The New Rabbit

Rabbit has a litter box, a food dish, a hiding box, a water bottle and some toys- a rope corn that rattles and two wooden sticks.  One book suggested giving him a phone book to chew on, but I can't see teaching him that it is okay to chew on a book.  I was able to use the puppy-spacer horizontally to make a second story, but I'm not sure the rabbit can actually get up there and anyway the wire mesh is too open for him to walk on.

Tomorrow going out to the rabbit breeder to get a rabbit.  I'm thinking a ruby-eyed white female that we'll call "Bunny", we'll see what actually comes home with us.

Went through the rabbits at Avillion Farm today and brought home an 80% German Angora, chocolate color, male, three-month old (he'll be three months old tomorrow) that we have named "Brewster."  I don't have a picture yet because I didn't want to freak him out with the flash- I'll get him into the sunshine and get a picture tomorrow.

I pretty easily narrowed down the selection to Brewster and a very sweet multi-colored female.  I then cuddled each of them and interacted with them while they were loose in their cages.  The female was very cute and very sweet, but appeared to have very little curiosity.  Brewster and his sisters, on the other hand, were very outgoing and curious and were more active in the interactions while they were in their cage.   From meeting all of the adult rabbits, it was clear that the males in general were much more outgoing and curious.  Also it was starting to seem like a good idea to get a male as a pet because of the uterine cancer issue.

The owner clipped him to show me how, and he was very good for that.  Then we brought him home.  When Brewster first went into his cage he was very active and looked at everything, but then he settled into the back of the cage and just sat there looking scared for an hour.  We went out to watch the Belmont, and when we got back he was more active again.  He sniffed me face and let me pet his ears and stroke his back.

It did turn out that the base of the dog kennel is way to slippery for the rabbit.  Fortunately, I have hundreds of empty file folders that are going to the dump (the paperless office may have passed everyone else by, but not me), so I used those to line the bottom of the cage.  It'll make clean-up easier anyway.  Not that there's been any clean-up to do... I am a little worried because Brewster hasn't made any kind of messes since he left the farm.

So, as Brewster's Mom said when she was getting him ready to go, Brewster has started his "career as a pet." 

Had a difficult night sleeping.  Brewster's chilled out, which leads to "ker-plop, ker-plop, ker-plop" as he checks out his cage.  The cats are extra-extra needy.  "If you really love us, why did get that thing?"  And, "Is that thing going to eat us?"  Despite Brewster having shown no aggression toward the cats at all, and in fact almost completely ignoring them except to sniff their noses when they were sniffing him, the cats are certain he must be dangerous.  Which brings up a point I've wondered about ever since I started studying the issues of house cats & house rabbits: Aren't cats supposed to eat rabbits?  Apparently my urban kitties have lost all sense of their natural place.

Brewster let me pet him some in his cage and gave me a few "chin nudges".  This is supposed to be a sign of affection, like patting someone on the back when you walk by.  He also ker-plopped out onto the carpet and was bold enough to try to push past my hand on the one side, but not bold enough to try to bounce over my lap on the other side. 

He did finally pee- in the litterbox corner but not entirely in the litterbox.  Still, for a first pee, not bad.  And it was just normal yellow urine; none of the gross stuff that I've been reading about.  He did eat the litter (compressed paper) that had urine on it... don't know if he was just trying something new, or needs salt, or what.  To get him to use the correct corner I did as advised and filled up the other three corners with his food dish, his cardboard house, and a water bottle & toys.

He's mostly ignored his toys, but he did chew on them a little bit and he picked them up and threw them several times.  I've read that throwing toys is a rabbit specialty.  He's chewed on his cardboard house a little bit, but really he doesn't seem to be very into chewing, just sniffing.

Brewster woke me up this morning making a huge racket.  He had peed more- in the litterbox!  I thought he wanted food because he had eaten absolutely everything and I didn't give him very much dinner, but when I brought him breakfast he wanted to visit with me and explore the room a little.  Cat: "My, what big fluffy ears you have."  I was waiting for the cat to try to use if for a cat toy, but apparently he was too worried about the cat-eating rabbit that it was attached to.

Brewster's water bottle hadn't been working right for some reason.  After I fixed it he drank more than 0.5 cup.  I was waiting to see an exploding rabbit.  Might see one later: this might be a test on the litterbox skills!

