Cosmo the bunny
Active Member
Hi Guys.
My bunny, Cosmo passed away last night. Here is his story.
Cosmo 2/14/2022 - 12/21/2024
My mother and I were visiting her friend's farm. This friend bred Angora bunnies for their wool and meat. She had just one bunny for sale. A 5 month old boy bunny that she didn't want and was going to slaughter for meat. I was a little bit appalled by this and begged my mother to let me rescue him. She agreed and I paid the lady $30 dollars that I had earned that summer from selling lemonade. Cosmo was named Cosmo before we arrived home. It just fit, he was grey with white speckles, like the Milky Way.
When we got home, my dad was shocked that I had brought home a live animal. He is strongly NOT an animal person. But he allowed Cosmo to stay. Cozzy stayed in an open cardboard box for 2 days, then a large wire dog crate, and then we discovered that bunnies could be litter-box trained! For the next 6 months he was free-roam in my bedroom... until one day he was limping.
Cosmo had mysteriously broken his front left leg. We live in a rural place, so we drove an hour and a half to a cat vet for X Rays and painkillers. They told us to either put him to sleep, or take him to Angell Animal Memorial hospital, a 6 hr drive from us. No one closer was willing to operate on a bunny. Once we arrived in Boston, we were quoted $4,000 for the operation. This bunny turned out to be quite expensive! But he survived the operation and healed entirely within 6 weeks, fur grew back to cover the scar and he acted as if he never lost a leg!
Coz loved to lick my hands and he would groom me like another bunny. His favorite food was banana and his whole body would twitch when he ate it! He also slept like he was dead. Cosmo lived relatively peacefully for a year, until this August, when we brought home another bunny. This bunny was supposed to be his friend and companion. Unfortunately, Sunny, our little innocent 8-week old baby, was NOT content to live peacefully with Cosmo. Sunny attacked Cosmo upon their first face-to-face encounter, and Cosmo didnt even attempt to fight back, he just tried to run and hide. So Sunny was a caged bunny, and Cosmo, after that encounter, began peeing EVERYWHERE. To mark his territory against this intruder. Cosmo was put in a large pen with supervised time outside of it everyday.
In the hope that one day the two bunnies might one day be friends, we decided to get them both neutered. Cosmo's appointment was yesterday. The surgery went fine, until, 5 hours later, and he still had not sat up from the anesthesia. He had not progressed at all, he was still entirely knocked out. The Vet told us he would keep him overnight and run some blood tests. He called later last night and told us Cosmo had extreme kidney and liver disease, but that if he survived the night, we could look at treatment options. Cosmo did not make it through the night. The Vet performed an Autopsy and informed us that he had had a type of degenerative kidney disease, that was often inherited between generations, and that by trying to work the anesthesia through his system his kidney had shut down. Cosmo's kidney was 70% degenerated and he would have died within the next 4-6 weeks. He wasn't in any pain, though.
Cosmo was one of a kind, my precious three-legged Angora bunny born on Valentine's Day.
Cosmo, Cozzy, Moosey, Momo, Coz, Cosmonaut, you will always be the most special bunny to me.
