When I was about 10 years old, I got the honor of caring in the summertime for my class’ pet rabbit, Thumper.

He lived in, well, a rabbit cage, decently large but portable, and the last day of school, my mom and I brought him to our suburban Milwaukie home and got him situated in the unfinished part of our basement, next to the ping-pong table and a basketball hoop my dad had put up in the room for my friends and me.

An hour or so later, I went to check on him and was somewhat alarmed by the amount of, well, waste he had already created. My mom, however, born and raised a Minnesota farm kid, was unphased.

“Everything that eats and drinks,” she said matter of factly, “pees and poops.”

Those words have stuck with me, along with a corollary I picked up later: Everything that breathes will one day stop breathing.

I was reminded of that again Tuesday when I get home around 6 p.m. and discovered my current rabbit — my daughter Pam’s old 4-H animal, Bunny — in a bad way.

Ancient for a rabbit at around 9, she was lying awkwardly in her large outdoor cage, still alive but apparently the victim of a stroke; her hind quarters weren’t really functioning.

I scooped her up and asked my wife Roberta to call the vets’ office before they went home for the day and ask if I could bring her in to have her put down; I’ve seen enough dying animals — more on that in a minute — to know Bunny was beyond any other treatment.

Both vets at Alpine Animal Hospital were still there and we were told at least one of them would wait while I made the 15-minute drive to the clinic. I had Bunny in a cardboard box on the seat next to me and petted her as we drove.

She was still alive with less than a mile to go, but then she seized and let out a deathly, muffled squeal and I knew she was gone. I brought her inside anyway just for confirmation, and Dr. Hixson put a stethoscope on her chest and said “she’s already gone to bunny heaven.”

By my count, Bunny was the 13th pet (and third rabbit) who had died in my presence. It was hard to lose every one of those — and the other four who expired without me around — but I will admit it’s not as difficult to bid farewell to a rabbit or a goat as it is a dog or cat. Those latter two animals, to me anyway, just have far more developed personalities and capacity for affection; when a dog or cat has died, my feeling of loss has been profound.