For her, I give thanks

I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week already.  I'm happy that fall arrived, but now I don't know where it went; I blame this on the two weeks I was semi-conscious.  I don't want it to come and go without even taking the time to reflect on my many blessings, so I thought I'd post some along the way.

Of course, the first thing that leaps to mind is that dang kidney stone lurking in my body, and my sincerest thanks to God that it hasn't moved yet.

But I digress.  Today, I'm very thankful for Orca, our geriatric bunny.  Most of my friends are not animal people, and those that are don't read this post, so I'm writing to the minority right now, but bear with me.  G & I, we're animal people.  Like, we purposefully don't go in pet stores; we purposefully don't volunteer with the ASPCA.  Why?  Because we would be those people you see on the news who were found with 18 different forms of wildlife in their house, and their neighbors got so fed up they called the cops.  We've never met an animal we didn't like.

Orca chillin like a villain

That said, we're choosy in our animals because we want to give them the best life possible.  But they're not our children.  We don't dress them or think of them as people.  Today I was in the waiting room of the vet's office and I heard a lady carrying on a conversation.  It was one-sided so of course I assumed she was on her cell.  I turned around to see and...she was having a full-on conversation with her feret.  Who was sniffing the floor and looking around, oblivious to her enthusiastic blabber.

We're not those people.

Matching red eyes in the vet's office

It's hard to explain our love for animals, particularly our animals, but there it is.  We adopted Orca from a local shelter a couple of years ago, and she's very old for a rabbit.  She's 9.5 years old which is like 80 human years.  She got some kind of infection and we rushed her to the vet a couple of days ago.  Rabbits are prey animals, and so they don't show weakness in the wild because it makes them a target.  Consequently, by the time a rabbit starts acting sick or abnormal, it's usually too late to do anything about it.  So, usually when we end up in the vet's office, it's bad news, and we've been steeling ourselves for that day for a year or so now.

But that was not today.  And for that, I'm thankful.

She sheds just a tad

When times get hard, we question why we put ourselves through this.  The stress and expense when little bunny health starts to go downhill - and when the time comes and we lose them altogether.  But after a couple of quiet, still days in the house, we get restless and realize our lives weren't meant to be like that, and we end up with more animals again, and it just feels right.

Whatchu lookin at?

I once heard Beth Moore teaching about love and loss, and she was describing someone close to her (or close to a friend of hers) who died.  She said this person was a valuable gift.  And she said, just because God "took" the person away, doesn't make them any less of a gift.  I'm completely butchering her point - but it made me think of our relationship with bunnies.  They come and they go - but their passing doesn't diminish the blessing that they were to us.

Animals are a valuable part of creation, and we are tasked to care for all the world.  We animal lovers must do our part, you know.