X-mas Card-toon 2007

X-mas Card-toon 2006

To keep you occupied...

So I thought I could post some older cartoons so the blog will keep 'going'. Starting with a bunch of x-mas cartoons I did the past years.

But before I started with x-mas card-toons I did a manip of Zoë as an X-mas card in 2005 that I want to start of with:



Isn't that the cutest little bunny snout? <3
I miss her so much still.. but then it has only been two days...

Thank you for all the support xxx

I received many messages through comments, emails, text messages, phonecalls and Hyve comments. Thank you for that everyone.
I feel a little better but I still miss her very much. She was so sick though and I could not bare to make her go through more surgery at her age.

A wise friend of mine wrote:
Animals are the only living creatures who truly give us unconditional love. They don't care if we look like shit, dress badly or gain 40 lbs. They love us no matter what.

It's not easy to watch them suffer, it kills us inside. My heart goes out to you because you have to make a difficult choice at a very difficult time.
For me, if there is very little hope at her age, I would look at her quality of life and if it is not or will not continue to be as pain free as possible, then I would give her my gift of unconditional love and let her move on. I wish we had that choice for those people we love.

I took her advice and therefore it felt like the right thing to do.

I hope to be able to pick up drawing cartoons again, because I really miss it. But I will also try to post some old cartoons in here in the meantime, so that it wont just be about all this sadness anymore, but about funny cartoons again, like it was supposed to.

No words...

Zoë
15 August 1998 - 28 December 2009

Appointment at the vet tomorrow

I stayed at my sisters for one night (25th to 26th)and then came back home because my neighbour called that Zoë was scared of him now that he had to forcefeed her her meds and he did not want her to spend her possible last few days like that.
So I rushed home and arrived last night. She seemed the same then, but I did see her get worse today.
I will call the vet as soon as they open tomorrow and make an appointment for that day. I do want them to do some more exams on her and an x-ray just in case, but with her age and all.. well.. you know.. I can't say it out loud, but I know the chance is very high that there is only one humane way to take her pain away.

Thanks everyone that reacted to my x-mas card and these blog entries by calling, commenting, emailing, phone texting and posting on message boards. They really help me not feel so alone in this.

I have decided I will definitely finish the cartoon story as a tribute to the coolest bunny I have ever known, but it may take some time to heal a little before I am able to pick it back up.

I don't know if there are ways to get notified when something new is on here?

And I may post other cartoons I do in the meantime anyway, so I won't abandon the blog just yet and I hope you guys won't do that either.

Holiday Card-toon 2009

n 2007 and 2008 I did a Christmas Cartoon about my bunny Zoë by way of a Christmas card, because she was already quite old and it was very special that she was still there, so she had to be in my x-mas card-toon.

But 2009 has been a very bad year for my little bunny. In spring she lost the sight in her last good eye to cataract, so now she was as good as blind.

Then in June she started to eat less and less. Took us till August (and several different vets) to find out what was wrong with here but the operation and the 2 week stay had been very hard on Zoë and she wasn’t a well bunny at all when I got her back. But over the past few months she finally got a little better and felt at ease in her home again. But she never fully got her appetite back and her droppings stayed smaller than they should. And then last weeks events happened (see other blog entries)

So it was very hard for me to come up with a funny X-mas card about her. I did do some cartoons in the style of the cartoon book I have been writing

Not sure if I will be able to finish the story if Zoë doesn’t make it that long though. But I also post updates about her status there. So please keep visiting.

Meanwhile here are the 3 little cartoons I already did for this card. I didn’t feel like colouring all of them.

Hope you like the cartoons and I hope your Christmas and New Year will be better than ours. Pray for us if you believe in that.

Big Hugs, Hannah

*clickie*

feeling down again

I am thinking maybe I am kidding myself with giving myself hope for Zoë. I do think I made the right decision, but she is not getting better all that fast. And when I take her in next week for an x-ray that may turned out to be moment I dread so much anyway. So maybe I am just putting it off. At least she is not so sick again that she doesn't wash herself or get active a little bit every now and then, but then I don't want to wait until she does get that sick. I just could not do it without knowing what is wrong with her and at this particular moment. But just the thought of having to bring her to the vet for the last time still rips my heart out and brings on a total panic. So I am still not really eating anything.

And telling myself she is just a bunny and there will be other bunnies doesn't help one bit right now. I am so damn scared, I follow her every move. when she plays I get some hope, but when she lays flat on her tummy again my stomach turns in despair.

