Apologies for the change in posts today….it has been a busy week with my rabbits. Because it wouldn’t be a normal week without at least one sleepless night making sure they are ok.
So the fun thing about rabbits is that if they stop eating they can go into GI Stasis, and they can die. Pretty quickly, usually within about 12 hours. If they cannot eat, then their entire digestive track just shuts down and the bad bacteria in their gut can release toxins into their body that will eventually shut down their internal organs. It is the fear of every rabbit owner and it is fundamental to recognise the symptoms of GI stasis as soon as possible to ensure that your little bunny receives the treatment as early as possible so as to make sure no lasting damage is caused.
So Wednesday night, our usually bottomless pit, Sasha (the brown and white one below) was ignoring all food. This was very worrying, as she is usually the one begging at our feet for scraps whenever we are preparing food, even if she has been fed seconds before. She even refused banana (which is her equivalent of heaven) and we really started to panic. Now this was at about 8.30pm, so our usual vet wasn’t open and we had nothing on hand to try and help ourselves.
So then it was a trip to an emergency vet, which also happened to be located in a town 25 minutes away from where we currently live. I was still in my onesie, with nothing but a hoody on, my partner in his marvel heros pj trousers, sitting in this eerily quiet vet practice at 9.30pm. Luckily there was no serious concern. The vet gave her some meds to help move everything in her gut along and after sacrificing our first born in emergency vet fees we were finally heading home for the night.
We watched her throughout the night, offering her little treats to make sure she eventually ate something and to monitor her in case she took a sudden turn for the worse. At 1.45am, she finally ate a small piece of banana, and then proceeded to chase me around the living room until I gave her more food: Bananas, pellets, more banana, hay from the storage box (because apparently the hay from her bowl was not good enough for her). She then had a mad five minutes of binkies and zoomies around our living room, before finally flopping down next to her sister and falling fast asleep.
She is now doing much better and is back to her usual greedy self, who will eat her dinner in record time and then proceed to follow you around the room acting as though she has never seen food before in her life. So with all the stress of that, mixed with just every day stresses of a busy work schedule, too many social obligations and general adulting chores, I just didn’t really have anything properly prepared for today.
So, as way of an apology, here are a few photos of my bunnies. The two little beings that test my patience on an hourly basis and yet I would die for them without any hesitation.
They like to sleep snuggled up to each other underneath our dining table
One very floppy Sasha being used as a pillow by Lola
My partner tried to eat a banana….Lola demanded that he shared.
T xxx
