All is dead and lost
Noticed Amelia was in bad shape last night just as I was leaving for work. No time to do anything about it.
Came home expecting to find her dead, but she was still breathing so after making a couple of calls I found a rabbit vet willing to check her over today if I just dropped her off. I did so and stopped off on the way home to try to pay the fee for placing my father's headstone. Which it turned out I couldn't do because the guy who handled the arrangements with my sister was out (possibly to lunch) and his notes didn't say which of the two headstone options my sister had gone with. So I couldn't get that cash safely out of my wallet, but at least Dad's temporary death certificate had arrived and I was able to collect that (after a bit of fuss calling Lauren for her verbal okay to send the certificate home with me).
Came home, fed animals and did dishes and went to bed. Woken from a sound sleep to a call from the animal clinic asking me if I wanted the vet to put Amelia down so she wouldn't suffer any further. I had just woken up and the call kept cutting out and then after I'd given the okay and and hung up I found I'd missed two earlier calls regarding her being ready to pick up and bring home. Which -- did she suffer a major downturn in the next couple of hours after the second call, or did I just get asked to go ahead and euthanize her if I wasn't going to pick her up before they closed? The tech I talked to seemed to be implying she'd be untended all night at the clinic and almost certainly die alone, so were they just trying to get her out of the clinic before she died when they called me this afternoon, or did they figure I'd have a shot at pulling her through myself with overnight care (which I wouldn't be home to give anyway)?
Not happy. And her new mate Norwood probably has no idea what to think about me taking his ladybun away and not bringing her back. They'd only been together a month and actually were bonded at the rabbit sanctuary while Amelia was being boarded to get her away from the living room renovations last month. Norwood barely knows me and today was not a trust-building exercise.
(Did I ever mention Hrothgar the Easily-Startled in this journal? Adopted late last June, died between Xmas and New Year -- presumably due to the dust in the air from the kitchen renovations, which is why Amelia was boarded for the next round and why I postponed finding her a new mate until the living room was handled. I didn't predict a love-at-first-sight bonding for her next mate and feared having to board two rabbits that still needed separate cages.)
So, yeah. Losing Amelia so soon after the storm-induced power outage (from around 2pm Sunday to 8:30ish Monday morning) makes me want to blame the greens in the fridge having gone bad during the outage, or possibly a touch of heat stress Monday afternoon. (Let the bunnies play in the yard that morning, couldn't find Amelia that afternoon when it started getting warm enough to want them in, left the back door standing open until I finally got them both in and had the AC off all day and the inside temp reading was 89°F when I finally got them in and turned the air back on.) Also she could have eaten something she shouldn't have while out in the yard. Cause of death gastric stasis but why she stopped eating I don't know.
Also, how much fun is it to get bombarded with Father's Day ads a month after your father was found dead in his house? (Cause of death also unknown by us, at least until I get that autopsy report request printed and mailed. The going assumption is that it's due to spending the last several years trying to subsist on a diet of beer and cigarettes -- but the hospital telling my aunt and uncle last February that bringing him plates of dinner was "enabling" him and they needed to stop doing it was probably a contributory factor.)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.
Came home expecting to find her dead, but she was still breathing so after making a couple of calls I found a rabbit vet willing to check her over today if I just dropped her off. I did so and stopped off on the way home to try to pay the fee for placing my father's headstone. Which it turned out I couldn't do because the guy who handled the arrangements with my sister was out (possibly to lunch) and his notes didn't say which of the two headstone options my sister had gone with. So I couldn't get that cash safely out of my wallet, but at least Dad's temporary death certificate had arrived and I was able to collect that (after a bit of fuss calling Lauren for her verbal okay to send the certificate home with me).
Came home, fed animals and did dishes and went to bed. Woken from a sound sleep to a call from the animal clinic asking me if I wanted the vet to put Amelia down so she wouldn't suffer any further. I had just woken up and the call kept cutting out and then after I'd given the okay and and hung up I found I'd missed two earlier calls regarding her being ready to pick up and bring home. Which -- did she suffer a major downturn in the next couple of hours after the second call, or did I just get asked to go ahead and euthanize her if I wasn't going to pick her up before they closed? The tech I talked to seemed to be implying she'd be untended all night at the clinic and almost certainly die alone, so were they just trying to get her out of the clinic before she died when they called me this afternoon, or did they figure I'd have a shot at pulling her through myself with overnight care (which I wouldn't be home to give anyway)?
Not happy. And her new mate Norwood probably has no idea what to think about me taking his ladybun away and not bringing her back. They'd only been together a month and actually were bonded at the rabbit sanctuary while Amelia was being boarded to get her away from the living room renovations last month. Norwood barely knows me and today was not a trust-building exercise.
(Did I ever mention Hrothgar the Easily-Startled in this journal? Adopted late last June, died between Xmas and New Year -- presumably due to the dust in the air from the kitchen renovations, which is why Amelia was boarded for the next round and why I postponed finding her a new mate until the living room was handled. I didn't predict a love-at-first-sight bonding for her next mate and feared having to board two rabbits that still needed separate cages.)
So, yeah. Losing Amelia so soon after the storm-induced power outage (from around 2pm Sunday to 8:30ish Monday morning) makes me want to blame the greens in the fridge having gone bad during the outage, or possibly a touch of heat stress Monday afternoon. (Let the bunnies play in the yard that morning, couldn't find Amelia that afternoon when it started getting warm enough to want them in, left the back door standing open until I finally got them both in and had the AC off all day and the inside temp reading was 89°F when I finally got them in and turned the air back on.) Also she could have eaten something she shouldn't have while out in the yard. Cause of death gastric stasis but why she stopped eating I don't know.
Also, how much fun is it to get bombarded with Father's Day ads a month after your father was found dead in his house? (Cause of death also unknown by us, at least until I get that autopsy report request printed and mailed. The going assumption is that it's due to spending the last several years trying to subsist on a diet of beer and cigarettes -- but the hospital telling my aunt and uncle last February that bringing him plates of dinner was "enabling" him and they needed to stop doing it was probably a contributory factor.)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.