Monday, August 29, 2005

Genie and Tomoyo

Regular readers know by now that posts containing solely the name of a pet do not bode well. This post is no exception.

Genie and Tomoyo were both daughters of Rem, the pregnant mouse we adopted from my lab last year.

Six day old mouse babies
Genie and other baby mice at six days old

Sadly, Genie fell ill the day before we left for our recent Canada trip. The friend who had volunteered to check on our mice once a week graciously volunteered to take care of Genie 24/7 (including giving her antibiotics) while we were gone. He did his best, but Genie died on the morning of July 26.

Genie stretching for food
Genie

Tomoyo (formerly known as Wide Stripey) was doing fine until last Thursday when we noticed that she was having trouble breathing. We took her to the vet, who gave us three different antibiotics: we had to force feed Tomoyo two of them using a syringe, and put one of them on her nose. She disliked being given the medicines, but she seemed to be getting used to it, and even appeared to be on the mend yesterday. However, when my SO woke up this morning we found that Tomoyo had died.

Tomoyo exploring
Tomoyo

Genie and Tomoyo were both tame, good tempered mice who were a pleasure to be around. Like all of their siblings they loved to crawl on us, never attempted to bite or escape, and were a joy to watch as they rearranged and explored their cages.

Meryl is now the sole surviving girl from Rem's litter; she is alone in the girls' cages.

To see more pictures of Genie and Tomoyo, see my adult mouse set on Flickr, which contains pictures from back in June.

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