California Love 2010

[silvermoon]

California Love (2009)-Last year's bun blog!

Well, 2010 is already bringing some new things for Fluffy and I! The most important thing? BINKIES!

Binkies The magic binky ingredient? A rug for her to get some real traction on. All our floors are either hardwood or linoleum tile. Another bunny owner has dubbed these surfaces "bunny lava" because her buns hate stepping on them. We had someone housesitting while we were on vacation and wound up having her use the kitchen door to get in the house, the keys are less finicky. I moved the doormat over to that door to compensate. The kitchen door is right next to Fluffy's enclosure and play area. Fluffy is now a BIG fan of having that doormat there! The first time she experienced it she started grooming herself and then did two binkies in a row. I was so happy! She has never done a full binky before and I was worried that she wasn't happy here. She now loves sitting on this little mat and one day she even stretched right out on it. I was shocked. She only twice has done the DBF on the couch with me, and never on the hard floors. I had to take a bunch of pictures of course.

A bunny outing leads to a very angry bunny Today I happened to go by Petco and saw a sign that the Sacramento House Rabbit Society was doing adoptions today. I stopped into talk to the people and see the buns. Very friendly group! They were also doing free nail trims and Furminator groomings. I ran home and brought Fluffy right in. Even in a foreign place she didn't trance out, even for the brushing. She was still alert with her nose going a million miles an hour. She didn't try to escape thankfully, but looked nervous the whole time. The vet tech doing the nail trims was great and got her situated sitting facing forward and then held her front legs with one hand and trimmed with the other. She got lots of compliments. Everyone thinks she is such a pretty bun. I don't like this new coat that she grew in, it has much more gray in it. She is still gorgeous but I like the golden butterscotch better. I hope it grows back in during the summer! She is also a very fastidious bun, so her cream belly and feet are always pristine. The woman doing the brushing also liked her 'pointy' nose, said it was more of a European look. I guess she does have a pointier face than a lot of common buns like the ones in the RO header. I never really noticed the different before. They had so many cute buns for adoption. They will do introductions between your bun and the available buns to see if they are a good match. I am tempted to someday get a buddy for her. Temptation! Once we got home though Fluffy seemed out of sorts. She refused to go back in her enclosure. She was sitting in her play area under the table and hiding in the corner. I got her to eat some pellets (her favorite snack) and threw some in her enclosure but no luck. Didn't even want veggies, which she normally loves. I never leave her out unsupervised so I finally started chasing her around her area trying to shoo her back "home". She was NOT having it. Usually she loves being home and will hop right in. I wound up getting her cornered next to the door, on the little doormat. Time for another new trick: she boxed me and growled! It broke my heart. :tears2: My poor Fluffy was so mad at me. She kept boxing my hands even when I brought the snacks over. I finally got her to accept a crunchy ring treat and when she was distracted with that I grabbed her and transferred her over to her enclosure. She promptly hid under her shelf. She has NEVER boxed or growled at me. Not even when I put my hands in her enclosure. I wonder if I really broke her trust earlier. She wouldn't get in her carrier so I broke my own rule and picked her up out of her enclosure instead of waiting for her to leave. I'll just have to see how she is around dinner time. She has never been a cuddle-bun but she does lick me fairly often. I hope I haven't made a big mistake with her.

Pictures Here are some photos of her on her new favorite mat! I'm considering buying some more cheap doormats or rugs and putting them all under the kitchen table where her play area is.

 

[Myia09]

Haha "Bunny Lava" That is so cute.

My hamsters name was fluffy bun..so I say good name choice! lol!

 

[Wabbitdad12]

She could be mad by being taken to a strange place and having strange slaves handle her. My buns get like that occaisonally, but eventually I am forgiven, I am sure you will be too. Probably just reminding you who is in charge.

 

[fuzz16]

im sure youll be forgiven soon buns are quick to forgive specially if your a good slave and bring some treats for bribery

lol

and shes sooo pretty, you def need more pics of her.

 

[hln917]

silvermoon wrote:

LOL~ Boy does she look pissed!

