We lost our favorite pet rat (my son's rat) Uncle Kracker tonight. He had been fine though we'd noticed an odd squeek here and there when he wrestled with his cage mate (Kid Rock - Rocky). He just laid down and passed away quietly. He was just a year old and a truely lovely, responsive pet. All we found when we examined him was a small bump on his spine so perhaps a cancer had grown or he was accidentally hurt during the rather rough male rat play.
He's got a quiet spot under a big tree and even though he was "only" a rat he'll be sorely missed by Mike and I and the kids.
Makes it worse as we've made the hard decision to have our elderly cat put down next week and were just trying to figure out when to talk to the kids about it when this happened so it's going to be a hard road losing two pets in a relatively short amount of time.
~~Jo~~