Bunny terrorised by cat - will he be ok?

Hi all

Firstly, I apologise if this is the wrong section for this topic - I've been reading threads on here for ages but have only just created an account to ask this question! You'll see why I think it ought to be in this section when you read on...

A bit of backstory: Benny is almost 2 years old. We've had him since he was a couple of months old, and he lives inside with us, in a roomy cage overnight and roaming free whenever we're at home. When he was very young (we had only had him a few weeks), he was given his vaccinations for myxomatosis and RHD. As a new bunny owner, I had never heard the words "GI stasis" before. I became pretty familiar with them over the next couple of weeks though! Long story short, we didn't recognise the signs at first as we didn't know rabbits not eating for relatively short periods of time is a very bad thing. He was extremely ill by the time we started treating him, and it took a lot of hard work, in and out of the vet's, and staying up with him through the night to get him to pull through. Since then he's had numerous stasis incidents, which we've treated at home. Since we reduced the number of pellets we were giving him and forced him onto a mainly hay diet, he had had no incidents in over 6 months (I can't actually remember the last time - it may have been much longer).

The problem now: Benny was castrated on Wednesday. As we could have guessed, this sent him straight into stasis but, luckily for us, we are pretty much experts in that by now. Thursday was spent at the vet's, Friday I took the day off work to stay with him, and by last night (Saturday) he was pretty much back to normal (up to and including trying to hump my leg...can't wait for the neutering to take effect :roll. I gave him a dose of cisapride and ranitidine around midnight, then came upstairs to bed, where I opened a window. Sometime during the night, without waking me up, a neighbourhood cat had the cheek to climb up our conservatory and jump through the window, then saunter on downstairs to meet Benny. I don't know how long it was down there; it could have been seconds, or it could have been hours. A noise woke me up, but I was still getting my bearings when this cat came flying up the stairs like a bat out of hell and jumped back out the window, via my bed. My first thoughts were of Benny and his stasis. It has really not been a good week for him!!

I went down and he was predictably pretty stressed out. He ran into his little hidey house and was thumping his heart out, but calmed down when I gave him some food. I tried to leave him to chill out properly, but as soon as I came upstairs he started thumping again, so I spent some more time with him. He seems OK now, but I just keep thinking of a story my cousin once told me about her rabbit Thumper, who was terrorised in his outside cage by a fox one night, then sat around miserable for a couple of days before dropping dead.

Will Benny be OK? We're already treating his post-op stasis (which he just seemed to have recovered from), so can go on treating it and hopefully prevent him from getting really bad again. Is that the only thing that could kill a rabbit after a stress like this? Could the cat have brought any infection in with it? I've never seen it before but it did look well-groomed and healthy, and had a collar.

Sorry for the length of this post, I just wanted to make sure I got all the info down, and gave Benny a proper introduction! I'd post a photo of him, but don't think I have the permissions to do that yet as a newbie

How does he seem this morning? As long as he wasn't bitten or scratched by the cat I think just keep a really close eye on him today and get him straight in to the vets if you're worried and keep tempting him to eat with his favourite treats.
Hopefully he'll be fine

You can post pictures btw, you just need to copy them from a hosting site like photobucket.

Wow, super speedy reply, thank you! I just went down to check on him again and no thumping, he's eating his pellets a bit and very happy to eat some yoghurt treats from me! I know they're not great for him, but we save them for special occasions like this...or tempting him to get back in his cage at night :roll:

I don't like to stress him out more by taking him out of the cage just yet to check for scratches but there's no way he could have been bitten as the cage was a barrier between the two of them. Fingers crossed the bars are too narrow for a pesky feline paw to have fitted through as well, but I'm not 100% sure. I'll keep an eye on him as you say, and hopefully it will be forgotten very soon! I just feel so bad for my little man - of all the times for this to have happened!

p.s. cheers for the photobucket tip, let's see if I've done this right! Benny:

Sorry, this was a double post and I'm not sure why. Trying to delete...

Aww he's lovely. Sounds like he's going to be none the worse for his encounter then :thumb:

Have you tried him on fenugreek crunchies as an alternative treat? They usually go down very well and are a healthier option

Hi there, Benny''s beautiful. I'm wondering if the cat was more scared than Benny. Seeing as the cat was in a strange house and had probably never seen a rabbit it was probably scared stiff. We used to have a French Lop, Duchess, who used to see off the cats that came into the garden. She did a corkscrew and landed on a cat that was stalking her. The cat made such a noise and dashed off. We never saw it again. She was a BIG girl!

I'm wondering if the cat was more scared than Benny

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You know, I think you're probably right. That cat was definitely in a hurry to get out of the house, and not at all concerned about me being in its way - it was getting out at all costs! I know I wouldn't like to mess with a grumpy man who had been neutered against his will in the past few days So maybe the cat never really got near him.

