino Rex with Dumbo ears and Karma is an Agouti Rex with Dumbo ears. They both had the curly whiskers.

They fit in wonderfully and Cameron has been exceptionally responsible with them, only needing to be reminded to clean their cage maybe twice in the last 18 months. Then he went to Alaska to visit his dad over the summer and Paws started to go downhill. She gained a lot of weight, really getting huge and looking like those mice that are bred for fatness, and her hair started to fall out. I did some research and it seemed like she was stressed out so I tried playing with her more to keep her from missing Cam.

Fast forward to about a month ago when we took both rats to the vet and Dr. Gray said to try separating them and see how they did. They did poorly with Karma now pulling her fur out and Paws getting more and more depressed. We put them back together and Paws cheered up a little but not much and over the two weeks we tried many things to cheer her up, moving her away from my room so the neighbor's cigar smoke wouldn't come in through the window and get to her, and a million other things. Then she started crying, which in rats looks like blood and is very disconcerting if you haven't seen it before, which we hadn't. We've had rats before, in fact our last one before this, Ratsana, had an absolutely enormous tumor and never had the crying.

But it was the weekend and the doctor at the emergency vet clinic isn't exactly Dr. Rat so we waiting until Monday to take her back to Dr. Gray. This may have been the eighth, because I think I didn't have any work that day. By the time we got her there she was staggering and had obvious neurological complications, which she hadn't had the day before.

He said it was possibly an adrenal gland tumor, which makes the hair fall out, or possibly a tumor in her brain. Just in case we started her on glucose (pancake syrup) and antibiotics but by the time we got her back home she couldn't walk anymore. She worsened by the hour and Cam started giving her water with the syringe also. Finally we took her down to animal control, which is just a few minutes from our house, and asked them to put her to sleep.

It was an extraordinarily difficult decision but the people at animal control said she looked just like hundreds of other rats they've had with adrenal tumors and sadly those just aren't going to get better. The animal control people were very kind and respectful, which surprised me on some level because a dying rat, especially a white one with what looks like blood coming from their eyes, is not a site we're programed to handle well. "Disease, run, run," screams the hind brain and it's hard to override it with compassion.

Karma was very traumatized by Paws' loss, as were we all, and barbered off large swathes of hair. We got some new fellows, three little girls, Delirium, a tan hooded rattie girl for me, Master Chef (a joke name because that's what I always call the Master Chief in Halo) a black hooded rattie girl for Cullen, and Miss Bianca, an albino for Cam, but Karma has wanted little to do with them. Their cages are next to each other and she occasionally boxes them through the bars but mostly ignores them. But she did stop with the hair cutting so she's not as stressed out or feeling as isolated as she was.

Last night Cam was playing with her and he found a tumor, probably a benign mammary tumor. Coming on the heels of Paws' death it's quite a shock. I suppose that scientifically it's not that surprising because most fancy rats are bred from lab rats, who were bred to get cancer, and Paws and Karma are sisters from the same litter, and they're getting old for rats, or at least middle aged, but somehow it is surprising. And this thing just wasn't there three or four days ago but now it's the size of a pencil eraser, which is worrying. If she's got to have a benign tumor I want it to be very slow growing, because that way it won't bother her for a long time.