saying goodbye to my dearest friend...

I didn't realize how hard this was going to be until I started, but I want to share with you all my story to finally find acceptance and peace.

Mochi (the brown bunny you'll be seeing in the post) has been with us for 8 wonderful years. My boyfriend and I rescued her off the streets of Los Angeles. If you read my previous post, I talked about this with our other bunny Dusty. Seriously though, if I had the opportunity, I would have taken all of the little baby bunnies in tiny cages sitting out in the sun with no water and no food. I am SO grateful the cops finally cracked down on this. As of today, I haven't seen any animals being sold on the side streets of L.A.

After a long walk from the area we found Mochi to our car, I decided to take her out of this tiny cage and just held her for a bit to make sure she was ok. This was the first photo we took of her. :)

By the time we got home, she was very weak and didn't want to drink or eat anything. But everytime we put her down in a comfortable spot, she would wobble towards us because she wanted to be held. At this point, my boyfriend and I had no idea how old she was, so we frantically started researching on how to care for a baby bunny. After a few hours, she finally started drinking water and ate a little bit. Phew!

As the days went on, she regained her strength and became a normal happy bunny!

We loved her so much!

One thing I forgot to mention was that we though Mochi was a male for the longest time! But little did we know, she was hiding a secret.

I decided to take her in for a regular checkup and BOOM! That's when we verfied that she is in fact a female bunny.

Over the next few years, Mochi's health was up and down and the doctor's couldn't figure out what it was.

But then everything was ok for awhile. Mochi was happy and the BEST bunny we have ever cared for thus far! Her favorite thing to do was perch on top of my boyfriend's shoulder and just snuggle. Does anyone else's bunny do this??

She loved being held. :) This is me with her when she was around 5yrs old.

Our bunnies are never caged. We let them run around outside and when they are inside, they have an entire (bunny safe) room for themselves.

In February 2017, I noticed Mochi was having trouble breathing. She kept sitting in a corner and was very uncomfortable. This went on for a couple of days and her symptoms seem to be getting worse each day, so I finally took her in. The doctor wanted to do an x-ray which literally took a few minutes to produce. As she came back to the waiting room to talk with me, I could see it in her face that there was something serious.

My heart sank and I remember a deafening silence fell upon the room as the doctor explained her findings. One of her lungs collapsed and cancer had invaded her entire chest cavity. There was nothing we could do for her. The doctor said that she could either go home and be uncomfortable and potentially in pain until her days are up or they could euthanize her humanly. I started crying SO hard.

I took her back home to share the news with my boyfriend. We took a few days to say goodbye, but with each passing day we noticed she was declining quick. The very first photo you saw at the beginning of this was the day before we brought her in to be euthanized. Even after 4 months this has happened, my heart aches....but I know we gave her a great life and she in turn did the same for us. She's at peace now and her memories will love on forever.