A death in the family

We have a somber household today. This morning a member of our menagerie expired. Rosie, the friendly miniature lop rabbit, is no more. A couple of weeks ago, she began drooling, and I suspected something was amiss. But we were busy getting ready to go to OKC and finishing reading fair projects, so I didn’t call the vet. And she was a hand-me-down rabbit – hard to justify spending $60 for a vet visit. About 2 months ago, I did actually take her to the vet to have her teeth trimmed because she wasn’t chewing on anything. My suspicion is that she developed an abscess or infection as a result of this trimming, and maybe the vet would have discounted an antibiotic. But we didn’t go.

When we returned from our trip, she looked worse: a bald patch appeared under her chin from drooling, and her cheek looked swollen. I finally called the vet to schedule an appointment on Friday. But Friday afternoon she had blood under her nose and was wheezing. She also had shrunk from not eating. I hemmed and hawed about taking her. I didn’t want to pay for treatment for a dying animal. I also didn’t want to look like a bad pet owner to the vet and my kids. After consulting my rabbit killing father, my husband agreed to put her “to sleep” himself. I cancelled the vet appointment.
By the time husband returned home, the rabbit was lying on her side. She looked like she was going to breathe her last any minute. Why knock her head with a blunt object or smother her if she was just going to fade out on her own? The kids all patted her and went to bed bawling about how nice she was and how sad to wake up with one less pet.

But she was still alive in the morning.

I started to feel a little guilty. Should we put her out of her misery? She didn’t seem to be suffering visibly. Neither I nor my husband wanted to be the one to “put her down” with a swift bludgeon to the head. Why is it that we feel compelled to kill animals near death? I try not to anthropomorphize our pets, but if they aren’t miserable, why go ahead and kill them? Is there a little unconscious sadism at work? How many dogs die naturally these days? Of course, dogs start to pee the carpet and get snippy when they are dying. This rabbit was just lying there. And eventually she died, like my 11yr old’s rat, who spent about 4 days shrinking until he finally breathed his last.
If we keep our small pets partly as teaching tools for our kids, they are useful for teaching about caring for the dying as well as the living, a reminder of that forgettable 7th corporal act of mercy. I was a bit squeamish about touching dead things, but my kids reached in and patted the rabbit and carried her out to her grave in the backyard, and wept as they shoveled dirt on her already stiffening body and said a few prayers of thanksgiving for her life.
The younger kids were similarly without fear this past summer when my grandmother lay in her coffin. They reached in and patted her hands and stared and said goodbye without self-consciousness, while I held back and felt awkward standing at her coffin. This grandmother was free with her commentary on the appearances of corpses, and I think she would have been pleased with her own appearance, although she looked thin. May she rest in peace and find happiness in Heaven.