• I arrived to collect him at 4:15pm  and was asked to wait. I waited more than 10 minutes before Sandy Bhalla-Pentney ushered me in. 

• Sandy said she had tried to telephone me at 3:45pm to ask me what so do (?!) as they had noticed he was still bleeding after the operation and that the blood was oozing through the wound glue 

• She said that they had:
  (a) applied pressure but that he had continued to bleed, and
  (b) given him oxyden when he had started to gasp ,and
  (c) had again tried to reach me on the phone; this time to ask me if i wanted him put to  sleep.

 

They hadn't been able to reach me as I don't have a mobile 'phone and had been travelling back from Papworth Hospital at the time. She said because they hadn't been able to reach me to ask me what to do, they had simply continued to apply pressure and give oxygen and he had carried on bleeding and had just died. 

I broke down as she told me all this.

 

I asked to see my boy. He was brought into the room in his cage and I picked him up and hugged him to me; he was as warm as he would have been if he was alive. He had not been dead more than a minute or two. Blood ran from the open wound and it got all over my coat and my hands. They took him away to clean him up again whilst I cleaned myself up.  I was hysterical by this point. They gave him back to me in a towel to hug and gave me a few minutes alone with him.
 

The receptionist came in to see me and said I still had to pay. I was still sobbing. She took my card but brought it back saying  it had been declined. I said there was no reason for this so she tried it again - and returned to tell me it had been declined again. I asked her if she was sure she was doing it right.
She asked if I had another card or any cash. I said, 'No'. She asked  if there was anybody I could ring who could come down there and pay for me. I said,  'Only my husband and I'd have to go home to find his number anyway.' She asked if I usually put my pin in when I pay. When I said 'yes', she said I would have to come out to the front desk and enter my PIN in person. I was still sobbing.

I put Pugwash down and followed her to the front desk where I was made to pay IN FULL in front of all the other customers whilst sobbing and visibly shaking.
 

When I got home I hugged his body for two and a half hours before my husband Richard got home. Blood had soaked from the wound through 4 layers of towel and into my dress in that time. .    

No pet should bleed to death slowly in the recovery room at the Vets.

I cannot understand why they did not go back in to try and seal whichever blood vessel had not been sealed off correctly.

I cannot comprehend how they could just let him lie there and bleed to death over a period of more than 30 minutes whilst doing nothing more than applying pressure and giving him oxygen.
 

I telephoned CompanionCare's Head Office the next day to let them know what had happened. They were very helpful and kind until they found out from their records that he was 'only' a rat. From that point onwards, it was stock letters by email only and she never did telephone me back to let me know what it was they wanted done with his body, as she had said that she would. (Nor was this point addressed in either of their two stock email to me.)
 

They also tried to suggest that he had ''a bleeding problem''. Anyone who knows fancy rats knows that a Black Eyed Siamese does not suffer from bleeding problems. If he had been Topaz, maybe, but he was a BES and besides which, we would never send an animal with a bleeding problem in for an elective operation.
They also pointed out that every operation comes with risks.
I replied that we were aware of standard post-operative complications - reaction to anaesthetic, heart failure, etc - but that Pugwash's death did not fall into this category. No animal should bleed to death immediately after a routine castration.

They said it would take them about 2 weeks to investigate what had happened but that without a Post Mortem they would not be able to comment on cause of death. They gave me a telephone number to ring and told me to get in contact with the Royal Veterinary College myself if I wanted a PM. 
 

Regretably the phone number they gave me is 'no longer in use. I found their number for myself and spoke to the Small Animals PM section there. They said they do not take referals from individuals and that a request for a PM can only come as a referal by the Veterinary Practice and that the Head Office should be aware they were asking me to do an impossible thing. She suggested I complain to the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
 

I emailed the CompanionCare Head Office to let them know what I had just been told and what I had been advised to do. I have never received a reply to that email; there has been no communication from their Head Office apart from the two stock email and no contact with the Practice whatsoever. Yet, in reply to a comment left about all this on their Facebook page, the Practice states that they are in contact with me. That is not true; they are not. I have had no contact with the Practice whatsoever.
 

Many people - some of whom I don't even know - have left messages on CompanionCare Huntingdon's Facebook Page after hearing about this. Most of these have been deleted although some, with replies from the practice, still remain. There is not, to date, one reply in which they apologise or express any sorrow at what has happened to our lovely boy.
 

The appalling irony of all of this is that it was elective surgery. 

• Pugwash was not a hormonal buck. 

• He was a big old softie, a true ambassador for the ratty race, who made friends and influenced people everywhere he went. 

• Pugwash was a wonderful kind and loving Stud Rat

• We castrated him so he could live out the final third of his life with a coterie of his women; this was supposed to be 'a nice thing' for him and now he is dead.
   

We promised him he'd be all right when we took him to that place that morning. I wish to God we hadn't done so and that we still had him here in person rather than 'in the freezer'. I cannot begin to tell you of the tears and heartache and stress this has given us. We miss our boy and feel so bad. If we'd taken him somewhere else or to someone other than Sandy Bhalla-Pentney it's strongly our informed opinion he'd still be alive.