Brewster photos!  He is three months old today.  Click on the picture for a larger photo:

Today someone said that Brewster looked tiny in his picture.  At first I thought, "No, he's not that tiny."  But then I tried to guess how much he weighs.  Less than a laptop computer- so probably about 2 or 3 pounds.  He'll be about 10 pounds when he grows up.  So I guess he is tiny!

He's getting more bold and friendly.  This morning he let me pet his face, and today he seemed relatively accepting of being held and petted.  He's bold enough to run up and give me a chin nudge on the ankle- at first he was afraid of me when I was standing up.

He doesn't like weird noises.  Yesterday when I took the pictures it wasn't the flash that bothering him, but the click of the SLR.  He was upset when my alarm clock went of this morning, and he doesn't like the startup jingle on the computer.

I've given up on the drip bottle.  All it does is drip out into the cage and make a mess and get Brewster all dirty.  I've got a dish that bolts to the side of the cage instead.

Brewster's been showing some territoriality for his cage.  If I'm cleaning it or messing with it for some reason he wants to come get in my way.  This morning I was cleaning and he got so annoyed that he picked up his food dish with his teeth and threw it.  Bunny temper tantrum.

Woke up this morning to the sounds of a bunny having an active morning.  Brewster is most active at sunrise and sunset.  Good timing in the afternoon, but in the morning he wants to get up at 5:30AM.  So he took a good run around the room and did some bunny dancing until the air conditioner turned on just as he was running past a vent.  What was that!?!  He had to investigate it for a while, with his ears blowing in the air stream.

He's having some visitors this weekend, so I wanted to get him comfortable in the kitchen where the visitors will be.  I gave him an extra litter box into which I had put some used litter and then when I brought Brewster into the room I put him in the box.  This is what the experts say to do.  He got out and explored a little, and then returned to the box and peed.  He got a treat for that.  He's been really good about the litterbox except for peeing on his food dish every afternoon; a rabbit thing.  He peed in one place in my room, and then he tried to pee there again and got in trouble.  So today he wandered all over that part of the room and didn't try to pee on anything.  He really is a good rabbit.

I started out using the crumpled paper litter, CareFresh.  It didn't work out to well- with the Angora rabbit, he ended up with bits of wet litter stuck all over him.  And it flew out of the litter box when he jumped in and out and ended up everywhere.  I've switched to "Critter Litter" the "Potty Training Pearls" which are basically little clay balls and I'm really happy with it.  It doesn't stick to him, it's heavy enough that it basically stays in the litter pan, and it absorbs so well that you can't even tell where he has peed.  It is a bit expensive, but it seems like it won't have to be changed very often.

Anyway, after returning to his room Brewster decided it was bunny play time.  Why are these cats on the chair?

Because a bunny chased them around the chair at least three times before they finally jumped up- something bunny hasn't figured out how to do yet.  Bunny explored everywhere he could.

Just after I took this picture, Brewster ended up high-centered on the bar.  Here is Brewster mid-hop:

The books say that bunny will get tired after an hour.  Well, we had had an hour of bunny racing around the room.  Brewster even took a break to suck down some water, and then went back to dashing circles around the chair & doing bunny dances.  He would rush over and give me a chin-nudge and stand still for a few minutes for a back scratch.  Apparently all that fur itches constantly as bunny did have to take frequent scratching breaks.  Finally, bunny was tired:

This is the first time that I know of that Brewster has completely flopped out since he moved in.  Bunny was very, very tired.  Maybe bunny will sleep in until 6AM.

Nope, Brewster woke up at 5AM and did another hour of crazy bunny.  I look at pictures of bunnies sleeping on laps and think well, someday.

This morning I got my first "bunny puddle".  This is a behavior where the bunny flattens himself on the ground.  It looks like "I'm scared," but "I'm scared" is a frozen compact bunny.  The bunny puddle is "pet me."  When I was a kid we had some bunnies that we never really bonded with.  Now that I'm learning about bunnies, I realize that part of the problem is that we didn't know anything about bunny behavior.  For example, when the bunny hopped away from us we thought the bunny was nervous and wouldn't follow because we were trying to make them comfortable and secure.  But actually what it means is, "You are boring and hopefully there is something interesting somewhere else."

