Tokyo Tofu

A few weeks ago, I noticed that Samwise was starting to look a bit thin. I started weighing her on an almost daily basis only to find that she was gradually losing weight. After a week and losing about 100g (she went from around 920g to 818g), I finally took her to the vet, who wasn’t really sure what was going on with her, but gave me several medications to try to see if they helped. She seemed to be perking up a bit, but then late Sunday afternoon she stopped eating. Because I had class on Monday morning, my mom had to take her to see my vet, who told her that she had just kind of given up and that her gut was essentially dead. She then had to be put to sleep. This condition, called gut stasis, where their guts just seem to stop working for no apparent reason, has happened to a number of my guinea pigs, including Samwise some years ago, but usually with swift medical treatment and forced feeding for several days, they snap out of it. Sometimes this works, and on a few occasions it hasn’t. Sadly, this was one of those times.

Samwise had a great personality, and she and Fuji got along so well together. Any time I would bring treats over to their cage, rustle a plastic bag, or even just walk by, Samwise would run over to the side and stand up on her back legs, while squeaking at my loudly so that I would come and give her pets for feed her. She lived a pretty long life for a guinea pig, but I had hoped it would have been much longer than this…..she is missed.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of her:

Also thanks to everyone who sent me email or messages of condolences. If I didn’t reply, I apologize, but I appreciated it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Daily Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.