The Death of Our Rabbit
Somewhere around 2010-2011, we rescued a domesticated rabbit. The family that had him no longer wanted him and they were going to let him go into the wild. He is a black and white mini lop and he wouldn’t be able to adapt well to living in the outdoors, after a couple of years in a cage. So my family adopted him and set out to make sure that he had a great life with us. We figured he would live a few more years and that is it.
We made sure that his cage was huge (three stories tall) and that he had free-range access to the entire house. He had daily access to his hay, dry food, and fresh veggies, plus unlimited water. He quickly befriended our 70-pound pitbull dog, those two were always together, sleeping and playing. He would chase the dog and then she would chase him. He would actually climb on the dog and the two would “wrestle”. Sadly our dog developed cancer and passed and he lost his friend. He mourned her for a few long months and then he started to make friends with the other dog and our cats. The whole time, it was like he was the “alpha” and everyone knew it. Yes, a little bunny was the alpha to large dogs and a handful of cats.
He would retire to his three-level cage when he wanted to use the litter box (but he did at times use one of the cat litter boxes. He would also only eat in his cage and sleep in his cage. He would unlock his cage door (if we locked him in there for some reason) and he was known to periodically join us on the couch for TV time and some nights sleep with whoever fell asleep on the couch.
Though his name was Oreo, I gave him the nickname “Fred”, our Daughter-in-law gave him the nickname “Mr. Bunny”, our daughter called him “Stuffy” and my wife always called him “Stuf”. He was a well-loved member of our family.
Sadly this morning he was lying on his side, breathing heavily. He was euthanized by our vet at 11:15 today. He was somewhere around 13-14 years old, as we don’t know how old he was when his previous family got him. He lived with us for close to 12 years. He will surely be missed.
I know that many of you out there in the world could care less, and that is fine with me, but I treat my pets as family, they are all spoiled.
