GRP (i.e. gratuitous rat post)

Argh. Pets provide constant drama. As you may remember I had to separate Ben and Krümel after Ben coldly disposed Krümel's brother Gonzo. Since then they are only hostile to each other through the cage bars. Anyway, now that Krümel is a bit older they are kind of snorting, squeaking, chuffing and bristling at each other when they can see the other. Which until now I thought was a bit annoying, but inevitable and not too worrying. I mean, I can't really prevent Krümel spending part of his playtime hanging on the cage's exterior on Ben's level without quite a bit of effort to distract or displace Krümel every time, so mostly I just collect Krümel when they seemed to get really worked up. However I didn't take into account that Krümel might be stupid enough to stick his paw through the bars so that Ben could bite it. *headdesk*

Krümel's paw bled quite a bit, but at least he seems to have come out of it with all of his toes intact, and he still used it afterwards. I tried to apply a bit of antibacterial wound salve I had gotten for my rats for a previous injury, but predictably it didn't stay on the paw for long. Well, it seems to have stopped bleeding and I hope it doesn't get infected. If the paw doesn't look okay tomorrow morning I'll bring him to the vet, since currently I have to take Ben there daily for antibiotics injections for a lung infection anyway (the only problem would be getting a second transport box, seeing how currently I only have one, and obviously that wouldn't do at all). Unfortunately that isn't going too well either, because he's already on the second antibiotic, after the first didn't work, and he reacts with swelling of the injection site to that current antibiotic.