So my mother hates my rabbit. She thinks he's cute and all, but I made the mistake of giving him free run of the living room before he was neutered last year, and he chewed through two cell phone chargers and a TV cord (all unplugged). I promptly replaced all of them, but she still brings it up.
We have a very tiny house (882 square feet) and there's not a lot of room for Sugar to run. I'm not allowed to rabbit-proof the living room, so his free time occurs behind a baby gate in the kitchen. He lives in a 4'x4' x-pen in the laundry room. As a result, he's not socialized as often as he should be, and I'm force to carry him from the laundry room up a short flight of stairs to the kitchen. While he's friendly, he's not "cuddly" and HATES being picked up. I feel like every time I do it, I'm eroding what little trust he has.
The irony is, it was my mother's idea to get him! As I mentioned in my introduction, he was a prop for a play we both worked on, and I decided to keep him when the play was over. She was originally VERY enthusiastic about the idea of me caring for him. Neither one of us knew thing one about rabbits, and we both thought they were these timid animals that sat in a cage all the time. I researched and learned otherwise; Mom still thinks I make too much of a fuss over him. I've tried to explain that they're not like the hamsters I've had over the years; they're as socially complex and intelligent as a dog or cat. She doesn't get it.
I'm 31 years old and still live at home for financial reasons. My boyfriend is in the Army (11 days from graduating basic--woo-hoo!), and we've discussed moving in together or even him helping me pay on an apartment while he's deployed or on base, because he knows my mom's crazy. Once I do that, Sugar will have supervised free run of my home. In the meantime, however, my mother keeps complaining about him, saying he takes up too much room in her house (where I pay rent) and periodically threatens to get rid of him. (Ironically, the play he was obtained for involved a crazy mother who kept threatening to get rid of her daughter's rabbit--and ended with her killing him.) Yesterday she even claimed that because it was her idea to get him, she had the right to get rid of him. Um, her total investment in Sugar was a used $10 guinea pig cage (which he lived in for a week before I got him a much bigger cage) and gas to drive to pick him up (Sugar himself was technically free). I've paid for everything else, including his $300 neutering, $140 x-pen, and who knows how much on food, bedding, toys, treats etc. etc. etc. I've invested WAY more time, money, and care on Sugar, and by any definition he's mine.
The only bright side is that she realized that rabbit droppings make terrific fertilizer, and she plans to use it in her garden.
So that's one reason she would keep him around.
Any ideas on how to make my mother come around to the idea of Sugar as a family member? She has a dog and two cats, so she's definitely an animal lover, and was very permissive about pets throughout my childhood. I can't understand why she would harbor such animosity toward a relatively harmless, inoffensive pet.
We have a very tiny house (882 square feet) and there's not a lot of room for Sugar to run. I'm not allowed to rabbit-proof the living room, so his free time occurs behind a baby gate in the kitchen. He lives in a 4'x4' x-pen in the laundry room. As a result, he's not socialized as often as he should be, and I'm force to carry him from the laundry room up a short flight of stairs to the kitchen. While he's friendly, he's not "cuddly" and HATES being picked up. I feel like every time I do it, I'm eroding what little trust he has.
The irony is, it was my mother's idea to get him! As I mentioned in my introduction, he was a prop for a play we both worked on, and I decided to keep him when the play was over. She was originally VERY enthusiastic about the idea of me caring for him. Neither one of us knew thing one about rabbits, and we both thought they were these timid animals that sat in a cage all the time. I researched and learned otherwise; Mom still thinks I make too much of a fuss over him. I've tried to explain that they're not like the hamsters I've had over the years; they're as socially complex and intelligent as a dog or cat. She doesn't get it.
I'm 31 years old and still live at home for financial reasons. My boyfriend is in the Army (11 days from graduating basic--woo-hoo!), and we've discussed moving in together or even him helping me pay on an apartment while he's deployed or on base, because he knows my mom's crazy. Once I do that, Sugar will have supervised free run of my home. In the meantime, however, my mother keeps complaining about him, saying he takes up too much room in her house (where I pay rent) and periodically threatens to get rid of him. (Ironically, the play he was obtained for involved a crazy mother who kept threatening to get rid of her daughter's rabbit--and ended with her killing him.) Yesterday she even claimed that because it was her idea to get him, she had the right to get rid of him. Um, her total investment in Sugar was a used $10 guinea pig cage (which he lived in for a week before I got him a much bigger cage) and gas to drive to pick him up (Sugar himself was technically free). I've paid for everything else, including his $300 neutering, $140 x-pen, and who knows how much on food, bedding, toys, treats etc. etc. etc. I've invested WAY more time, money, and care on Sugar, and by any definition he's mine.
The only bright side is that she realized that rabbit droppings make terrific fertilizer, and she plans to use it in her garden.
So that's one reason she would keep him around.Any ideas on how to make my mother come around to the idea of Sugar as a family member? She has a dog and two cats, so she's definitely an animal lover, and was very permissive about pets throughout my childhood. I can't understand why she would harbor such animosity toward a relatively harmless, inoffensive pet.