 

[kirbyultra]

A bunny who licks will always forgive its slave

 

[silvermoon]

Wabbitdad: That may be it. When all was done and we put her back in the carrier at the store she was standing up and peeking over the edge, all curious and happy. Didn't seem to mad at the time. But once we got home, hoo boy.

fuzz16: There are a bunch of pics in last year's blog, the link is right at the top of the first post. She hates the camera flash! I love doing picture posts of her though so there will be more.

hlh917: Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not but all those pictures were from a week ago. She was actually totally relaxed. I think in that one she looks more like a diva!

kirbyultra: Thanks for the vote of confidence

Fluffy seemed back to normal by dinner time. I did not let her out of her enclosure though as I had cleaned it earlier when she refused to go back in.

This morning I let her out for a good long while and she was back to normal. She went and hid under the Christmas tree. Twice. (We finally got it out of the house this evening). She loved hiding under there and chewing on it. She also played in her boxes and shook the oatmeal container to get the snacks out. It did take a little longer than usual but she eventually put herself "back home" without too much prompting.

She was up on her shelf in the enclosure while we were watching tv, in total bunny-loaf mode. Then she actually did a DBF on the shelf and remained that way and slept! I've never seen her actually sleep, just dozing in bunny-loaf. She's doing so many new things lately.

I also let her out this evening briefly. She has a long box tunnel and she was dragging it around and climbing on it, trying to find a good spot for it. She also did a bunch of half-binkies while sitting on her rug. I didn't even try to handle her at all today, just to be safe. I can live without my bunny kisses for a few days.

The woman who was brushing her was so surprised when I mentioned that she licks me. I think she was jealous. Fluffy is a very independent bun, but I think on some level she knows that I saved her from a nasty death outside on the street. She hates being handled but she licked my foot long before she would let me touch her, let alone touch her face!

I hope 2010 is a great year and the bond between us just grows stronger and that she feels comfortable enough here to be her true self.

 

[pOker]

Fluffy is such a beautiful bunny!!!! Im glad she found a comfy spot-and did the dead bunny flop, Vegas just did his first one yesterday!!!! nice blogg so farr and gorgeous bunny.

 

[Fancy77]

I am just reading this now...What a great blog so far and of course LOVE your bun!!!!

 

[yngmea]

love that picture...

 

[fuzz16]

its always nice to hear about someone else bonding with their rabbit so well...i am very jealous...my boys licked me once but thats it ):

 

[silvermoon]

Thank you for all the great comments p0ker, Fancy77, yngmea and fuzz16.

First I must say that Fluffy did forgive me. Monday and Tuesday nights I let her out to play and both nights she hopped up on the couch with us for a few minutes while we watched tv. She wasn't being super-snuggly or wanting noserubs but when I presented my hand both nights she treated me to several kisses. :inlove:
She has never kissed my husband, only me. She loves me. I am the one who spent hours and hours on the floor with her when we first got her though, coaxing her to come closer. I talk to her every day, even though she doesn't talk back. So for those of you wishing for kisses, just keep on loving your bunners. Maybe someday!

Yesterday I got out a new toy for her, an empty oatmeal container. I put her pellets in there and she had fun stuffing her whole head (half her body really) inside to get them, and tossing the container around. I had to take some pictures! Then while I was still on the floor she took a little bath, so I have some cute photos of that too.

 

[fuzz16]

aww..ya i just get kicked or jumped on if i lay on the ground, depending if i have food or a brush or just laying there

sounds like your husband needs some floor time wit the bunny

 

[Fancy77]

I can never get enough of Fluffy she is so darn cute I love the pic of her in the container...classic

 

[silvermoon]

I haven't had a lot of time to let Fluffy play this week. Work is crazy and I feel like sitting in the office (across the house) instead of watching tv or reading a book on the couch, where I can watch her.

Of course I let her out for a little while every morning to clean her enclosure. Most evenings when I do let her out she's just staying on her mat and under the table and then she puts herself back to bed!

I got brussel sprouts as one of her veggies this week, which she definitely ate once in the past. Well, this week she turned her nose up at them the first day! Hmph, picky bun! Well, I left them in there all day and when I got home 95% of them were gone. She ate them the other two days I gave them to her. She rarely refuses fresh veggies, the only thing she would not touch is asparagus.