My main concern was that Benny has always been very sheltered, never having met another animal except humans since he was taken away from his litter, and his cage is his stronghold, so feeling trapped in there by some strange new creature could have psychological effects. Luckily he's been fine all day! Hiding under his favourite armchair, but that's pretty standard during the day, and he quite happily came out every time I waved some kale in his face. All's well that ends well, hopefully

Have you tried him on fenugreek crunchies as an alternative treat?

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Actually no, but I have noticed lots of people around these parts mentioning them! Where do you usually get them? I'll have a look in our local "Pets@Home" and "PamPurred Pets", but suspect it might need an online order instead. I would certainly feel less guilty giving him something like that instead of the yoghurt drops.

Benny's beautiful/Aww he's lovely

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Thanks both I love his little harlequin face - that's the photo I usually use when I'm trying to entice my Facebook friends to bunnysit for us if we go away for a weekend...

I don't think pets at home sell them but my local independent pet shop does, or you can get them online from the hay experts or Amazon. My bunny loves them although he's only allowed one a day because I'm strict with treats much to his displeasure!

He's sounds (and looks) like a lovely boy! And I'm glad he seems to be doing well despite his surprise visitor.

To me it sounds like the cat encounter hasn't overly upset him, just going by your description of how he is behaving now. Usually the signs I look out for in a rabbit being overly stressed, is reduced/lack of appetite, unusual behavior changes, lethargy, sitting in a corner not moving around much, hiding out for prolonged periods that would be different than usual, increased respiratory rate, changes in poop. You'll also want to give a thorough check of his face, ears, and front paws for any signs of a scratch, just in case. I would also continue checking for the next few days for signs of swelling in case anything was missed. And if you do have any doubts or concerns, a vet check is always best.

One thing I will mention, is that I also had a stasis prone bun, that was completely cleared up by removing pellets and carb rich treats from his diet. I believe that his digestive tract was damaged by his initial stasis brought on by stress, and it just wasn't the same after that, being especially sensitive to sugars and carbs. As long as he remained on a strictly hay, leafy greens, forage diet, he did fine and never had stasis again. If your bun is anything like mine, foods like yogurt drops and even fenugreek crunchies, could lead to digestive upset and possibly stasis. For treats for my bun, I stuck to strictly non sugary/starchy treats like herbs and forage. So if your bun continues to have digestive issues, a stricter diet may be something to consider.

Well I can tell yo one thing for free - he's a gorgeous creature.

I'm glad to hear you've been able to help him so many times in the past and I hope he recovers from his op well. Though as you say, he's needed an eye on so often that you know what you're looking out for mostly if he is overly stressed out by it. I can't remember from reading at the top but has he his check up appointment left with the vet? Maybe worth just mentioning and I do agree that cats can be wiley, so it's maybe worth triple checking for a hidden scratch anyway - afterall where we don't know what's frightened the cat it could be it's nicked poor Benny and his reaction frightened the cat or similar.

But I agree with everyone and though I'm no stranger as a human to the odd fatty treat, I read what JBun has said about diet so it may be worth considering if that can help him in the long run.

I can't remember from reading at the top but has he his check up appointment left with the vet?

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Unfortunately his 3-day check up was Saturday morning, so we're only left with the 14-day check up a week from Wednesday. It would have been nice to get the vet to thoroughly check he was none the worse from his feline encounter. But I felt him all over, much to his displeasure at the moment but he tolerated it, and I couldn't find anything. If he had even a minor scratch giving him pain I'm sure he wouldn't be eating and acting normal - that's just the way he is, although I know bunnies are supposed to hide their ills! He's absolutely fine still this morning, but I will be keeping a close eye on him for return of stasis symptoms for the foreseeable future! Maybe I should change the title of this thread to "Intruder cat terrorised by my bunny - will the cat be ok?"

I believe that his digestive tract was damaged by his initial stasis brought on by stress, and it just wasn't the same after that, being especially sensitive to sugars and carbs

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I think you're spot on with that, Jbun. The same thought had crossed my mind with regards to Benny. That first episode was very, very bad, so it wouldn't surprise me if every episode we had after that was related to that first one, and not just because he is genetically prone to stasis. Fortunately, before the post-op ileus he hadn't been in stasis for a long time. I've been racking my brains trying to work out exactly how long, and I think it could have even been a year or more. Maybe he's been lucky and the damage from that first episode cleared itself up as the GI tract cells changed as he grew and got older.

We were lucky in that we have two vets in the family (the bf's parents), so they recommended the drastic reduction in pellets and forcing him to eat more hay, which did coincide with the end of his episodes. We also starting brushing him whenever he was losing fur, as I read in various places that too much fur in the digestive system could cause stasis. For now, the changes we've already made seem to have worked, so I'm confident that the odd naughty treat hasn't been doing him any harm recently, although I will be looking into the less naughty fenugreek treats! But if this latest episode makes him regularly stasis-prone again, I will happily test him out on the Bunny Atkin's diet - his absolute favourite, kale, outweighs any amount of sugary treats anyway so I don't think he would mind too much