This is Crumble, my adorable, friendly, puffball of a gerbil. She is 1 ½ years old and lives with her twin sister Cookie.
About a week ago Crumble was diagnosed with diabetes, an almost unheard-of condition for a gerbil to have. The diagnosis comes after we took her to the vet after noticing her being lethargic, high temperature, weight loss, her eyes bulging and her constant drinking. We thought her eyes may be an eye infection that one of our other gerbils previously had, so we changed her bedding and gave her special eye drops from the vet. However, we noticed considerable deterioration in Crumble and weight loss, (we regularly weigh the gerbils to make sure they are in good health). After this we took her to the vet.
Once testing a urine sample, the vet determined the cause of her symptoms to be diabetes. At first, I found it a bit amusing, as our gerbils are quite overweight, but I soon came to he realisation that this was a serious, potentially life-threatening diagnosis.
In 2017, we adopted Cookie and Crumble, from the chain pet shop “Pets at Home” in the support adoption for pets section, as a Christmas present for my mum. We have had many gerbils in the past, since I was 6, so it was no problem to add to our long line of gerbil ancestry. From the moment we got them, Cookie and Crumble were the friendliest gerbils we had ever had, they were constantly at the bars waiting for us to get them out. Soon they became my little babies and began to take over the house.
As the gerbils are so tame, we allowed them to run in a big cardboard box, thinking it would give them something to fulfil their bursts of energy. Well no. They quickly learnt to jump out of the box, so they graduated to the sofa. The sofa met their active needs for a while until they became bored of it and started launching themselves off onto the living room floor, and for some reason (perhaps the reason being that we allow them to get away with anything), the little cheeksters got away with it. The living room was perfect until they managed to escape and run down the stairs to the kitchen or up the stairs to the bedrooms. That’s how they revolutionised our house and claimed it as their own. They have their own food bowl, water bottle and sand bath in the living room and kitchen and run there at least once a week for at least an hour.
Spending times in the living room watching TV with Cookie and Crumble made them become a real part of the family and I truly believe that even they think we are past of their clan. Therefore, the news that Crumble may not have much more time with us and Cookie, hit our family so hard.
So, for my family the question was and is, “what do we do next?”. The vet was unsure as she had never heard of a gerbil having diabetes, the internet proved no help, so we felt helpless. The vet got her colleague to call us to tell us possible options. There are 3 options which the vet determined from his experience in diabetes with cats and dogs. The first being we do nothing but give her painkillers to try and help her not be in too much pain in her final months. The second being we change her diet and they will do another urine sample to determine if it has had any help or the third being, we inject her with insulin twice a day.
We changed Crumble’s diet immediately and to her disappointment her and Cookie were put on boring pellets and no treats allowed. We have received many dirty looks and sneaky side eyes from the pair of spoilt princesses since that change. The question now is, is the change of diet going to make her get better? A question we will have to wait 2 weeks to answer. If the diet change has no impact, then the only other option would be injecting her with insulin twice a day for the rest of her life. A treatment that will not only be very expensive but that also begs the question: would that be morally right? Would it be morally right for us to put Crumble through pain and discomfort just to keep her alive for our and cookie’s pleasure? And what quality of life would we be giving her by putting her through this?
For many people it would just be a case of “it’s just a small animal, it can’t feel things like we do”, and yes gerbils don’t have as complex brains as humans, yet I believe that they can interpret emotions and are also very smart. Just going off the pure fact that they can learn how to climb the stairs, allow us to tickle their tummy, hold their hand or learn dance routines; and yes, my gerbils perform dance routines. Therefore, I can understand that they are intelligent animals.
Ultimately, I don’t want Crumble to die for mine or Cookie’s sake, however I don’t want to keep her alive when she is suffering either. I don’t know how things will end up looking like in the future but for now I will do whatever I can to keep my Crumble happy and by sharing this story I hope that if, by the odd chance, you have a diabetic gerbil you can have some reassurance that there are ways of helping the situation.
