I left Paula a message two mornings ago and haven’t heard back from her, so this makes me think something’s up. I’m really sick of writing to her only to get maybe one letter a year from her. It’s not fair. What does she do with her time? She doesn’t work, so she should have time to write more often yet she doesn’t, and I’m tired of spending a fortune on stamps on her. So from now on, when I don’t hear from her, I’m not going to bother writing. Besides, I never know if she’s getting the letters, locked up, or what. She had court on April 30th, as well as today, unless the dates got changed. Anyway, maybe she ended up in jail last month, though even if she did, couldn’t she write from jail to tell me this?

Yesterday, the rats woke me up after just 4 hours of sleep. Their wheel was bumping the side of their cage. After numerous times of lost sleep on account of them, I not only secured their wheels to the sides of their cage, but I made a rather ingenious setup and was quite productive for a good 12 hours or so, despite my lack of sleep.

The boys had been in a tank cuz they were not big enough for the old cage. To give them more room till they are, I took the wire floor and attached it to the center of the new cage with cable ties, creating a two-story house. The 5 guys live downstairs and the 5 ladies are upstairs. Each floor has one wheel and two tubes. The top floor also has a bowl, since I can’t just throw food in there that’d fall through the wire floor.

I just wish these rats would calm down! They come up to me when I approach the cage and they take food from me, but they act like I’m gonna kill them when I go into the cage or try to pick them up. By now, I know they’re never gonna get any better. All I can do is accept the fact that I’m stuck with a bunch of schizophrenic, nonsocial rats, but at least they’re cool-looking.