Mornings frequently start out by waiting for breakfast on this rug. Timing is important; sleeping in by the human servants is not appreciated!
It is not uncommon to find the pellet bowl and snuffle mat flipped over on the ground – often with pellets strewn all around. Matilda has a bad habit of flipping bowls for some reason – maybe she just prefers to eat off of the ground?
After breakfast, it’s always worth checking to see if it’s possible to snag a treat (or two… or three). One good spot for begging for treats is by the kitchen, where (if they’re lucky) they can snag a blackberry! (The towel is there to catch the dribbles and juice that comes while eating.)
After treats, the buns head under the bed to sleep for a while – but sometimes they will do a bit of exploring around the house, just to make sure nothing has changed.
Although they usually go under our bed and sleep all day, sometimes they will come into my office instead (but still to sleep).
Chuck is a very heavy sleeper.
If Matilda is there, you can almost guarantee that Chuck will be leaning on her in some way.
After a busy day of sleeping, it’s back into the living room for evening pellets (and possibly another quick nap), followed by the main course: the dinnertime salad.
After dinner the buns tend to relax in their area for a while – they are quite content at this point to just lounge around all night. But if they are lucky, they’ll be allowed back into the bedroom for “family time.”
The buns don’t sleep on the bed with us, though – they sleep under the bed – and they just jump on the bed (and on us) multiple times during the night in order to pester us for a treat (which they almost always get). There’s nothing like being woken up at 2am by a 7 pound rabbit jumping straight onto your chest while you’re sleeping!
Regardless of where they spend the night, the buns will be ready for the next day and their busy schedule of eating, sleeping, and generally being adorable.
Early in the year, one Saturday morning we noticed Matilda hunched up on the rug in the living room – a place she did not normally spend much time. When she refused a treat, we knew something must be up – so we hopped in the car for the hour-long drive down to the emergency vet hospital.
After examination, we were told that Matilda had several cracked teeth (!!??) and that they had become infected. There was no alternative but to remove them.
We agreed of course (anything for our little princess) and spent the next seeming eternity waiting for news from the hospital. Eventually we got word that the surgery was complete – but that in order to remove the bad teeth, they’d had to go in through Matilda’s cheek.
The teeth that were removed were the molars on her upper-left – which in rabbits are way at the back of the jaw, which is why they had to go in through her cheek to get to the last one.
Matilda shortly after coming home from surgery with her shaved cheek and ear
After nearly a week in recovery at the hospital, Matilda was deemed well enough to come home – but she didn’t end up staying at home for very long. After only a few days, she still wasn’t eating properly (despite our best efforts) and to avoid going into stasis she had to go back to the hospital.
At the hospital, they also had to keep flushing her incision site and re-packing it with antibiotic beads. She was kept under close observation and given critical care feedings every few hours – and this went on for a whole additional week.
Finally, Matilda was able to come back home – and this time she kept eating on her own.
Matilda is glad to be home
However, we still had all the after-care from her surgery – anyone who’s had major dental surgery will know how difficult the after-care can be. Matilda needed oral pain medication and antibiotics, as well as oral rinses to keep the extraction site clean on the inside of her mouth.
Matilda on the couch with her shaved cheek
Worse yet, when we finally got the culture results from the labs, it turned out that Matilda’s infection was a particularly antibiotic-resistant strain, and the medicine we’d been giving her wasn’t going to cut it. So we had to get new medicine – which had to be given subcutaneously via a syringe, twice a day.
Needless to say, no one was enjoying this… but Matilda was a real trooper about it all. Despite how much she hated being picked up, she tolerated us giving her medicine and injections extraordinarily well – she always sat still for medicine time, even for the injections.
However, this infection she had was a stubborn one, and despite completing the entire course of medication, the infection was still not beaten: about a week after stopping it, we noticed some discharge from her nose. Taking her to the vet and doing a culture resulted in us finding out that it was the same bacteria… so back on the injections she had to go.
Poor Matilda was on these injections for about 6 weeks before we were eventually transitioned to a nebulizer treatment: Matilda would be placed in a plastic tub (we named it “Tilly’s Tub”) twice a day and a nebulizer was attached via a little hose and it pumped in a mist of water & medicine for her to breathe in… for 30 minutes at a time, twice a day, for another 6 weeks.
Tilly’s Tub
Matilda’s nebulizer setup
Matilda getting her nebulizer treatment
During this time we had to go away on two separate occasions, which was very difficult – we did not want to leave Matilda – but thankfully we are extraordinarily lucky to have a very, very good pet-sitting service who was willing to take care of Matilda, including doing the injections (when we had to go away during the time Matilda was still getting injections) and doing the nebulizer treatment.
Matilda doesn’t want us to leave (or maybe she wants to come with us?)
Once we’d completed the course of antibiotics using the nebulizer, the vet suggested we continue the treatments (just once a day), but with water only – so basically giving Matilda her own little cool sauna.
By this point it was already June, but thankfully, after all this time and effort, we’d finally eliminated Matilda’s infection and she could stop all treatment.
It was an incredibly long and difficult (and expensive) ordeal, but we got through it – and so did Matilda, our tough little princess, who has now lived through liver lobe torsion AND major dental surgery. We’re so incredibly grateful that, despite needing to continue with oral rinses (to keep the spot where her teeth were removed clean and clear), Matilda loves the oral rinses and will happily take them like they’re a treat.
Matilda does now need periodic tooth-trimmings, because the molars on the bottom of her jaw, below the ones that were removed, don’t have anything to grind against, and since rabbit teeth grow constantly… this means her remaining teeth on that side will grow and grow and grow! But despite hating going to the vet, Matilda has tolerated these trimmings very well, which we are also very thankful for.
Matilda has been through a lot, and 2024 in particular was a really rough year for her, but our little princess doesn’t give up, and she continues to be just as energetic, curious, and playful as she always has been – snuggling with Chuck, demanding treats from us, and just generally being an adorable little weirdo. But we love her, and we’re so very happy she’s still with us, despite everything 2024 threw at her!
Just checking the trash in case there’s some treats in there…
Not quite sure what you’re doing there, Matilda… but Chuck doesn’t seem to mind.
Chuck and Matilda on our bed
Chuck and Matilda together with us on the bed for “Family Time”
My heart always stops for a moment when I see either of the buns sleeping like this… then I see them breathing and I can relax, knowing that he’s just sleeping really, really deeply.
Matilda loves her cardboard A-frame “Playframe” house – she spends just about every day in there, up on the 2nd floor. I think she likes the position of the house as well – it’s at the far side of the room, so she has a view out over the whole room and can see us coming (though she often sleeps so deeply that we can walk right up to her and she doesn’t wake up).
Chuck sometimes comes for a visit, but he generally stays on the bottom floor – which is just as well; I don’t think both of them could fit upstairs!
Turned around to find Chuck sitting by the kitchen counter around dinnertime. He may not be able to speak, but he has no problems telling me what he wants!
