Through the course of the past two months I’ve relived memories of a couple of pet rabbits I had that dramatically impacted my life. Pets have a way of doing that.
When I left off last month we had just returned home and found Bunky, my female cottontail rabbit, and Jumbo, my male cottontail, loose in the house, along with Mom’s cat. That wasn’t supposed to happen. We went to great lengths to keep them apart from each other. When we drove up to the house and saw Bunky running around next to a set of sliding glass doors, we knew there was a problem.
We entered the house expecting the worst. Cats and rabbits don’t mix, we had learned. There was no way we could have prepared ourselves for what we saw when we entered the house. Bunky was running free in the living room in one of her normal, favorite spots. Less than six feet away the cat sat on the hearth. He was making no movement toward Bunky. In fact, it seemed as though he was oblivious to her existence. I can’t remember now where we found Jumbo, but he was huddled up somewhere doing his normal hiding thing. Both rabbits, amazingly, were completely unscathed.
The aftermath was actually funny. From the scene in the basement, we deduced that the cat had gone downstairs, gotten on top of the rabbits’ cage and rocked it until it completely toppled onto the floor. The top of the cage was built to open for access to them, and the cage was on its roof in the floor. There was white fur all over the top of the cage, but the cat was upstairs, sitting on the hearth, acting like it was completely innocent of whatever had happened. I imagine him sitting there thinking to himself, “I know nothing.”
That was really the only scare we ever had with the rabbits and that cat. When it was time for them to run around, I would take them to my room and turn them loose to run and get exercise. Sometimes we would put the cat in a room and let the rabbits run loose in the full house for better exercise.
I mentioned earlier about how it was funny that animals have their own, unique personalities. These tamed wild rabbits were no exception. Bunky was loving and carefree. She was almost cat-like in how she would run up to where you were sitting and jump up into your lap for a few seconds to be petted.
Jumbo was much more reserved. He usually preferred to stay hidden under the bed or behind some furniture when he wasn’t running around. One of his favorite things to do when he felt secure, though, was to grab a metal wire hanger with his mouth and flip it around and jump through it. He could do that for a half hour without getting tired of it. I could watch him playing without tiring of that, too.
The rabbits had their favorite foods. Grass and broadleaf plantain were their favorites. They couldn’t get enough of the plantain. They also liked loaf bread. And they drank a mixture of milk and water their entire lives.
One time, though, Bunky ate something she wasn’t supposed to. Once again we were afraid she wouldn’t live.
Mom had a huge Christmas cactus, and finally, after many years, it had begun to bloom. She was proud of that cactus. When I say it was large, it was large. It probably had better than 150-200 segments on it. It stood a good eight or 10 inches or so from the top of the pot.
One day while the rabbits were running around, we noticed we hadn’t seen Bunky in a while. I was dispatched to find her. What I found was her sitting in the pot with what was left of the Christmas cactus. She had absolutely demolished that plant. When I found Bunky, there might have been 10 segments left in the entire pot. She ate basically the whole thing, and she had a look on her face like she was prepared to go all the way.
We weren’t sure whether that plant – that much of the plant – or Mom would kill her first. In the end, Mom was livid, Bunky was OK, the plant never really recovered, and ultimately it was a hilarious story to recount.
Well, hilarious for the rest of us. I think 25 years later Mom is still irritated about it.
Jason Collum is Publisher of The Red Bay News.
