RIP Chichi

Let's all give our heartfelt condolences to Sylvia, the mom of one of the crabbiest chinchillas on the planet (she loved her to death, don't get me wrong), for the loss of her furbaby, Chichi.

Chichi was a blue diamond female that Sylvia adopted from here back in late summer of 2017.  Because Sylvia goes out of country a couple times a year, she would board Chichi here.  While boarding, Chichi has always been in the same cage, and had never had a problem... until now.  Chichi had been with us about two weeks or so for boarding, when a few days ago, we went downstairs in the morning to find her like this:

How did she get stuck?  No one really knows.  What we do know is that she hooked her hip over the bar, and hooked her foot over the lower bar, like an S... effectively holding her in place.  She fought like hell to get loose (which was so like her), to the point of twisting that leg several times.  By the time we saw her and freed her, she had spiral fractured her leg in several places, and the leg was not salvageable.  The bone was sticking out a good 2", and we knew she'd need her leg amputated.

Chichi in the carrier on the way to the vet, back leg facing the wrong way

She was taken into the vet's office as soon as they could see us, and they performed the amputation surgery.  The surgery itself went well, but her temperature was a little low, so they didn't want Chichi to come home that night, they wanted to continue monitoring her.  The next morning, her temp wasn't any better, and she wasn't making any improvements either (which was odd, with the time that had passed), so they put her on oxygen to hopefully promote healing.  She remained a little groggy, so the vet thought maybe one of the pain meds was having a sedative effect, and took her off that pain med.  Later in the day, Chichi still had not made improvements or progressed in any way, so we discussed doing bloodwork to see if there was an underlying issue.  An x-ray was also performed to see that there was no other broken bones which could be contributing to this -- there were not.  Blood was drawn, but shortly after, Chichi started seizing.  The vet gave her an anti-seizure med... so she did stop seizing.... but then her heart stopped as well.  The vet performed CPR, but they unfortunately were unable to save her.

Chichi was just over 2 years old.  This was unfortunately a freak accident that took her life.  It just goes to show that even if everything is done right in veterinary care (and heck, even in caging... she was in a ferret nation -- one of the more highly recommended and owned chinchilla cages), sometimes things go wrong, and sometimes the chins can't recover.  She is no longer in pain though, and is running free on all her legs.  RIP Chichi.