Wednesday, October 16, 2002. Entry #188

Lots been going on the last couple weeks, but I've been sort of mentally blocked from writing any of it down here. There's another story I've got to get out first.

I need to tell you about Button.

If you've been around for the last while, or have dipped into the archives, you've heard about Button. She's one of our four guinea pigs, and the one that's had two litters of pups in the last year.

We had been planning to get Jersey, her piggy boyfriend, fixed, as it isn't good to breed the little girls too often. We had planned to do it after the last pregnancy, but we waited too long. Guinea pig fathers help out raising the babies, and he managed to find time to breed her while they were caring for the five new babies.

So Button got pregnant again. Last week we knew she was getting near her time - she was all fat and grumpy, and the babies had shifted outwards, giving her the distinct flat look of a mamma pig about to give birth. Last Tuesday she was nested, and we fully expected to see some babies the next morning.

Wednesday, no babies. She looked like she was in active labor, and was busy pushing. We were a little worried, but decided to wait.

Thursday, no babies. She had hardly eaten anything and was looking weaker, so Lisa took her to the vet. I met her there after work.

There wasn't much good news.

The four babies were dead, and had been for some time. The vet explained that because Button had had such a large litter last time, her uterus had been overstretched, and didn't shrink back like they usually do. Button hadn't been in labor like we thought, but had just been straining to simply get them out because she was so uncomfortable.

The vet was working on manipulating the babies into position and then inducing labor. If that didn't work, the only other option was to give Button a Caesarian. The vet had successfully got two babies out, and was working on the others when I arrived.

Lisa and I went to a little café a couple doors down and waited. We each had a piece of pie. Mine was a combination of strawberry, rhubarb, peach and apple. I didn't taste a thing.

We got back to the vet some twenty minutes later. She told us, with a tired smile, that all four babies were out and we could take Button home. She gave us some antibiotic drops and said to keep her warm.

After she went back into the offices, another vet popped out and cautiously told us that piggies and stress do not mix very well. She wanted to make sure we knew that the odds were stacked against little Button.

And so we went home. Lisa held Button wrapped in a towel in her arms the entire way.

I set up one of our smaller cages with soft blankets and Lisa settled Button down in it. We have a couple heat lamps, so she set one up to make sure Button stayed warm. We even gave her the little igloo from the cage she normally shared with Jersey, so she'd have somewhere familiar to hide in.

Then we went to bed. Both of us quite certain we wouldn't find her alive the next morning.

Every time one of us would get out of bed, to go to the bathroom, or refill our bedside water bottles, we would peek in and make sure she was still with us. Then we'd come back to the bedroom to tell the other. When Lisa was off checking, I would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the news, knowing it would be the worst.

But she survived the night.

We were heartened, because the first night is usually the hardest part. However, she hadn't moved from where we had put her, and had not touched any of the food or water we had left.

We feed our piggies fresh veggies every morning, so we put a small amount in front of Button to try to tempt her. She was very excited to see a carrot, and grabbed it from our hands. She didn't eat much more than a bite or two though. She was just too exhausted.

You can't get better it you don't eat anything. So Lisa picked up some baby food (Milupa oatmeal, which is what the vet feeds convalescing guinea pigs, as well as some preservative free carrot puree and stuff) and proceeded to feed Button her meals through a syringe.

The vet suggested feeding her three times a day, so that's what Lisa did. Three times a day she would mix up a little food, and give it to Button with a syringe. Sometimes she ate it well; sometimes she fought with her characteristic gruffness.

That's how it went for all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Long nights of wondering and peeking, and days of watching and careful feeding.

Sometimes she seemed to be getting better. She would squeak and make her old 'I want breakfast!' noise in the morning, and she would fight being fussed with. But she wasn't getting stronger, and she wasn't moving beyond some twitches.

Sunday afternoon. Lisa was feeding her, when she saw fluid coming out of Button's nose. Worried that Button had breathed in some food, she called the vet. The vet advised her to hold Button on a slant, head down, which would help her drain it. She suggested using a Q-tip to clean out her nose as it dripped.

I grabbed a towel and draped it across my belly. I slouched down in my chair, and Lisa gently placed her on the towel. So as I sat, gently petting and reassuring her, Lisa sat on the floor in front of us, dabbing at her nose and mouth with a Q-tip and some Kleenexes.

She was having troubles breathing. The fluid coming out of her wasn't baby food, as it was all clear. It wasn't a lot of fluid, but it had us worried.

And then she started hitching. She gasped for breath a few times, and stopped moving.

And then she died.

Lisa saw it in her eyes. I felt it in my hand and on my belly. She stopped moving, stopped twitching, stopped shaking.

She cooled off so very fast.

From when Lisa stopped feeding her, to her final moments, it couldn't have been any longer than five minutes.

And that was it.

The worst part of being undiscriminating of where you bestow your love is that you are so easily hurt when something happens. A lot of people don't understand why we put such an emotional investment in our pets, and I can't fully explain it myself. But we love them. We do. They are family to us, and we care for them as we would any other family member.

The last couple years have been bad for me, in terms of losing people. My Grandfather last year, my Aunt the summer before that... And yes, losing a person is much harder than losing a pet. But the death of any living being touches me, and this one was one of my companions.

Button was my charge. My ward. She looked to me for food and water and protection. I've had some long nights where I wondered if there was anything else we could have done.

We're trying hard not to blame ourselves. We let her get bred again, but our research showed that three pregnancies should have been okay, and would have been, if her uterus had recovered. Lisa was worried that she fed Button too fast, and the choking is what killed her, but no, the fluid that came out was clear. We worried that she might have caught pneumonia, and she may have, but we did everything we could to prevent that.

The final answer was that she tried really hard to live, but she just couldn't do it. It hurt too much, and was too much work. She just let go.

She was born in our apartment, back when we brought her mother to our place so she could have her babies in peace. She died in our apartment while sitting on my belly as I stroked her funny fur.

I miss her.

One Year Plus A Day Ago Today: New Job - New Identity, where I chime in from the second day of my new job. The job I still have a year later! Woo hoo!

Two Years Plus A Day Ago Today: Free movies, where I gave my review of 'Pay it Forward', plus some other movies I'd seen.

Aaaand in 1775: Portland, Maine, was burned by the British.

Mom Rating: 0 out of 5.

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Take me home, big fella