Caesar, Netherlands Dwarf Rabbit, whom I had raised with great care, passed away the other day. He was just 11 years old. Caution: If you scroll down, the dead rabbit will be displayed.
For a long time, I’ve felt that he is in a daze that is getting longer. He used to poop and pee almost 100% in the toilet, but gradually he had to go elsewhere.
He has been looking okay for a few months but doesn’t use the toilet often. The level difference with the toilet might be tight. The height of the circle and cage is also equipped with a slope to reduce the level difference.
He is in a daze but still doing fine.
Caesar was eating grass, pellets, and snacks in a balanced manner, but overall the amount he ate was less than before, and he was thin. The first thing he ate less was the number of pellets and less grass. In the old days, when the activity of the intestines was terrible, he would recover if he ate the best cut of premium timothy with a lot of fiber. If that didn’t work, I used a dropper to do forced feeding, but this time, it was powerless.
Maybe because his head was heavy, he seemed to rest on a small step before he died.
Ultimately, he could barely eat his cecal droppings, but it seemed very troublesome. I don’t know how much I should take care of.
Maybe because I have been giving them a “bunny selection” for a long time, I think the hair gloss was good, but it’s not so shiny anymore.
On the morning of the 22nd, the rabbit could not even sit and was lying down. I thought the towel would be more comfortable, but he wanted to lie on the wooden floor. He passed away. I don’t know if it was painful. He seemed to have passed away quietly. At this time of the year, his body will deteriorate soon, so I wiped his lightly dirty bottom and body, put it in a plastic bag, and put him in the refrigerator.
It was my first time having a pet funeral, so I didn’t know well. I had my pet cremated at a pet crematorium near my house. I thought it was a small facility, but the staff treated me kindly so I could have his bones safely.
Since it was an individual funeral, I was shown his bones after cremation. I received various explanations from the staff, such as a skull, sore throat, and femur.
The firepower is not as strong as that of a human cremation. If you grill it with a strong fire, the bones won’t remain. When I checked, I was impressed that some municipalities have excellent municipal crematoriums for pets. I wonder if there is no pet crematorium in the 23 wards of Tokyo. But it is possible to collect dead animals, but it is treated as garbage collection. Of course, it is not possible to return the remains.
I chose my favorite orange color with a rabbit pattern on the cover of the bone pot. Although it was a funeral for my pet, I was given some salt. I went home and purified myself in front of the entrance. (In Japan, there is a custom of sprinkling salt on the body to purify the body after the funeral and expel evil spirits. This is based on the idea of Shintoism, and it does not regard the deceased as an impurity, but rather, it comes from the exorcism of the evil that caused death.) I received a charm of a cat’s eye stone from the staff of the funeral hall.
I got a cat a year ago. I would be sorry if that became stressful for rabbits and shortened his life span. They were quite isolated, and the kittens weren’t bad enough to mess with the rabbits, but the rabbit might have been concerned that a different creature would come later and roam the room. I wondered if he could live to be about 15 years old. It’s not a pet loss, but I don’t feel like doing anything for a while. There is a cat so the shock might be reduced, but it is a delicate point. Cats and rabbits are different.
From here down is Caesar when he was well. I feel that vitality is more in the eyes of the past. Thank you for giving me 11 years of fun.
(2020/05/24)
