Matthias my buddy, my little mouseboy, you were the best of mice. You were not a young man when I took you in, you were a rescue with a broken tail and battle scars, but you had so much life left. When you were sick I thought that was the end, but you pulled through. (You also bit me when I held you for the vet. It’s okay. I love you.) When you started to look truly ancient, when your fur started to go threadbare like a well-loved teddy bear, I thought that might be the end, but you still had had months left to go. Even last night, you were eating treats and came up to my hand to be petted. I told you that you were a good boy, and that I loved you.

And Cornflower loved you more than I ever could have. I adopted her the same day I got you and from the moment you met she adored you. She was still a baby then and you were her big brother, her best friend, her whole world, the man who taught her how to be a mouse. You put up with her annoying teenager energy, you cuddled with her every night, you shared your food and your wheel and your burrow with her. She grew to be twice your size but she’d still let you walk all over her (often physically).

In your last days, she’d sit with you when you were tired and groom you when you were scraggly. When I found you this morning she was still snuggled up tight against you. I had to push her away to take your body. To the last day she wanted to keep you safe.

There have been so many mice in this world and sometimes it kills me to think that every one of you has had your own unique personality. That’s too much to know, when your lives are so short and often so hard.

I can take satisfaction in this, at least: when you were with me, you were absolutely spoiled rotten. For the last year-and-change of your life you didn’t spend one day cold or hungry. You never had to fear cats or owls or traps. You lived like a little mousey king, going to bed every night surrounded by a pile of carefully cached, lightly gnawed food blocks. In terms of mouse lives it had to be 99th percentile. I’m glad I could give you that.

Farewell, Matthias the Warrior, the toughest little mouse I have ever known.