Snuggles

A couple weeks ago Shadow the cat brought in a little rodent. Trevor rescued it, we set it in a quiet cage to recover from the shock, then the plan was to release it back to the wild (and hope none of our cats caught it again). This is usually how cat "gifts" are handled, well the animal is well enough to be released or dies within a day. Every once in awhile a caught animal lives but needs additional care.This happened with Snuggles. When I was about the release the little rodent noticed how very young and helpless is was. Just a baby! So began life with Snuggles. First we had to determine just what it was and about how old. First we thought mouse, then we thought vole, this never was fully decided but it's eyes were still closed and that meant less than 2 weeks old most probably.

The syringe bottle was found and our stash of kitten milk powder (combined with almond or soy milk and water since rodents are not carnivores like cats) brought out. People formula would have been more suitable but we were out of that. I do tend to keep a few things like that on hand for these sorts of emergencies.

Snuggles was fed his first dropper feed and he liked it very much. Feedings for the first couple days were painfully slow, snuggles needed to drink drop by drop. Forcing the milk into a small animals mouth too fast is a recipe for death. Hayley and I did most of the feedings.

Also we needed to do an injury check since we knew the cat had this creature. We found no major injuries, just what looked like a scratch by it's eye. This was a lucky rodent.

One thing we noticed early on is how very friendly this vole (or mouse) was. This is certainly not the first time we've hand raised something the cat dragged in and we'd never experienced a rodent which liked attention and the comfort of being held so much. He spent many hours sleeping in any welcoming hand.

After a few days Snuggles eyes were open and he was anxious to try new foods. He tried cheerios, pieces of bagel, bread, hamster food, he liked the cheerios best.

After a week or so Snuggles seemed like he wanted to see more of the world and I started to consider releasing him.

Still undecided about it several more days later but we do find that Snuggles is still rather too attached to humans and may not be a good candidate for release.

Below are some photos of Snuggles journey so far. From bottle baby to messing up his first cage after playing in all the food.