A real trooper

Kenzie was a perfect angel today. She endured the poking and prodding like a champ, and the vet didn't even need to sedate her for the X-rays. Her pelvis and spine look perfectly normal. There's no evidence of previous injury, and no damage to the vertebrae or disks. Which is great news on the one hand, but doesn't shed any light on the cause of her semi-paralysis.

I was just glad it was Kenzie on the hot seat instead of me. I didn't even begrudge her the extra slice of banana she scored after the exam. I did not appreciate it when the vet put the two of us on the floor so she could evaluate our gaits, and Kenzie decided that would be a good time to mount me. HER, mounting ME. It's supposed to be the other way around! Oh, my battered dignity.

So Kenzie's condition is still a mystery, and one that's unlikely to be solved anytime soon, at least without benefit of a bunny MRI. The vet said that would run close to a thousand dollars, and might be just as inconclusive as the X-rays. So for the time being, we're going to watch and wait. It might be months before Kenzie has another episode, or maybe *paws crossed* she never will.

Now we are back home, and Kenzie is soothing her frayed nerves with a heaping helping of timothy hay, fresh from the new bale. Granny brought it with her this morning. Granny also brought a big bag of birdseed, which I am eager to get my little jaws around. Mom is in the bedroom taking a nap, "sleeping off the stress" she says, as if SHE was the one getting manhandled today! She says, "It's harder on me than it is on you," which I don't believe for one minute. Neither does Kenzie.

One more day

So Mom is getting nervous. Tomorrow morning Kenzie sees the vet for spinal X-rays, and Mom is wondering how that works. I mean, Kenzie isn't going to just lie there quietly while they stretch her out and snap away. So how WILL they get our girl to cooperate? Mom is envisioning all sorts of gruesome scenarios. She made the appointment for 8:30 in the morning so Kenzie would have all day to recover and hopefully forgive Mom for the ordeal!

In other news, Mom finished her first paper for school. Well, *I* finished it, is more like it. She counts on me to channel her creative muse. It was a fascinating two page study of the strategies of effective technical communication. Okay, it wasn't fascinating, it was dull as dirt. "Just as long as I get an A," Mom says. She's been really enjoying school lately, now that she dropped that horrendous Mathematical Reasoning class.

Mom was all excited the other day when she saw another student who was as old as her! "Everybody thinks I'm a member of the faculty," she complains. "I'm old enough to be the faculty's mother!" That's only a slight exaggeration. She's pretty old. She says I have no room to talk, seeing as I am pushing the upper bounds of senior citizenship myself. But everyone knows we rabbits age much more gracefully than humans.

She also got three new assignments with the newspaper, which bodes well for our grocery budget. Mom is getting tired of cold cereal and peanut butter and jelly. She had to buy us a supplemental bag of hay while waiting for our bale to arrive. $10 for a tiny little bag! She says we'd better cherish every bite.