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
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
Last edited: