Hi babes,
Today I'm rewriting the furrybabies blogpost that I promised earlier. It's a long one so prepare yourself.
Last week on Wednesday the 28th of June I believe, we lost Jack the gerbil. He was a very old little gerbil. He was somewhere between four and five years old. Over a year ago we lost his little brother Twinkie so we never expected him to live this long. We kinda figured he would die out of loneliness but he persevered and we tried to keep up by giving him so much attention. My brother became a replacement Twinkie, as he's the only boy in the house Jack gravitated toward my brother. He bloody loved my brother. He became a lot more tame over the last year. He was so active and was always running around, jumping through the room(he would always jump of the bed and claim the rest of the room), reclaiming his territory after my hamster would've been in the room before him, shredding every piece of cardboard the could get his paws on.
Anyways it was all fun and games untill about a month ago he became sick. When I got home we noticed he wouldn't use his back legs anymore. Just like that out of the blue, he didn't fall or anything so he couldn't have broken something. He also had a small wound on his foot but even when that healed, he didn't start using his legs again. We were prepared for things to go quickly by this point, we didn't think he would make it through the night. Anais wasn't even home so I begged Jack the gerbil to hold on until she got home and boy he did, he held on and on and managed to get by, half paralysed might I add, for longer than a MONTH. We have one though cookie of a gerbil. He didn't seemed to be in pain or sad about it. He managed to live with his handicap and did almost everything as he used too, even with the heathwave that was going on. He would still rip toiletrolls to shreds, he would just do it laying down,... The only difference was he didn't want to go out of his cage anymore nor did he want human contact. I think he felt more vulnorable and less safe because he couldn't really safe himself anymore incase of danger.
About a week before he died he would start to bury his bottom half in to the bedding and just eat like that, he started to chew on wood/cardboard less and less. The last two days he didn't move himself at all anymore, he started to eat less to barely anything, he slept continuously and eventually died in his sleep. Which is the best outcome I guess, you never want to see your pet suffer it's best if they go in their sleep. He had a good life and we were so happy to have had him in our lives as long as we did. Gerbils are just the best creatures. <3
Onto Ganache the hamster, he's also getting old. He's past the two-year-old mark and we're starting to notice. He's more grey than brown. He isn't as active anymore, also doesn't want to come out of the cage as badly as he used to. He would do anything in the past to get out and get cuddles and free running space but now he just seems to tired for it.
He got a bit sick over the winter. He had an eye that kept getting clogged up. It was sticky and stuck both eyelids together so he couldn't see if we didn't rub it open with a warm cloth. Eventually we took him to the vets and as by miracle just arriving at the vet seemed to heal him. Nothing to see except the most active excited little hamster but the vet gave us eyedrops just in case. Of course by the end of the week his eye got sticky again and he had to have a week of antibiotic eyedrops twice a day. It was a struggle as he really didn't want to get these drops but we made it, his eye healed and has been healthy ever since.
Over the past days we noticed he sleeps most of the day and night, he doesn't run (as far as I can tell) in his wheel. He breathes faster and his heartrate seems to be up. He stumbles and seems to fall over a lot of the time. We fear he might have diabetes which apparently has these symptoms. We've put him on a sugarfree diabetes diet and hope this will fix it or at least keep it under control. We did give him a lot of fruit en veggies over the past month maybe that has caused it together with his old age? We don't know but hope for te best. I'll update when things change.
Goodbyeeee
- Nikki
