Charles (left) and Jason (right), August 2001

Jason (the fatrat)
a.k.a. "Value-sized rat," "grizzly bear," "The Kitten Bear"

May 2001 - March 6, 2003

Jason is named after the little boy in Terry Pratchett's book Thief of Time. A troublemaker from the start, before he even had his eyes open, Jason would crawl off and get lost in the bedding. I got many, many bites from Mommy Joanna while frantically sifting through bedding, trying to find a tiny pink thing - who Joanna was always very relieved to see. She would get very distressed whenever her tiniest baby vanished, but she never looked for him herself.

When he was four weeks old, Jason dived into a chair - a reclining chair full of rat-squashing moving parts. Mom and I were convinced that he had been killed until we finally spotted the tip of a little pink tail - and then Jason stuck his head out at us!

Jason started out as the runt of the litter - until he started eating. In his prime, Jason was the largest rat that I have ever owned. He was about 18 inches long from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail... and, it seemed, nearly as wide!

As an elderly rat, Jason was the King of the Rat Cage, and decided that he deserved more playtime than anyone else. He loved to fall asleep in the arms of anyone who held him for more than five minutes.

In February 2003, when he suddenly lost a lot of weight and became dehydrated, seemingly overnight. We still have no idea what was wrong, but a few weeks of antibiotics and nutritional supplements returned the Kitten Bear to decent health, if not to his youthful vigor. It is amazing how much this family of rats will care for one another --- while Jason was feeling sick, he stayed in the hiding box and Joanna brought food to him.

The pharmacist flavored the antibiotic to taste like tuna. I told Jason that it was medicine to "turn him into a tuna fish." This became an evening ritual, like a bedtime story. He would not drink the medicine unless told that he would become a tuna fish, and then he swallowed it eagerly.

Jason's condition improved for a couple of weeks, but he died in early March of heart failure. He had been declining for several days, and when we moved him into the sick cage that night I knew that it would be for the last time. I carried him around the house, just walking and holding him, until he became unresponsive and lapsed into a kind of slumber. A couple of hours later he was dead when I got up to check on him.

Over the rainbow bridge and into the ocean, my little tuna fish...