I lost Bramble a few days before Christmas, but didn't have the space and time to reflect on her life. Bramble came to me with her sisters Hazel and Ash, and was the last of the trio to leave.

Bramble was the most licky rat I've ever known. I'm convinced that she thought I was a giant faily rat incapable of taking care of myself, and she was the only one standing between me and my inevitable descent into socially unacceptable poor hygiene. I've had ratty manicurists before, but Bramble took this to a new level - she cleaned under my nails, nibbled my fingers, licked my hands, licked my face (especially my nose), tried to groom my eyebrows... Once, in the midst of thesis finishing, I took them into my bathroom to free-range and fell asleep on the floor. I woke to Bramble carefully grooming my hair and scalp with her teeth. It sounds alarming but it's the gentle nibbling they do to themselves and other rats, and I was charmed and honoured that she extended that to me.

When I took her to the vet recently to see whether she should be on metacam for her old lady hips, she ended up licking both the vet nurse and the vet. It made the horrible child on the bus ("is that a rat? will it bite? I don't like rats") even worse - Bramble was the least bitey rat I can imagine, and a great deal more pleasant company than a horrible child.

She completely charmed my mother by grooming her - when my parents were ratsitting my mum once phoned me with delight to say that she'd been groomed by Bramble. Their ratsitter was besotted with her to the point where I wasn't entirely sure I'd get Bramble back.

Bramble was a champion nest builder:


Photo of shredded cardboard bedding piled around a grey hut with Ash's weird puppy face, Bramble's nose and Meena's head sticking out of the hut.


Photo of lots of shredded paper and cardboard piled so high around the grey hut you can barely see it.

I admit to teasing her a little - she especially liked large bits of cardboard to line her nests, and when I cleaned them out I'd move the biggest bits of cardboard to a different level to their hut and hammocks so she'd have to move between them, cardboard stuffed in her mouth. It was exercise!

She was also a shoulder rat:

Photo of a small black rat perched on a human's shoulder. As she got older she'd drape herself on my lap and just hang out with me while I was on the computer.

She was chronically respy towards the end of her life and was increasingly thin and frail, but she didn't lose her spark until the very end. I found her dead in the morning; it looked like she'd just never woken up.

Goodbye Bramble, Bram, Brambly - you were loved.