Sad news

I'm afraid I have some very sad news to share with you all. Yesterday we came home from work, went in to say hi to the chins....and Quito was happy to see us....jumping up on the side of the cage. Actually he was probably just looking for food. But then I looked down and saw Tiago laying on the bottom of the cage. I couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. He looked like he might have been breathing a tiny bit but he really looked like he wasn't moving. I yelled for Tom and he came in to take a look. He picked him up and Tiago definitely wasn't breathing :( He was still warm though, and not stiff, so we think he must have just passed before we got home. I started looking up emergency vets online and I was going to call them but it was definitely too late :(

We did a lot of reading online last night about what could have caused his death. A lot of people who have lost chinchillas said that they often die suddenly. We're not sure exactly what happened to him, but we think it was probably a contribution of a number of things. He did have glaucoma and couldn't see, so he wasn't as active as he used to be, and it is important that chinchillas get exercise every day. Also, on Tuesday Tom noticed that he wasn't eating as much, but didn't really think anything about it (especially because Quito usually hogs the food bowl anyways).

One of the most common causes of chinchilla death is gastroenteritis. The signs and symptoms are lethargy, loss of appetite, and death. We think this may have ultimately caused his death. But we're not really sure how he got it. Quito likes to sit in the food bowl and sometimes he poops in it...so we don't know if that contaminated the food and then Tiago ate some of the food? It's possible but who knows.

We don't know if Quito had anything to do with his death or not. It's possible but it's also possible that it was just random chance. We have had Quito for almost 2 and a half weeks and apparently chinchillas die pretty quickly after they get sick...so that leads us to believe that it may have just been random and Quito might not have had anything to do with it. Regardless, Tiago had a buddy during the last few weeks of his life, so we think that made him happy. They were so cute when they snuggled up together and slept.

RIP Little T. We will miss you.