R.I.P. Joshua

Joshua has crossed the rainbow bridge to be with the rest of the "J" gang.

I posted about this on Facebook and Twitter the same day it happened, but I've waited to post this until now, because I needed time to write it properly, and wanted to grab the last photo we took of him off the camera to go in it. Anyway...

Though I've gotten out of the habit of mentioning it on here, so those who don't know me wouldn't know it, Kelly and I consider ourselves to be celebrating the Winter Solstice rather than Christmas, and when we celebrate the holidays has varied over the years. I'll talk more about this in another post, but for now you just need to know that this year we decided to only celebrate over the weekend of the Winter Solstice, and ended up glad we chose to celebrate that way, since it meant our degu buddy, Joshua, got to celebrate with us one last time.

This is the last ever photo we took of him. It was taken on Saturday December 21st, right after we gave him his new wooden and grass nibble toys that were his gift. I also gave him some of the treats from his stocking, though we didn't get a photo of him with those. Anyway, here's the photo:


For those who don't know, Joshua was the last of a group of four degus we had. We lost his brothers, Jasper, Jenks, and Jacob, in that order three years ago. Now Joshua - who didn't take the loss of his brothers well at first, so actually had to learn to trust us again - was almost seven, and had been in the cage on his own for a little over three years.

I admit, he hadn’t been doing too great for a while physically, but, like I said, he was almost seven, and seemed to be perfectly content, so we weren't concerned. I mean, he was playing - even running on his wheel for ages at a time - eating and drinking normally, and seeming happy, so why would we be? Especially since, though degus can - in rare cases, admittedly - make it to about ten years old, on average they only live about five to seven years, so by degu standards he was an old man. Lots of old people and animals don't get about as well as they did when they were younger. That's nothing to be concerned about, especially when there are no other signs anything might be wrong.

But he took a turn for the worse on Monday when his back legs simply stopped working.

His climbing and jumping hadn't been too good lately, but we'd put it down to age, and he was getting about OK... Even running on his wheel a lot, like I said. So we hadn't been too worried, until he stopped being so active on December 22nd. Even then though, we just figured his age was catching up with him, and checked him regularly. He was eating, drinking, scampering about in his cage some, and even making the odd attempt to run on his wheel though, so we just decided to keep a close eye on him, and only step in if something changed.

On the afternoon of December 23rd, we left him watching Harry Potter movies in his cage next to Mollie's while eating nibbles, and went to Oscars for our holiday meal. When we came home, he wasn't moving.

We thought at first he'd slipped away while we were gone, but he was still breathing. He just didn't seem able to move. He didn't even object to being picked up, which was odd in itself, since he'd never fully accepted being handled after losing his trust in us when we lost his brothers, even though he got to the stage where he'd accept food from us and petting just fine. Anyway, I tried holding him wrapped in a towel in my arms, in case it was just that he'd gotten cold, and warming him up would help, even though he should have been warm enough based on the indoor temperature. We turned the heat up a little too, in case that would help. It didn't. So we spoke to the vet. Long story short, Kelly ended up taking him in to the vet that evening, and that's when we discovered his back legs had simply given out. He wasn't moving for the simple reason that he couldn't move.

There was nothing the vet could do for him, nothing we could do for him, and no reason to leave him suffering in that state any longer than necessary. It had likely already been an awful few hours for him as it was. So we sent him to join his brothers, my Kero, and the other furbabies we've had to say, "Goodbye," to over the years, across the rainbow bridge.

Rest in peace, Buddy. We miss you already.

Thank you to everyone who left us nice comments on my social media posts about Joshua. Also, thanks to Bertie, and the rest of the gang over at George's Guinea Pig World, for taking the time to put up a sweet little post about Joshua on Thursday after I told their human about Joshua crossing the rainbow bridge.

R.I.P. Joshua
March 9th 2013 – December 23rd 2019