Saturday, April 11, 2009

Ill-timing.

Bunnies like kids and vehicles never seem to get sick during the nine to five convienent office hours. I can't speak for kids, but my two furrballs seem to have one eye on the clock and five minutes after the vet closes, come up with a symptom. I think they have a scoring system where they get double bonus points if it's a Friday, double the double if it's a long weekend. The scoring system is found in a book called 'A guide to giving your human grey hairs by hares.'

So, most bunny parents have a bunny first aid kit. A way to (hopefully) kick over a slowing down or cranky gut, some painkillers, gas medicine, and various foul tasting things to threaten your rabbit with. "Remember this? Smell! Do you want this?? DO YOU?? EAT!"

The secret weapon in my larder is baby food. Scout adores banana flavoured baby food. She can't stand bananas, won't go near banana chips, but baby food? Nom, nom, nom. I sometimes think she goes without food all day just when she feels she deserves some baby food. Sage, of course, the walking appetite, thinks she's insane. Sage once lost a chunk of claw in a hopping accident and bled EVERYWHERE. I was chasing her arond trying to catch her, she thought it was a great game of tag. Eventually I caught her when she wanted a snack. Here's my bunny, bleeding, in theory in pain, and she wants a mouthful of pellets. Yeah, never had a stasis problem with Sage!

Scout went three days with stasis before I managed to finally get food in here. It was over a week before she started eating on her own again. She seems to think food is something to eat when she's really really bored and well rested from her after nap nap. She'll drink a small lake of water a day, and nibble of a few strands of hay, she's just not big on the whole eating thing. Probably why she's so skinny. She's the size of a guinea pig naturally, and you can feel bones under that fur. She's been checked over for everything, offered soft foods, hard foods, inbetween foods.. and no, she's just not interested. She'll even tire of baby food after a meal. "Yeah, eaten enough now."

Of course, it means when she gets sick, it's an extra emergency to get her in fast because she doesn't have a lot of reserves to fall back on. Which, all in all, means its a minor miracle that neither rabbit has gotten sick on a four day weekend. Nope, my truck blew its exhaust system instead. Fortunately, vehicles don't require nursing at 0300.

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