The comparison is usually made between a bunny and a cat or a dog.  But what a bunny is most like is a horse.  They are both prey animals that live in grasslands, and so they have a lot of the same behaviors and respond to a lot of the same stimuli.  If a horse is scared, it usually freezes for a second before running.  The bunny never unfreezes, but eventually a very scared bunny will run too.  The horse kicks up his heels when turned loose; so does the bunny.  The horse doesn't like to go into caves; neither does the bunny.  But they are also very different- a bunny is it's own kind of creature.

This evening Brewster was completely into the bunny puddle, asking for lots of petting.  In total bunny puddle, he spreads out his front legs so that he can get his chest and chin flat on the ground- it is tremendously cute.  He also tried to get the cats to play, engaging the universal "downward facing dog" play invitation, but the cats just ran away.

He also peed twice, though I managed to cut one short and head off a few other attempts with the clap of the hands and "No!", though it is getting less effective.  The first time I did it he thumped and darted straight into his litterbox (his most, most safe spot) and wouldn't come out, which is kind of the point.  Now it doesn't even necessarily startle him.

The first time I clapped my hands at Brewster because he was peeing on the carpet I really startled him and really got a reaction.  Soon after that was my first bunny puddle.  It looked a little bit like a bad dog that is trying to get into you good graces.  Today I sharpened up my rabbit language skills at The Language of Lagomorphs.  Turns out, in rabbit culture the dominate rabbit demands that the other rabbits groom him.  So what my rabbit was actually saying was, "Look crazy lady, you made a really annoying noise but I'm willing to forgive you."

Brewster is an active explorer, and after he has completely investigated an object and figured out everything that a bunny needs to figure out about it, as he is hopping away, he makes a little sighing sound.  Like a person saying "hmmm" when he is done thinking about an issue.  He only does it if he has been concentrating very hard.

Today a lady at work was wearing an angora sweater, and I felt the cloth.  It felt just like Brewster.

Going with the theory that the smaller the animal the bigger the name, Brewster has become "Brewster the Rooster" for some reason.  Actually, the reason is that the foreign-born husband was trying to ask me about Brewster on the phone and I couldn't understand what he was saying.  Why are you asking me about a rooster?  So Brewster became Brewster the Rooster.

This morning Brewster woke up at 4:30AM.  Today I read a web site that noted this is a plus for the rabbit- since rabbits are active at sunrise and sunset and sleep in their dens all day they naturally match the average work schedule.  The plus for me this morning was that he asked to be pet and then cuddled in my arms for nearly ten minutes.  This afternoon he asked for another cuddle, and when I put him down he made a bunny puddle right where I set him and so we did some more cuddling.  I also earned my first "tooth purr."  A rabbit shows supreme satisfaction by lightly rubbing his teeth together, thus producing a sound very much like a purring cat.  Brewster has developed some matted fur where he rests his chin against the edge of his water dish; working on that fur earned me the purr.

Brewster's palace is right next to my bed, which I think is the best arrangement for a house bunny that needs to be caged.  Rabbit friends nap together, and I think it is helping our bonding that we nap together.  Right now he is resting in his cage next to me; the interaction would be the same if he were loose on the carpet.  He looks very content with his back legs stretched out behind and his front legs stretched out in front and his head resting against the side of the cage.  Rabbits legs are so oddly shaped that they look broken when he stretches them behind, but nonetheless he is clearly a contented bunny.

Brewster has started chewing on this a little bit.  Yesterday he learned to pull the carpet, and he also learned that it would get him put in time out.  He's also taken a couple of experimental chews on a few other things, most popular being the odd choice of the barbell weights.  Today he chewed on his chew toy (a block of wood) for the first time.

I've made an experiment of replacing Brewster's loose food dish with one attached to the edge of the cage.  I was a little annoyed about his requirement to spread his food all over the cage, but it wasn't that bad because he also ate most of it.  But he was also peeing in an empty corner of the cage once a day, so I've put the new cage in that corner hoping that it will make it less inviting as a potty location.

Brewster didn't pee anywhere in my room today.  Yesterday I was a little down about how the potty training is going.  It's okay if he can only be out of the cage when I'm here and awake, but if I have to watch him intently the whole time he is loose that isn't any good.  Of course, the potty training is actually going very well.  First, Brewster has only been home six days.  Second, Brewster only thinks of peeing in two places and I don't have to focus on him if he's in any other part of the room.

Brewster has his first visitors tomorrow.  Hopefully he won't pee and hopefully he won't be terrified and hide in his litter box.

