last one

Reggie died this morning on the way to the vet.

I kept him in his playpen in my room last night to watch him, and ended up sleeping in there with him for a while until he kept using my legs as jumping pads. When I woke up, he was curled up in the corner, so I went to pet him before getting coffee. He tried to move, but fell over immediately. I called my vet, found a weekend clinic, and called them, who refered me to one who does rabbits. Technically, they don't, but they'd look him over, as there is a lack of sunday emergency care for exotic pets. On the way there, he died.

Without an autopsy, they can't be sure, but they think he got hit with what I was worrying about last night--snuffles. A lot rabbits are born with it, but it's like RSV, stressors cause it, and if one gets it, they all get it fairly immediately, and according to them and what I read, there can be some symptoms, no symptoms, or like Reggie, suddenly getting all symptoms all at once. Reggie made some odd coughing sound a few times last night, but his appetite was fine and he had no discharge, so I--really really really wanted this to be something else. There's a fairly good chance that if Reggie *hadn't* had it, I gave it to him by handling him so soon after the other two died. And if there were symptoms, I totally *missed* it and this all could have probably been avoided and I dno't know how I missed it at all.

Waffles is in isolation in his cage and I'm frankly terrified to go anywhere near him in case I pass it on. I'm throwing out everything the warren owned and starting off fresh. Waffles wasn't exposed to them, with his propensity to attack them, but we're taking him to his vet to have him examined. As soon as I've finished re-cleaning my room, he's coming inside for observation, but I'm scared about that, too. I don't know if keeping him in a separate room would be best, or keeping him outside temporarily, or if I should not let anyone go near him at all except for food until we can be sure none of us can pass this on to him. I'm not even sure if it's safe outside, since the warren played there several times. I'm not sure anywhere is safe, and he could have it already, or he could be asymptomoatic and more or less fine. I'm disassembling the condo as soon as I can get Waffles to a safe location, wherever the fuck that is, because the condo was for four and it looks wrong to just have one.

I"m still on no comments--I mean, I appreciate the sympathy, but there's no way I can really deal with it. I'm mostly just mad. There are backyard breeding projects tehy rescue rabbits from every day and they're *fine*. They're stuffed ten at a time into tiny cages that are never cleaned and fed crappy pellets and not enough water and left out in the cold day and night, and they're *fine*. I built mine a comfortable cage and read up on rabbit nutrition and gave them toys and loved them and they're gone, and the ten year old part of me--probably the same as my son, currnelty cuddling his bearded dragon to death in his room--just does not *get* it. I just don't.

And I'm mad I didn't take them to another vet appiontment, evevn though they didn't need one until February, because a six month appointment just to check up on them would have been an awesome idea and maybe something would have shown up then. And I'm mad that I didin't wake up earlier, because maybe I could have gotten Reggie to the vet earlier and he'd be on antibiotics and safe. And I'm mad that I didn't even have them a *year* and they're gone and they were my first pets--*my* first pets, and I loved them and I was looking at condos thinking about how I needed a third bedroom so I could convert it into a Rabbit World and it's *stupid*, but I did something wrong here and killed my bunnies and I keep staring at Waffles even though he's acting like there's nothing new in the universe thinking that if I go near him, he's going to die too. I mean, I was trying to figure out if I could give them pneumonia, because Jesus, how incompetent a rabbit owner am I that three of them die in twenty four hours? Who the hell loses *three rabbits* like this when they're barely a year old? They can live *years* just fine.