# Heart attack?



## fayefleetwood (May 28, 2013)

One of my girls - my Molly, just died.  I was playing with her babies and her sister was on top of the cage, trying to get down to where Mollys cage was. Thinking she wanted to see her sister I scooped her up and put her on the little table mollys cage was on. I then put my hand into Mollys cage and she very stiffly climbed into my hand and snuggled into my palm. I held her up to her sistee and her sister was all over her, sniffing her face and trying to snuggle in. Molly wasn't snuggling back so I got Daisy off (which was tricky as she didn't want to go back) and took her over to my partner. Just as I said something was wrong and I thought we should take her to the vet, Molly started to climb really wobbly up my arm to get to the crook where she usually snuggles. Half way there she stumbled and got back up, but then rolled over onto her back and started twitching, sometimes violently and gasping and was trying to get back up. I noticed her heart started beating really slow and hard and then I couldn't hold her anymore because I couldn't see for tears and was afraid she would fall off, so I gently put her back into her bed where she twitched a few times more as I stroked her, blinked very slowly one last time and then her heart stopped. My poor little Molly.  It was very graphic and absolutely heartbreaking.

She was acting strange for about a week. It seemed her 4 week old litter were bullying her so we separated them which seemed to help. Then last Thursday we noticed she was looking quite thin (sides sucking in slightly) and hunched up. We picked her up and we could see a lot of lice, so we got treatment from the vet and treated her. Over the weekend she seemed to perk up and by Sunday we could see no lice and she seemed to be a lot better, with the exception of being a little less active and more snuggly than before. We tried to keep her comfortable and focused a lot of attention on her. She spent a lot of time snuggled up in my hoody pocket in the evenings (her new favourite place) and just genuinely seemed to enjoy our company. We gave her a few more little treats too, to help her gain back some weight (she was eating normally though)

Were the lice too much for her? Did the treatment the vets gave react badly (Xenophon spot on)? Should I have left her in with her litter and sister? I just feel like I did something wrong.


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## SarahC (Oct 3, 2008)

having had a litter and the drain of blood sucking lice she probably succumbed to infection.You can't blame yourself,not everything or everyone lives a long and healthy life no matter how hard we try.Sorry it has upset you so much.


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## fayefleetwood (May 28, 2013)

SarahC said:


> having had a litter and the drain of blood sucking lice she probably succumbed to infection.You can't blame yourself,not everything or everyone lives a long and healthy life no matter how hard we try.Sorry it has upset you so much.


Yeah... I guess once the babies were weaned and separated from her she just got overwhelmed. We don't think the spot on stuff helped... she had sores on her ears and a scratch on her eye the day after so we think they just got infected and it was too much for her at once.

It just happened so quick. But I do feel good that she wanted to be close to me before she passed. Just climbed straight into my hand even though she obviously felt very poorly. Poor girl. She had a good last few days though. Spent the weekend being spoilt - lots of time on the sofa with us, snuggled in my evening hoody pocket.


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