Brewster has been with us for one week.  He's completely wormed his way into my heart, and he seems very happy with us too.  After the visitors left, I spent the afternoon napping and Brewster also napped in his palace.  Last night, I woke up from 2AM - 4AM so that bunny could play.  When my husband found out about this, he tried to translate an Indian saying, "The bunny is sitting on your head."  Brewster the Rooster is ruling the roost.

Brewster was great with the children.  Hopped right up to them and smelled them, which was a little more bunny than they were ready to deal with.  The children were delighted with him, and I made them a little "I met Brewster the Bunny" coloring project and taped some shearing seconds to it for them to take home.

My main advice about a rabbit is to learn everything possible about rabbit behavior.  Yes, the right cage and the right bunny-proofing of the house and the right effort at potty training are important.  However, if you don't bond with the bunny none of those other things will work out.  Dogs and cats have evolved to imitate human infant behavior and we don't have to learn anything to bond with them, but to bond with the bunny you have to learn bunny language.  And once you love your bunny, you will make sure he has the right house and you will spend enough time with him for potty training and you will bunny-proof so that he isn't pouting in his cage.

Brewster and I have been having something of a low-level conflict over which corner of his palace should be the latrine.  Brewster was using two corners, so I left the litter box where it was and cleaned the easier to reach near corner each day.  Finally I moved the litter box to the near corner to see what would happen and he immediately began exclusively using that corner.  Even most of the bunny seeds are going in the box now.  Turns out he really did want to use only one corner, but that crazy lady kept putting the litter box in the wrong corner.

I got my first "bunny kiss" on the way out the door yesterday.  I gave Brewster a goodbye pat on the nose and he groomed me back.  Very sweet- they have slippery little tongues instead of the rough tongue of a cat.  Today I got a new and improved bunny puddle- I was petting Brewster and he stretched out his front legs and back legs so that I'd be sure to get all those long sides of a Brewster.

Brewster has been mildly successful in enticing the cat Cletus to play.  Brewster would really like to play with the cats, but he hasn't been able to figure out how.  He tries to play chase, but they are just annoyed when he chases them and they don't understand the bunny "follow me" signal when he is ready to be chased.  Today Cletus lay on his back while Brewster ran insanely away from him and back and Cletus batted at him as he ran by.  Brewster kept going back, so I think he really was trying to make this an interactive game.

Brewster was just laying here completely relaxed when my alarm clock went off and now he's doing "scared bunny."  He is also terrified of the noise when the cat scratches at the cat litter.  By the way, completely relaxed looks a lot like dead.  Fortunately the House Rabbit Handbook warned me about this.  When Brewster is ready to relax, he'll find his spot and stand there for a moment considering his commitment to relaxation.  He will then throw himself violently on his side and freeze with all four feet sticking straight out.  Eventually, everything will soften and he will look more like the ragdoll that we expect sleeping animals to be.

Did I sneak into bed last night to avoid a bunny that thought play time was cut way too short?  Indeed I did.  The more comfortable Brewster has become the more clear in his opinions he has become, and his opinions was that play time wasn't over last night.  This despite the fact that there had been so much bunny dancing and "Bunny 500" speed demonstrations and chasing of cats that a certain bunny was huffing away under bright red ears.

The husband has never been one to be overly swayed by a pet's opinions (pretty stubborn in his own right really).  Add to this that to placate the bunny means spending time in the cats' room, and the husband hates the cats.  Nonetheless, the husband was sure to get Brewster's opinion on each kind of fruit he bought today and reported the outcome back to me.  So maybe a husband "has a rabbit on his head" too.

Brewster still hates the alarm clock and the start-up noise on the computer.  The air conditioner is mostly okay.  He wants the cats to play with him and is pretty pleased when they do, though one of his ears has a couple of scratches and he got bitten on the haunch at play time today.  But what Brewster hates most of all is the sound of cats digging in the cat litter.  He is certain that something evil and dangerous to bunnies is going on in there.

Brewster demands pets with bunny puddles and chin nudges and two feet up on a thigh and finally, if he's really not getting the attention he deserves, a nip on the toe.  So far the only place he's nipped me is on the big toe, and several times.  Apparently that is the human attention getting button.  Works pretty well because he's really good about nipping gently so it's just so gosh darn cute.

Original content copyright 2005.  This page last updated 23JUN2005.