And he has some small little problems that have my little alarm sensors going off!
One is head shaking and itching at his ears. Looking down into his ear canal I see some crusty stuff that looks like yellowish ear wax, but I’m worries could be mites. He always loved the tips of his ears being rubbed, but right now when you rub lightly at the base of them he becomes the happiest bunny ever. I’m assuming they itch really badly. He is shedding heavily, and had some really bad patches of matted fur, and dandruff. Bad enough I used my pet shaver to take it off. One patch wound up coming off, and he has a small patch of raw skin on his back.The bottom of his back feet have some minor sores. And he is definitely bigger/fatter than I remember, or I am weaker. He is definitely struggling to walk, even in places with grass. His poops are all strung together with fur he ingested, but I’m not surprised by that seeing as how badly he is shedding.
Also Chom has always dropped a cecotrope randomly, but he will always go back and eat it. And it was like one a day in the past. Twice today he has dropped cecotropes and just ignored them, even when I picked them up and brought them to his face. ((Should I be worried about this?))
My poor baby! I can’t blame my friend, because this wasn’t her. She had moved, and her grandmother insisted on taking care of Chom. Well she clearly did not do such a good job with that. =( But he is home in gentle, caring hands.
We have a vet appointment, this Monday first thing in the morning. Speckles has had contact, so if he has mites she will need to be treated as well. Ordered a good, high powered vacuum (Mine is tiny and only for pickup messes) and diatamacious earth to sprinkle along all of my apartment. I’ll have the two of them out of the apartment for a day when I do this, and make sure to be extremely thorough with my cleaning.
Any other advice for cleaning my apartment to keep the mites from coming back, or re-infesting my poor baby’s ears? I couldn’t find much about cleaning my place online for this.
~update~
Wondering now if it really is ear mites or not. I’ve noticed that yesterday he stopped the head shaking, and scratching at his ears entirely, except for one half second head shake while he was grooming. Could it maybe just be a build up of ear wax? Either way we have a vet appointment on Monday morning, first thing in the morning for him. We will be bringing Speckles in her cage, just in case he does have ear mites, so she can receive a treatment as well. We also came up with a game plan for decontaminating our clothing and the apartment, and the bunnies, just in case.