Rodney

[Rodney's Dad]

Hi Folks,

Rodney is our mini lop (we think). He's just over a year old, and lives with us in the house ( he has access to the garden as well). He has company 24/7 as we both more or less work from home. He's always within a few feet of us, day and night. He's also travelled a fair bit over the last year (2,500 miles) as we take him with us in our camper van. He makes himself at home at friends houses very quickly and is not shy in the slightest.

I knew nothing about rabbits when we got him, but have done a fair bit of research over the last year. He's very affectionate, gentle and very well behaved. He's also a bundle of fun to have about. We didn't need to litter-train him, as he sorted this out himself from day one. I'm woken at 6.30 ever morning, with licks so that I can give him his breakfast. Something I always look forward to.

Anyway, if I figure out how to post up a photo, I will.

Cheers,

Rodney's Dad.

 

[Rodney's Dad]

Rodney.

 

[J3lly]

Rodney is soooo cute. He sounds like a great bunny.

 

[Rodney's Dad]

Hi J3lly,

Thanks for the reply. Rodders is great fun. I didn't know bunnies could have such big personalities.

 

[Imbrium]

Welcome to RO!

Rabbits are a trip! So many non-rabbit-savvy folks think a rabbit just sits there in a cage and eats veggies or whatever... but they have SO much personality! We currently have five cats, four rabbits, 7 diamond doves, 10 society finches, 2 sugar gliders and one red-eared-slider turtle (RIP Mantis Toboggan, our praying mantis who recently passed). The rabbits are AT LEAST as quirky, individual and entertaining as the cats. Until my hubby and I got married a bit over six years ago, he'd never had a rabbit - after we moved in together (and combined his cats with my rabbits and gliders), it was a lot of fun watching them surprise him at every turn for a while! Now he's got Nala's name tattooed on one of his hands and can't even imagine going back to life without rabbits. Heck, he periodically asks me if we can get a 5th rabbit .

 

[Rodney's Dad]

Hi Imbrium,

Yup, I thought rabbits just sat in cages and ate green stuff. Rodney has made me realise that it's brutally cruel to put them in a cage and visit them twice a day.

Man, you have a lot of creatures. The sugar gliders are an interesting pet. I'm not sure if we can have them in the UK. How do the rabbits and cats get along?

 

[Nancy McClelland]

Very cute--they do run the gamut from couch potato to lap bunny--no 2 are alike.

 

[Imbrium]

Well, the rabbits and cats have some weird interactions... the cats we have now like the rabbits but the feeling has never seemed to be mutual, lol (when I'm snuggling with a rabbit in bed, some of our cats like to come up and groom the rabbit as though it's another cat). There was a time a few years ago when we tried free-ranging rabbits and cats together with light supervision but the bullying quickly got out of hand. Rabbits eating dry cat food, camping out in the cat box like they owned it and generally trying to run cats off to the point that they hid from rabbits in our bedroom. Even when cats and rabbits seem to get along, though, it's important to supervise and to know your cats' tolerance levels very well - cat claws and teeth have nasty bacteria that can cause scratches/bites to become infected easily. A 'warning' swat from an annoyed cat that breaks the skin could lead to a fatal infection (even with aggressive vet treatment).

 

[Esthezyl]

Rabbits are a trip! So many non-rabbit-savvy folks think a rabbit just sits there in a cage and eats veggies or whatever... but they have SO much personality!

Hello Imbrium!

How I agree! And I've often seen a shock of generations on the subject. Every time I speak about rabbits with a person older than me (I'm 45 years old), the image they have of rabbits is the ones in the farms (the meat rabbits). The ones that don't lick you and don't even pay attention to you because they never got much interaction with humans other than during feeding or cleaning time. I can understand because I rescued a bunny that was left for 2+ years in a tiny cage (she could barely hop) and it took her 1 year to understand that she could relax when I was trying to pet her, and not immediately bolt. It's only then that she started to realize it was agreeable. It's the same for bunnies in farm hutches. It's exercise, enrichment and interaction that brings out a bunny's most fascinating possibilities (same for a person who would have spent years in a tiny room I guess). So no wonder when people started to treat them as pets too, they had no idea that they could be litter trained or free roam. If all they needed was a tiny hutch, well, a tiny cage was only logical. Same for rabbits life spans. Bunnies in farms don't live very long and are not expected to. So it was only natural for people to think that 5~6 years was their natural life span.

We need much more years of people treating bunnies differently and educating both the old and new generations. Yes bunnies can live more than 10 years, yes they can be litter trained and free roam, yes they need to eat mainly fresh hay and not whatever rotten veggies you can get them etc.