When it rains…

Last October, one of our rabbits was stolen right out of the backyard hutch. Naturally we told everyone we knew, but as time passed by, it seemed like our bunny was gone forever. I wondered about adopting a companion for our remaining bunny, but decided to hold off for the time being.

Completely out of the blue, one of our neighbors told us that she had a white rabbit in her backyard. My husband and two older children ran over to catch it, and sure enough, it turned out to be our stolen rabbit.

Her teeth were badly overgrown and her foot was injured, so we got her into the vet right away.

I’m going to interject here and say that it seriously pisses me off that people will acquire animals then not bother doing a quick Google search on ‘basic care.’ Rabbit teeth never stop growing, so having something to chew is just as important as food and water. Obviously, our poor rabbit was not adequately cared for.

Anyway, the foot injury is bad enough that she has an impending toe amputation, and she’s on painkillers and antibiotics.

That very same night, our cat went into labor.

We didn’t plan on her getting pregnant when she did, but with everything that started happening two months ago, we forgot to pay attention to certain things. We didn’t realize our mistake until she was halfway through her pregnancy and started getting fat.

That morning she was flopped over the back of the armchair, and looked miserable. Having felt that way myself a few times, I knew that she was getting close to the end, but the vet had estimated another week and she hadn’t done any nesting behavior. I thought there was more time.

In the evening, I found her lying on the living room floor and having contractions. I moved her to our bedroom closet, away from the kids, but when I tried to go back downstairs she followed me.

Which is how I ended up sitting on the hardwood floor inside our closet, stroking her back as she pushed out five kittens.

At first, I wasn’t sure how involved I should be. While I was growing up, I had always heard that cats needed to be left alone while they gave birth, and it was something I have never been part of before. However, as our cat grew more exhausted, the more my mama instincts kicked in and I couldn’t sit and watch. I grabbed a towel and helped clean them up.

Unfortunately one of them was much weaker than the others and didn’t survive long, leaving us with four kittens.

This, of course, all happened when my husband had a big deadline with work, and he was stuck at his computer while I kept him informed through text.

So, while I was planning on spending May in a comfortably lazy routine, I’m thoroughly exhausted with a traumatized rabbit that needs medicine twice a day, a postpartum cat and kittens that I’m anxiously checking on all the time, and a pelvis that hurts like @#$! from sitting on the hard floor for too long.

Yet I feel so good about it all.

Having everything happen like that is so wild, I had to write about it.