#in both scenarios we stop having rats. grayson is devastated either soon or later bc no more pets | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

caterjunes · 7 days ago

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we're gonna put our rats up for adoption at the animal rescue. things are. bad. we can't keep their cage clean. grayson gets exhausted taking them out to play and i rarely join bc i just feel empty or disgusted or i start sobbing or wind up in pain or exhausted myself. so they don't get the amount of human interaction they deserve/need.

i feel awful about it. i feel sick. i don't know the last time i've felt like such an abject failure. not just as a person responsible for small lives but as a partner. grayson gets such joy from these boys, and they are so sweet to us too. i just. i can't even take care of myself. it isn't fair. it's not fair.

#keeping it fun and funky fresh #personal #the wild brunch #matty's mental health #i'm genuinely not okay. about any of this. about anything happening.#but the rats specifically are a real no-win scenario.#either 1) we pull the bandaid off & give them to the rescue. a clean (ish) break #we know they'll be fostered & adopted by ppl who will not just love them but will actually be able to take care of them #and they'll live out the rest of their lives with other rats who they'll get to know now while they're still middle-aged. & other people.#or 2) we keep them but continue the current plan to have them be our last batch of rats. they live in a habitat that we can't keep clean.#we're both wracked with guilt about this all the time. we keep exhausting ourselves doing what we can to keep things out of crisis mode #grayson gets to keep playing with them. i get to keep being miserable and More guilty every time i *don't* play with them #or just plain miserable every time i do #eventually they get older and their health goes downhill. one of them dies. i have a mental breakdown just like every other time #we rehome the other two. it's harder bc they're older and sicker and they miss their brother.#but they live out the (much less) rest of their lives with other rats. & other people.#in both scenarios we stop having rats. grayson is devastated either soon or later bc no more pets #while i'm wracked with guilt bc i feel very very very responsible for us not having rats anymore. and also devastated #bc i am. well. goodbyes are very bad for me.#which is why i feel responsible lmao bc last year i had like 4 straight months of ceaseless sobbing from all the back to back pet deaths #and i was like Listen. grayson. i can't do this anymore. i just can't. i can't keep having short-lived pets like this bc each death #feels like i'm being stabbed in the lungs over and over.#i guess technically option 3 is we keep having rats. we get another batch & introduce them. no rat off-ramp.#i just. keep getting stabbed in the lungs as they die. and we keep not being able to take care of them properly.#hey i didn't say it was a *good* option. but it is an option #pet death cw #idk how to tag the lungs metaphor.#injury cw #?

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