I live out in the country with an outside cat, so naturally he hunts.
Today he brought a live young Cottontail rabbit (I wanna say roughly no older than 6 months old, still very small). I managed to get it away from him, but there is a deep puncture just above the right eye, just below the forehead. I got the bleeding to stop, but her eye is still weeping after about 3 hours as of this post, and her eye seems swollen. I can’t open it very well to see clearly. From what I can see, it looks like only the Sclera is swollen, but slowly spreading to the rest of her eye. I thought at first that it may mean her eye popped out a bit. I tried checking for any other injuries, and found none, save for some missing patches of fur, and one area where the skin tore a bit, but no bleeding. As far as I can tell, there are no broken bones and no other external injuries.
I have her in my pet bunny’s pet carrier at the moment, and she is tucked up in a corner on soft material, with water, Timothy Hay, and some of my buns treats.
She hasn’t moved any aside from when I check up on her, and hasn’t eaten or drank anything as of yet. I want to keep her overnight, but I’m worried about keeping her in an unfamiliar environment for so long…
She has remained hunched in an almost Loaf-like way, leaning against a fold in the blanket she’s on. She keeps her head propped upwards on the wall of the carrier, ears are laid back.
Other that she still is active when stimulated, and breathing is fast, but overall stable. I thought at one point I heard clicking, but I know anything about her current condition would attest to that.
The DNR in my area will not do anything for wild rabbits, as they are considered pests, so I am unable to take her to them for help. I want to let her back into the wild, but I wanted to get some other opinions from people who know more about this than I do.
Please let me know if you need any other info, or can help me. I don’t want to make her suffer more than she is already.
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