So after putting it off all day, I finally started work a couple hours ago and man, the first tape turns out to be a dude who speaks such unbelievably heavily accented English that it’s almost totally impossible to understand him. Add to that the fact that the sound is muddy and there is not one, but two people asking him questions, often at the exact same time, and all three of these clowns overlap each other like it’s going out of style. It’s taking me fucking forever to do this piece of shit.
I don’t know what the deal is but all we’ve been getting lately is this kind of “non-standard” interview and it’s taking 500 times longer than normal interview would. You would really be surprised how tired you can get just sitting in one place and typing. It doesnt seem possible, but after a tape like this one, all you want to do is curl up with your thumb in your mouth and go to sleep for six hours. It’s really exhausting. I mean, he seems like a perfectly nice guy, but Jesus Christ, I can’t understand a word out of his mouth. Shit like this should be given to an in-house, Spanish-speaking typist. They aren’t going to be able to do dick with the transcript I’m going to have to give them, and it’s still going to cost them money, because they have to pay me for it, regardless, since it’s not my fault I couldn’t understand the guy.
An upside to this, though, is that this weekend we get a special bonus for all the work we do, so we get to make more money than we ordinarily would for whatever jobs we took. So at least that’s something.
Now here’s the really bad news. Just to make matters a little more stressful, my grampa rat, Spruce, seems to be experiencing the first stages of respiratory failure. He lost his twin, Hazel, back in August. I was worried about Spruce being able to survive Hazel’s death, but I tried to help him as best I could by paying a lot of attention to him. He was very sad for a couple of weeks but seemed to adjust pretty well, considering he’d never spend a moment of his life without his brother by his side. They were practically glued together. He’s been doing fine up until today; a few hours ago he started getting pretty agitated and I noticed his breathing had become a bit laboured.
He started making the motions of a rat in respiratory distress a few hours ago. I recognize the symptoms all too well by now, and I think I’m going to be losing him within the next day or two. He is a very old rat, two and a half years old now, and he’s had a long, full, hopefully happy life, but all the same, I’d like to hang on to him for a little longer. I was really hoping he’d make three. He seemed to be going on so strong! One of the bitterest things about having rats is that they rarely seem to ever die peacefully in their sleep. Instead, many rats…especially males, in my experience…who reach very advanced age seem to die of respiratory failure.
Taking Spruce to the vet isnt an option; he wouldn’t be able to manage the car ride; the stress of the ride alone would probably kill him before I got to the office. I’m not going to make what may be his final hours a hellish experience of fear and unfamiliarity. All the same, it would be nice if this little old man could at least skip the suffering and just pass away peacefully in his sleep, dreaming of his brother and running happily along whatever pleasant paths his mind wanders in his slumber.
He is fitful and restless. I have a fan set up in front of his cage now, so the airflow is increased, and this seems to have eased him somewhat, but not entirely. I feel so impotent and angry that I cannot help him more. He shouldn’t have to go through this shit. The medical community tortures and kills rats by the millions for medical research, and yet nobody can fucking come up with a solution to their health problems. Their lives are sacrificed to serve humanity, and humanity’s thank you is simply that theyre not worth saving because theyre only worthless rats. I can barely sit still for the injustice and cruelty of it all. I only want to be able to make him comfortable. I can’t even do that. Well, what the fuck good am I then?
This fucking sucks.