[Ly&Pigs]

My beloved Ratty Popeye crossed the Rainbow Bridge yesterday in the early evening. He wasn't walking so well late Friday night and there are no Emergency vets anywhere within a 2 hour drive so I kept a good eye on him this past weekend and had planned on taking him to my regular vet this morning.

Yesterday I was cage cleaning and lifted their fleece and there was a rather large spider. After looking Popeye over a little more carefully near his back end, I can only assume that it may have been a spider bite as the tissue under the skin seemed as if it was necrotizing. (Several years ago my now ex-husband had a dog that was bitten by a snake and the skin necrotized so it reminded me of that.) He had pretty much completely lost the use of his hind legs yesterday afternoon and had loss of bowel/bladder control too. He was near 2 years old. I had taken him in because I didn't want him to end up as snake food seeing as he only had one functional eye. The other eye was missing and closed probably due to a birth defect.

After I cleaned the cages, I wrapped him in a towel and brough him in my room to spend some time with him. I cried and told him it was ok if he needed to go because Mommy didn't want him to be in pain anymore. After about an hour, I put him back in the cage with Eddie and Sam and he died shortly after.

He was a very loving, gentle boy and will be so very greatly missed. He was my favorite of all my animals.