How many times have I saved this rabbit’s life? Once by adopting him eight years ago, certainly, less than a week before his “deadline” at the animal shelter. Again a year later, the first time he went into GI stasis and I found him cold as death already. We microwaved a sock full of rice as a hot water bottle and rushed him to the vet. Again on the first anniversary of Zeke’s death — bladder full of sludge, that time and a painful and crotchety recovery that was. Another time in 2008 with the head tilt, in tag-team fashion with the ex-. Any number of additional times over the years chasing away feral cats ad sharp-shinned hawks. Six times? Seven?
Apparently not often enough.
He weighed three pounds seven ounces on Monday, down four ounces from October. I can glide my finger between his shoulder blades.
A twentieth of a milliliter of buprenorphine twice a day for pain, and a third of a milliliter of enrofloxacin along with it, the latter one with vitamins and foul flavor mixed in. I pick him up beneath the armpits, cradle him lying on his back in my left arm, wait until he relaxes, then wave each syringe ineffectually in the general vicinity of his mouth as he flinches. Eventually I win. The enrofloxacin is supposed to kill off the deleterious gut flora his vet thinks is keeping him on the razor edge of GI stasis, and the buprenorphine is to ease his pain. Pain from GI stasis causes GI stasis. It’s a bit of a problem.
A rabbit is an abundantly self-replicating machine designed to turn plant material into turds. It’s what they do, except when they don’t and then they die instead. Shut down a rabbit’s digestive tract for more than a couple days and it’ll never start up again. It is my job to keep that fire lit, and to that end I have been shoveling fuel into him like a locomotive fireman with a pile of cilantro-flavored coal.
I can feel every one of his vertebrae when I pet him. When he’s lying supine on my arm his hipbones press into my flesh. He’s about ten years old, and there are any number of reasons he might be losing the weight. None of them are uplifting reasons that give me hope for many future years of companionship.
PZ left a comment here a long time ago, not long after I met Thistle, that has stayed in my mind since. He referred to rabbits, from his perspective as an habitue of biology labs, as “friable… Crumbly and fragile.” I’ve kept Thistle alive for seven years since he made the comment, and yet I have to agree.
He used to be an asshole, this rabbit. One day not long after Zeke died I was lying on the papasan cushion I’d bought him to comfort his old dog bones, and Thistle walked into the room. He’d grown to like sitting on the papasan cushion, looking for all the world like a raisin on a slice of pita bread, and he wanted to do it some more, but I was in the way. He grunted at me from the edge of the cushion. I petted him and said something insufficiently submissive. He turned, walked to the far side of the room, then pivoted and leapt at me, biting me on my septum. It hurt like hell, especially when I laughed. Which I couldn’t not do.
Maybe it was his aging that mellowed him, or maybe it was my going away for a year and a half with no explanation, and then showing up again. He is sweet now and spends most of each day with me in his cage next to my desk. Even when he’s feeling well, he sometimes fails to eat if I’m not sitting next to him. For someone that once had the run of an entire house and his own expensively planted garden, he now shows little interest in leaving his cage. He’s happier if I take him out once a day and fuss over him, but sitting next to me in his cage as I work is enough. He’s good company.
Exercise works to get the gut moving, so I’ve been making him run around the house anyway. After loading each dose of painkiller and antibiotic into him, I put him on the hardwood floor and he ambles slipperily off to see what the cat is up to. The cat only outweighs Thistle by a factor of five and thus is easily pushed around. Yesterday morning the front door was open and desert sunlight streamed in through the metal security door. Thistle headed straight for it, gazed out across the apartment complex’s patio with cloudy eyes. Annette questioned whether his memory was good enough, but I’m certain I know what he wanted on the other side of that door. Though he might have been confused about where it had gotten to.
Chris,
I’m sorry to hear that Thistle is poorly. I have two rabbits myself and until I became a “rabbit slave”, i didn’t really ever consider these guys to be more than “cage pets” like guinea pigs. I have to say I’m glad I have them now and how much they’ve changed my mind! I hope Thistle feels better soon, poor guy.
I also wanted to suggest the book “The Relaxed Rabbit: massage for your pet bunny” by Chandra Beal. It has techniques to help arthritic buns feel better and to help Stasis buns keep their little guts moving.
Anyway, thinking good thoughts for your little friend.
*HUGS*
Joyful about your marriage plans - Congratulations both of you! - and simultaneously cast down by this. My darling Maggie is losing strength in her back end (kelpie-Rottie-something black and tan cross.) She’s going on 12. I assumed she would live to 17 or thereabouts. Am going so see a super vet about stem cell treatment soon. Kids say “why can’t dogs live longer?“but then we’d still have the first animals we ever had. We wouldn’t know the ones we love so much now. It’s one of life’s implacable sorrows.
Your story of Thistle sounds too much like my Natasha-kitty… before her internal systems started to shut down (which is when I had her put down) her external world started to collapse inward. She grew progressively less interested in anything but cuddling with me. Though a couple of weeks before her death, we took her on vacation up to the Eastern Sierra, and she experienced snow for the first (and last) time. She was fascinated.
Dammit, it’s been over a year since her death, and writing about her still sets me crying.
I had rabbits as a kid, and none of them lived very long, between a chronic stupidity about dogs combined with a cleverness about cage hasps (which afflicted the Netherland dwarves) and fragility of the sort you describe (for the lops). But each one had so much personality, and I still think about them.
I hope Thistle has more time with you; I think getting to be a pet of yours is rather like winning the karmic lottery for animals.
*hug* for you and Thistle.
Just checking for news on how Thistle is doing. He’s the cutest little bun… in pictures he sometimes looks like a granite statue with that marbled gray fur.
Natalie!
Thistle seems to be feeling a bit better in that he’s eating and pooping more normally, but he’s still grinding his teeth at me and a couple other things aren’t quite right. But he’s back to being a mainly happy guy for the time being.
I’m so glad to hear that Chris. :)
We lost our almost-15 gray and white autistic kitty Gus last spring. He had lived in a large kennel in my office for the preceding couple of years, someplace I had to put him because he was soiling the house no matter what I tried. I felt terrible confining him and the original plan was that it was temporary. He, however, turned out to LOVE his kennel where he had his own little home and was safe and didn’t have to share with anyone. He got to where he really didn’t want to be taken out of it. So for those years I had my little office buddy who shared every work day with me.
Never had a bunny and didn’t realize how delicate they can be.