Hi, this is my first post here! It’s long but I’ve put a TL;DR at the bottom.
I have a sweet mini lop named Nessie who I’ve had almost a year now (she’s a few years old, I am her third owner). Last night she gave me quite a fright. When I get home from work, I let her out of her cage and put some lettuce out for her. She goes wild for the lettuce and last night was no exception. She was her usual self, perhaps even a bit more playful. She hung out for a while and then went back to her cage (all pretty normal) and stayed in her cage for the rest of the evening even though the door was open (this is not weird for her either, she loves her cage and sometimes prefers to hang out there even if it’s open). When I was heading to bed, I went in to close up her cage and give her pellets and she was acting very strange, lying flopped in her litterbox. I tried to give her a treat before bed but she would not take it and I immediately knew something was wrong. She was very lethargic, seemed uncomfortable, eyes squinted, not reacting. A couple hours earlier she was perfectly hoppy and gobbling up lettuce and then suddenly this. I was pretty panicked, last time something like this happened I took her to the vet right away and they said she might have GI stasis. It was around midnight so there was no vet available and I didn’t want to jump to a giant vet bill if they were just going to tell me to give her critical care and inject some fluids and prescribe some anti- and pro- biotics. Plus the stress of dragging her to the vet probably wouldn’t do her any good.
What I did was carefully pick her up and put her on the bed with me under some covers to keep her warm (I read that with GI stasis sometimes maintaining body temperature is an issue) our house is a bit chilly especially with the cold weather lately so I turned up the heat and cuddled her, petting her head and trying to warm her up as much as I could. I also read that you can try to massage their tummies so I tried gently massaging her tummy (ordinarily she would hate me touching her belly but she didn’t protest). I got a syringe from a past vet visit (clean of course, I wash them and keep them on hand) and just gave her a bit of water (probably not necessary but I was panicked). I would say I spent maybe 30-40 minutes with her under the blanket petting her and keeping her warm and worrying and then I decided to see what she wanted to do (It was way past my bedtime) so I stopped petting her for a few minutes and she suddenly perked up, licked me for a bit, then hopped out from under the covers and back down to the floor (low bed, she can jump up and down from it on her own) and hopped around like she was fine. She even stood up on her hind legs a few times and then found some spilled hay which she munched on, nibbled a cardboard box, and acted totally normal like nothing had happened.
I was still worried so I emptied her litter box and gave her fresh hay, lettuce, chamomile, and a papaya tablet. I let her go to bed and set an alarm for the middle of the night so I could check on her. She was fine in the middle of the night, munching hay, and she was fine this morning, again munching hay and devouring lettuce like nothing was wrong. Her poops looked just fine this morning too, all well formed and plenty of them. I also checked and saw that she did pee at least once last night.
What could cause a bun to spontaneously go from fine to sick to fine? She may have been feeling ill for up to two hours before I noticed her. I check on her pretty frequently when the cage is open but mostly just to make sure she isn’t getting into anything. The house is mostly bunproof but sometimes she manages to open doors. She did get into some things last week that may be of note. First, she got the bag of banana treats and chewed a hole clear through the bag. I was worried about that since the bag is that plastic/foil material which probably isn’t digestible. I don’t know how many bananas she got but it didn’t look like a lot. That was probably last Thursday or so and she’s been totally fine since then so I figured it had passed. Then on Saturday she found the onions in the kitchen and started crunching at the dried skins. I caught her right away and she barely ingested any skin so I think it probably isn’t that either. I’ve read some other posts of buns who ate far more onion with no adverse effect though I know every bun is different. The other thing I’m wondering is if she may have hurt herself. She can be pretty rambunctious at times and I have seen her scramble and run into things when she is either very excited or trying to evade capture. I hadn’t seen her do this last night but she may have fallen from a higher level in her cage or something.
TL;DR: I get home from work and the rabbit is fine, eats, plays, runs around, settles down. I go to bed and find her lying in the litterbox having trouble getting up, eyes narrow and lethargic. (max 3 hrs since she was hopping and playing). I panic and put her on the bed, pet her a lot, keep her warm, massage her belly. She will not eat. 30-40 minutes later she perks up, hops off bed and walks around like nothing happened. Eats hay and treats and lettuce as she usually does. I go to bed and wake up to check on her in the middle of the night, she’s fine. She’s fine this morning too. What could it be?
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