A few days more

Last night Zoë suddenly started to poop a little more and her droppings were a little better. I collected them in a separate little container to compare them to the droppings I collected since Monday. I then looked up information about paralytic ileus (still bowel) on the net on my favourite bunny sites (so I know they are trustable) and they said that ileus can sometimes take quite a lot of time to get better, so I could not give up on her after only two days just because the Holidays are coming. That felt like the wrong deadline.
I called my sister and she had some bad news as well. My brother in law was back in the OR after already having been operated on 4 times in the past month so that doesn't look good either. However, she would love to have me with them right now, but not if I was upset over just having my bunny put to sleep, so she said I should do what feels best for me. That gave me some breathing room. So I called the vet today and I will pick up some more 'emergency food' for Zoë which I have been forcefeeding her the past few days, so I have enough for the this weekend as well. I may not need to forcefeed it to her though, because I gave her some on a little plate this morning and she already ate all of it herself. Then I will go to my sister tomorrow and stay one night, during which my sweet sweet neighbour will take care of Zoë (I even taught him how to forcefeed her) and then I will come back the 26th. (Unless Zoë is doing so well that I can stay another night till the 27th when my youngest niece has her birthday, but we will see how she is doing first)
The 27th my neighbour leaves on a short vacation so then I have to be back to feed his cats.

So there is a little hope on the horizon, but she is not out of the woods yet, so who knows what the next few days will bring. And she is still old and sick, but I hope she gets over this so that I have a chance to have her checked over thoroughly with x-rays and stuff before I am forced to take such a decision again.

Zoë not getting better

So maybe it wasn't the antibiotics. I called the vet and the assistant advised me to bring her in today or tomorrow and that that would probably result in having her put to sleep. I couldn't do it today. I got so upset I almost had to vomit just from the thought. But I can't let her suffer for 4 more days if she wont get better. But how do you know that she wont get better? I don't know what to do. Right now I am so upset I can't even eat.

Zoë ill and X-mas cartoon

So I am a little too busy to update the story, because Zoë is ill and I am working on my x-mas card (which is usually a lenghty cartoon in my case). But the good news is that i will post the x-mas card here as well when it's done ;-)

Zoë's left eye started to run a bit so I took her in to the vet (local specialist actually) and he said her abscess is back (for those of you who know her history.. the rest of you will discover soon in the story). That was quite a fright. He also thought he felt a mass in her belly :-(
So for now he gave me anti-inflammatory painkillers, antibiotics and drops for her eye. So I can give her that on top of the anti-bladder stones meds she has had for 5 years and the bowel activation drops. That's 5 meds a day.. most twice a day.

And then she started to get worse. First I thought it was her jaw of maybe cancer, but yesterday she got so ill (shivering when I touched her, lying flat on her tummy but getting up and lying down a lot) that I realised her bowels were very upset from the antibiotics!

So I forcefed her 'rescue' food and the vet told me to give her more of the bowel drops. After HOURS she seemed to get a little better. Today I called back and we decided to stop giving her the antibiotics. Hopefully that will get her back to how she was before in two days. Because I am away for 3 nights or so with X-mas.

After X-mas I will bring her in to see if they can do an x-ray and stuff to find out what is wrong exactly, because I think the abscess he found is not in the exact same place as the other one was. Maybe I can get antibiotic injections for her again. Scared of needles as I may be, I was fine with giving her those myself.

But if they find cancer as well...... :-\

So more cartoons later. Keep coming back!

I forgot to post.. page 58

Seriously, I worked till deep in the night to finish editing the page, I even uploaded it to Picasa... and then I turned off the computer before I posted it.. :-D

But here it is:

Page 58

Page 57

Back to work...

Okay, so these first two weeks of December I have been posting pages that I already drew in November, so that I could have a little rest after NaNo, without having to pause the blog updates. But last weekend I picked the cartoon back up!

Also because the last few days of November I rushed the story along to try and get the ending down on paper, but I didn't make it after all, and now I want to draw it as I originally intended. So even though I still have some pages I could post, I prefer to draw some new stuff to fill up the 'short-cuts' I took.

That does mean I may not be able to post a page EVERY day, but I will try to post one at least every other day. So please don't leave me, just keep checking the blog and keep commenting! Your comments are what is keeping me motivated :-)

Page 56

Page 55

Page 54

What is The Travelling Shovel of Death?

Page 53

Page 52

Page 51

Page 50

...

Page 49

Page 48

Page 47

Page 46

Page 45

Page 44

Page 43

Page 42