I have herb seeds but we're waiting to plant them out in the garden in a few months. I'm tempted to start a pot with a few now though.

One of these days I need to get a video of her in the morning when it is time for her pellets. She hears the bag and perks up and her nose wiggles a million miles an hour. "Snacky-bun, do you want your snackies?" *wiggle wiggle wiggle* And then she nearly yanks the cup out of my hand, haha.

 

[silvermoon]

Well, I decided to go ahead and do it. The snacky video! She nearly falls off her shelf trying to reach out of the top. Hahaha. Silly Fluffy.

[flash=425,344]http://www.youtube.com/v/ms8wm8q_lks&hl=en&fs=1[/flash]

 

[silvermoon]

Oh wow. I've neglected my bun blog for a month. Ooops. Here's a little update on all creatures great and small in the house.

Fluffy
I realized Fluffy was turning into a bit of a fatty-fat bun. You can see it in the snacky video, her dewlap is definitely bigger. Around Christmas I started giving her more pellets because I thought I was shorting her. One of the HRS websites said a 1/4c per day for an adult. We don't give her any other snacks though and she's getting chubby. Someone on the forum said they only give theirs about 2 TBSP a day, so I've cut Fluffy down to a 1/8c. She gets fresh veggies daily too (and unlimited hay of course).

I put a piece of cardboard in the bottom of her cage as a sort of landing pad from the shelf. The bottom of it is bare plastic and was too slippery, I noticed she was reluctant to hop down from the shelf too often. She definitely likes the cardboard in there. She has even been chewing on it some, which is a surprise to me.

She binkies on her rug every time I let her out, so I know she is a happy bun inkbouce:

Agnes
Agnes is our yellow Lab-mix. We fostered her from the SPCA where I volunteer and then adopted her officially at Thanksgiving. She is the sweetest dog. Definitely had some health issue though, she has a bunch of very thin patches in her fur. They are finally starting to grow in! I am so thrilled. Poor girl looks a wreck.

I tried her on premium food (we were using crap Pedigree) and it made her sick! It was extremely unpleasant. She had three accidents in the house until I said screw it! and we went back to the cheap food. She's fine now. Thank goodness, I was worried something was really wrong. Here are some pictures of my sweet Aggies:

Yes this is me. Agnes did not really want to pose so it is way too bright but the only shot we could get!

George!
We also have a 55 gallon freshwater aquarium. We've had fish long before we had any other pets as we were stuck in condos or apartments. George is our fire eel. We also have five (small) clown loaches in there. George has always been a good eater. We feed him cubes of frozen blood worms and he attacks them and eats them right up. The loaches will try to steal worms from him even though he is much bigger!

Well, something must have happened with the frozen cubes because now he won't eat. He sniffs at them and then turns around. I saw him vacuum up a few free floating worms but it isn't nearly the quantity he used to eat. We had switched brands of food, so I thought that was it, and then the pet store was out of the right ones :X I finally got the good ones (Hikari) and he won't eat those either! ARGH. George! Eat!

He doesn't look sick, none of his tank mates are acting weird. I've even cleaned the tank recently. I wonder if he choked on the cube one day and now he's afraid of them? Or if they changed something about the food that he doesn't like? We may have to move on to trying real earthworms or something (ew!)

Here's a picture of George while we're talking about him:

Me:
Since we bought our house last May my husband and I have been trying to have a baby. I found out this week (well, confirmed a suspicion really) that I have fertility issues. So that was a bit of a blow. I'll try some medication next month and hopefully that will help. We can give it a few rounds of trying before I get too discouraged. I'm just frustrated. Two of my cousins and my SIL had 'accident' children and here we are trying to be responsible and no luck. Now, to their credit at least one of my cousins and my SIL have become wonderful parents and I wouldn't want to take that away from them. It just makes me sad that it is so easy for some people. It is such a basic biological thing and it doesn't work 'naturally' for me. I just needed to vent a little about that. It's been on my mind for about a month since I had bloodwork done. Just got the results yesterday.

