With the most sad of hearts I tell about a very kind, sweet, higgable
kissy face little guy that came to me with his brother as a pair of
rescues from a shelter.

Pete's brother passed soon after arriving here, he also was a very sweet
gentle fun little guy.  They were so very happy to be here and have all
the 'out' time I give them.

Pete was albino.  He would kiss me all over when I picked him up.
Where he always had a cage mate I got another shelter kid to keep him
company.  But these two never hit it off and would fight viciously so I
had to give them separate cages and separate out times.

The routine was that RePete (a total white and very near duplicate of
Pete) would be out from early morn till early evening and Pete would be
out from early evening to early morning.  Last night I put RePete back in
his cage and let Pete out.  Pete did his usual inspections and started
begging for a cheerio but I didn't give him any in his cheerio box (a
cardboard case bottom where they can eat these and make crumbs keeping
the floor clean).

Pete came to me and lay down at my feet while I was on the puter for a
long time.  I thought he was telling me he wanted that almighty cheerio
but maybe he had another message.  I did pick him up and play a bit but
he wanted down so I put him down.

He wandered off as he usually does, nothing seemed to be wrong.  I
watched TV as usual and after the late night news I retired.  With all
the lights off I went to the bedroom and began to step on a fuzzy thing
and immediately stopped not putting any pressure on him and turned the
light on.  It was Pete, of course.  I bent over to pick him up but he was
stiff, totally stiff.  There was absolutely no indication he was sick or
that anything was wrong.  He just lay down by the bedroom door and died.

I got up early this morning and buried him next to the others.  Is sad
to loose such a great little guy.  I really loved it when he would crawl
into bed with me under the covers and curl up and sleep like Byte-me did.

May he rest in peace.  At least he was in a home where he had allot of
out time, good food and plenty of it, and lots of love.  He gave it back
also, was a good deal.  Thank you Pete.

Aarrow Ranch Aviation
Rev. J Gordon Bengtson
7302 Hunterbrook Drive, Suite 100
Mechanicsville, Va. 23111
USA
[Posted in FML issue 5262]