Grieving rat, getting a bit worried now

[PixieofCatan]

We lost Ruby to her tumour on Thursday, it was cystic and burst during the night, she lost a lot of blood and so we had to take her to the vets to be pts :( Nibbles was fine on Thursday but a bit confused. Babies were fine too. Since then Nibbles has become very motherly to the babies, lots of nesting, dragging them to her nest and so on. She was on heat so that triggered it I think but it's carried on.

She has become very antisocial, she was a bit before but now is worse, she spends most of the day in the sputnik. She has come to the door couple of times for a cuddle but wants to go home quickly. The babies have been fine, as gorgeous as ever.

I don't think that it helps that we went on holiday and picked them up Tuesday evening, so she was already in a sulk with us about leaving her!

Any ideas as to what we can do? Aeryn and Zhaan are taking the mothering in their stride but we can't access Nibbles in the bloody sputnik and I'm loathe to remove her "nest" as she does need a comfort zone.

[70isaLimitNotaTarget]

Awww Ruby was one of your older girls ?

No help I'm afraid but some rodenty hand holding

[PixieofCatan]

She was, one of our rehomed/rescued girls, only a year a a half or so though so not that old. We weren't supposed to be getting the babies until next week so thank goodness we got our babies before we went on holiday! I don't think Nibbles would have coped well without Ruby, they kind of adopted one each and Nibbles kept fighting with Aeryn so we paired Aeryn with Ruby and Nibbles with Zhaan which worked wonders.