no, it's not about pixie, though i figured she would be my next to
cross over...not this sudden horrible surprise.

this morning we found shay had left us overnight. my big, hearty,
healthy 3-1/2 year old male. apparently not-so-healthy. :(

i'm still in shock and and unable to control my tears. there had been
nothing wrong with him. no signs. nothing. he was his usual adventurous
self monday night; climbing around, 'like a lizard' as my companion
would say. sleeping soundly and seemingly comfortably last night when
i checked in on everyone.

the vet's office called just a little bit ago with the necropsy
results. the cause of death was obvious when he was opened up. his
intestines had ruptured. there was pus everywhere in the abdominal
cavity. how? he had been fine. no lethargy, no weakness, no weight
loss. nothing at all to suggest he was even feeling a bit ill. like
this literally came out of nowhere. why?

the vet's speculation was that he may have had congenitally weak
intestines, and perhaps contracted a virus that ran rampant in his
intestines and took him out very quickly. peritonitis, along with
whatever caused the rupture. no other obvious explanation, and further
tests may prove inconclusive, so we let it go at that. i was attempted
to be reasssured that even if he'd shown any signs, say yesterday, or
the day before, or before that, it still would have been too late;
we'd be euthanizing him first, as well as cremation. now it's simply
cremation, and another broken heart for me. i am beating myself up;
surely i must have missed some sort of sign...how could so much happen
so quickly? how? no matter. he's gone. unfair. so unfair. he was so
young. so full of life and spirit.

i named him 'shay' after the little courageous narrow-gauge train
engines that used to be run in these mountains where i live, back
in the gold-and-silver mining days. he would climb, climb, climb
everywhere. how he would vex my companion; getting up on his baker's
rack. i'd say 'shay wants you to teach him to cook, that's why he keeps
getting up there!', and terrorizing the cat, luna, who would inevitably
come back for more anyways.

since pixie's accident, she and pandora had been staying in the little
single-level cage, while shay and burleigh, the big bruiser boys had
the big multi-level cage. now burleigh's all alone and i'm worried for
him; that he'll get lonely and become depressed. the now-3 will still
get playtime together, but i can't put pixie in the big cage with all
those levels she can't get around on anymore, and the small cage is too
small for all 3 of them. pixie's melatonin implants have seemed to have
stopped working as well, and now shay is gone, and so now i have just
more fears and worries along with tears.

i adopted shay from the denver dumb friends league as 'j.j.', about
18 months ago with another male that i named burleigh, (shelter name
'cream', this is in case sarah from the ddfl sees this and remembers
them.) he was surrendered along with a cagemate when their owners
were moving and couldn't take them. i never met shay's cagemate as
apparently he was a bad biter and sarah felt he wouldn't be adoptable
anytime soon, if ever. i adopted both shay and burleigh and they
immediately became best buddies, and got along wonderfully with pixie
and her (now-deceased) cagemate max from day 1.

so please, bridge greeters, please be looking for shay, 'shay-shay
mcweasel', 'lizard-boy', to be making his way over the bridge...he
won't know anyone there besides max, who left in april of last year;
they knew each other only about 7 months.

and so, now we are 3. with a big missing lump in a hammock and a big
gaping hole in my heart...

~sherrie, aka daoine o', the ferret queen

pixie, burleigh, and pandora

~missing shay, max, sascha-beanhead, monty-boo, razzle, jezebel, loki,
sylvi, natasha the stranger, and dweezil...my first, my one small star.

[Posted in FML 6619]