That's all for now. Oh! My husband got a job! He had been out of work since August and it. was. driving. him. insane. Home all day with nothing to do, having a sugar mama even though it was not his fault at all. He is soooo much happier with the job. It was very stressful for me trying to keep his chin up while stressing about our finances.

 

[silvermoon]

I've been playing with my camera some more, trying to learn about things like apertures and f-stops and whatnot. The critters are the natural subject! I took these this morning when I let Fluffy out for her play time. I got right down on my stomach to get the right angles.

With the zoom I wasn't able to get any action-shots of her doing binkies, but she did several of them. I also didn't include all the blurry pictures!

I love how the light from the door shines through her ears! In the last few you can also see how fat she is, with her furry little pantaloons. I've cut back her pellets but I think she needs more run-around time.

 

[Fancy77]

WOW it has been a while since u last posted...I AM SOOOOO GLAD u did You did a great job on the pics i fee like i am in the same room

 

[silvermoon]

I know I've been gone for a while. I only have the one bunny and there wasn't really much to say. I could have posted the new pictures as I took them but it didn't seem like anything interesting was happening.

Sadly my sweet Fluffy passed away last Wednesday. It was totally unexpected and I'm quite heart-broken about it. She was fine when I gave her a handful of hay before we went to bed, and in the morning she was gone. Her gotcha-day was in the middle of August; we were only together for just over a year.

In a lot of ways, Fluffy was the best pet I've ever had.

I can't explain what exactly it was like having her in my life. I do know that she made me smile. I would go in the kitchen and see her cute little face and it would cheer me up. I would laugh at her antics when she was running around the house. I think it was good for all of us, having her around. It has been a really rough time for me: my husband was out of work, we're heavily in debt, health problems. But she always made me smile, even on the worst days.

She knew her name. "Fluffles!" I would say and she would perk up and wiggle her nose at me. I mostly called her Fluffles or Fluffy-bun. I sang her songs. She knew the sound of the fridge opening and the rustle that meant *veggies*.

Her favorite things: snackies (rabbit pellets), banana, cilantro, parsley, bok choy, green and red leaf lettuce, carrots. She preferred orchard grass to timothy hay. I got her a fleece blanket from the dollar store and she liked to snuggle up with it before it got too hot. She liked to hide in a set of cardboard boxes I arranged for her, including one with paper shreds for digging. She hated our slippery floors and loved it when we put a doormat in for the side-door. Traction! She started doing binkies and sprinting around on it.

She was the best pet ever because she was clean, she was quiet, she never destroyed anything we owned, was pretty cheap to feed, and yet she was intelligent and affectionate. She never chewed through a single wire in our crazy electronic/computer filled household. She wasn't afraid of the dog. She had a mischievous streak sometimes, especially for sneaking off and hiding. I would call her Bratty-brat or Bratty-bun when it looked like she was plotting something.

The should-haves are plaguing me a bit. I never did take her to the vet to get checked out. I know that female buns really need to be spayed to reduce the chance of cancer. I don't know if she was spayed. I don't know how old she was. I don't know how long she was living on the streets and if that shortened her life. She could have been a year old when I found her or six, I just don't know.

What I do know is that she acted happy and healthy, at least to me. She ran around and played and ate well. The last few weeks she was getting picky about her hay, but she still ate some of it and ate her veggies and pellets every day.

I meant to get her a bigger cage or at least a baby gate so that she could run around her little play area more. I wanted to make a harness and take her outside. I wanted to get more rugs to cover the slippery floors so that she could run and binky more. I wanted to take more videos of her but couldn't find the camera tripod. I thought I had more time.

The Saturday before she died, I had her up on a chair and I was brushing her. She was annoyed at me and wanted down. I had a paper bag next to me to put the loose fur in and she jumped into it trying to escape and then looked really confused. When I put her back on the chair and gave her a nose rub she gave me a bunch of kisses all over my bare arms. She loved me too, in her way.

Fluffy was my first bunny and the only one we had. I would like to get another one, from rescue, but I'm not sure when I'll be ready. When I took her in I never imagined I'd love her so much, or miss her so much when she was gone. I had to post this as closure and then I'll probably be gone until I decide to open up my heart to a new furry face. Thanks for reading.