kind of heartbreaking

[ratcreature]

Oskar seems to be getting desperate to get back to his brothers. He's taken to running onto me when I open his module's door, and then tries to get somehow down, presumably to find a way into the module below, where the others are, who I blocked from him. You have to keep in mind that Oskar does not like climbing onto me. Usually he won't even come onto my arm when I bribe him with food. I feel really sorry for him. It doesn't help that he still looks rough, and that his appetite hasn't really come back either, and yet he musters this spurt of activity to try to find a way through. And then I have to put him back, while he wants to escape. It makes me feel like an extra cruel jailer. :(

Comments

[krait]

Awww! Poor Oskar. Could he, perhaps, have a piece of fabric that smells like them, or a big handful of their bedding from an area they hang out in, to comfort him?

[ratcreature]

I don't think that would work. Their bedding is mostly newspaper and they pee on it, so it has to be changed daily or they sleep on wet stuff (which causes the problems like the bumblefoot the others struggle with, I think one factor there ws that for a while I only changed the bedding every two to three days), but the sturdier interior stuff (like the baskets) has not been thoroughly cleaned by me, so it all smells like all of them anyway. And the barrier I used has a mesh grid, so he can see and smell them through it, when he sits next to it. The problem is that he knows they are just below, and sees no reason why I'm preventing him from going there.