23/05/2026
This is the currently unfolding story of two families who both suffered preventable tragedies as a result of pet stores selling pregnant young rats, and how they came together with the help of the rescue community to find a happy ending. Content warning for animal death, birthing complications, and loss of parents.
The week before this all unfolded, the team had a conversation that went something like "Well, we're on track for the original goal we set when we took our break, of reopening surrenders by the end of May. That gives us a month to finish tinkering and updating our back end stuff, all the application forms, training, policies, blah blah blah, stuff we already have but is due for an update... But what I suspect is going to happen is that now we're so close, at some point this month we'll see a case so critical that we know we're capable of helping, and we're going to feel like the tradeoff of taking extra time to have extra space to optimise just isn't worth it, and we're gonna need to make the call if it comes up."
Fast forward to this week.
It's 7pm on a Friday, and sweet Blaire has just died, leaving behind ten hungry pups. Her owners reach out for help, and we talk them through hand rearing. They thankfully already had milk replacer on hand, the other rats they'd bought from the pet store weren't pregnant, but they were far, far too young to be sold, and we'd recommended they get some to supplement while they catch up in growth.
They got the babies safe and warm, but Blaire had kicked them all out of the nest and stopped feeding them the previous night, and we were playing catch-up, with signs they were already dangerously dehydrated. They needed feeding every 2 hours round the clock, and it was taking over an hour to feed less than half of them, it was impossible to keep up.
Hand rearing long enough to raise them was far beyond what they were capable of doing for the next few weeks - most people couldn't, it's a very hard thing to do even without work or school.
The problem was, they were in Tamworth, pretty far from anywhere that could help, and they didn't have any other options.
The goal that night was just to keep them alive, while we found a solution. While the owners fed and toileted, stressed and grieved the pet they'd just lost, things ticked away behind the scenes.
I (Grove, hello!) stuck around in the Discord server's Maternity Mentoring channel, teaching them how to hand rear, reassuring and trying to keep spirits up. I've done my share of hand rearing, and even when it's going well, nothing feels okay at 4am when you're covered in milk and p*e. If your pet has just died in your arms and you're desperately trying to feed bubs that are declining faster than you can feed, with no way out of the situation... All our hearts ached for them.
First obvious call was Yuki and Iris Foundation, a fantastic rescue at Coffs Harbour, only 4 hours away from them. Unfortunately they didn't have any capacity or know anyone who could help, but I appreciate Ash taking my late night emergency DMs.
Then Shae, one of the lovely volunteers who's been working in the Rehoming team, suggested we reach out to Cleo's owner. We'd never asked anyone to foster before, and I was hesitant, not wanting to pressure anyone. I didn't know at the time how perfect a fit it was, or how much Cleo needed it too.
Keep an eye for part 4! Featuring a long road trip.
Please consider heading to our website and donating, we've been doing this a long time and you'd think we'd already have a solid base of recurring donors giving a little each month, but we just took a year break after 8 years on the job, and donations almost completely stopped. This is our first rescue since returning, and we need our community behind us again!
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Part 4 out tomorrow! Thank you for following along with the story of this rescue mission.
