Reuse...Confuse the rabbit

Imagine how lovely it would be if, when you recovered from a recent illness or two, some kind family member purchased you a brand spanking new home. One that didn't have bits missing where you had chewed a bit too hard, and didn't smell of wee. Bliss.

A few weeks ago we did such a kind thing for our rabbit. A brand new hutch to replace the one with a collapsing roof and a fair bit of mould.

We had put it together a while back and put some of her straw into it. A gentle introduction if you will. She went in, then promptly came out again. Clearly it didn't have the wow factor.

Three weeks later and enough is enough. We only have two rabbits so three hutches seemed a little excessive. Paul spent the afternoon taking the old hutch apart, not so ably assisted by the rabbit who refused to move out. As screws were removed she held on in there for dear life.

After a while she tentatively went into the new hutch, ate some of the wood then came out again.

An hour passed until she ventured in again. We acted fast and trapped her in, waiting for her to acclimatise. She started trying to dig her way out. We let her out again.

Another hour later and Paul had taken large sections of the old hutch and fashioned quite a natty planter. Petal got in the planter and looked like she wished to take up residence despite the fact that it has no roof and currently no floor. Clearly she likes the idea of a project.

The day ended and I lured her back into her new home with carrot peel. Let's hope the whole experience doesn't stress her out so much she stops eating again. Seriously I know a house move is one of the most distressing life experiences but it's hard not to be offended. Talk about ungrateful.

Rabbit Peril

As I write this my 3 year old rabbit is sitting in her hutch looking absolutely fine. I know she's fine because she spent the morning trying to eat the sucker off Tilly's arrow and eating hosepipe.

Two weeks ago things were different. Two weeks ago I thought she'd died. I refer you to this blog entry where I discussed how bad I am with dead animals. Or even animals that look like they are dead. Well Petal looked dead from the two metres away where I stood and squealed at Paul. It turns out she was just extremely poorly.

It was a Sunday evening. Of course it was. No-one's rabbit gets perilously close to death on a week day when the vets are open. Oh no it had to be a Sunday and hence an emergency trip to the pet hospital in Attercliffe. Who knew there was a pet hospital so near a large number of brothels.

I am, of course, exaggerating about how easy it was to ascertain that Petal was near to death. She looked dead, then when we lifted her into the pet carrier she hopped out of it like there was nothing flipping wrong with her. We drove across Sheffield well aware that the appointment alone was going to cost £125 and thinking she looked a lot better really. We didn't have long in the waiting room during which we very nearly decided to go home to avoid the cost. The short consideration time turned out to be a good thing.

Apparently because rabbits are prey animals they will do anything other than show they are poorly, because then something might eat them. So with her last ounce of willpower she tried to leap off the examination table and gave the vet the run around. Then she flopped over and looked, well, nearly dead.

I won't go into details about the examination. Sufficed to say there was more flopping over, some scurrying, the insertion of a thermometer somewhere unpleasant and a blood test which confirmed that she was very nearly dead. At one point there was even talk of diabetes. Had I not had pet insurance i might very well have flopped onto my side panting too. The expected cost was £450.

£450 to keep her overnight, give her medicine and fluids and try and get her to eat.

In the morning I had to drive back to Attercliffe and pick her up, terrorising her further by driving her back across town. If rabbits hate having thermometers stuck up their bottoms it's nothing compared to how much they hate car journeys. I then left her at our vets for the additional sum of £120.

To say my flabber was ghasted would be an understatement.

£580.

I mean I do like her but £580 would be enough to fly her to Amsterdam first class to visit her ancestors (she's a Dutch rabbit). You'd at least expect five star treatment. The hospital she was in was nice I'm sure but she didn't mention anything about chocolate coins on the pillow.

Just as a point of note, three weeks ago we called our pet insurance to cancel it because £12 per month per bunny seemed expensive. It was a Saturday and they were shut. Thanks be to the god of pets. Otherwise Petal would have been joining the great rabbit warren in the sky.

So now we are back to normal. Two rabbits who can't seem to stand each other and eat anything and everything they lay their teeth into. And one rabbit who isn't keen on us going anywhere near her bottom...

More day to day

I feel like a terrible parent. Phoebe has had a weird red painful toe problem for quite a few weeks and apart from a brief period of me applying nearly out of date fungal cream for few days with no discernible result I have done nothing about it. She mentioned the pain quite a bit. I put it off and shouldn't have.

Today I finally took her to the nurse. She looked at Phoebe feet and looked puzzled. She pressed her toes and checked between them. She even got a second opinion from a  doctor.

They were in agreement. Phoebe has chilblains. Prescription? Warm socks. I mean really.

I got home. Phoebe put some socks on and I went outside to find the rabbit. I've been worried about both rabbits since the parsnip Tilly used for her snowman's nose went missing. Can rabbits eat parsnips? Who knows.

She's in the shed. I can't get her out without risking life and limb, or at the very least being knocked out by a bicycle pump and spraining my ankle tripping over a bale of hay. She can come out in her own good time. Which may be never.

Back in the house we are seeking the other slipper which is probably buried under the massive pile of chaos that comes from redecorating bedrooms. Oh well at least we are treating one foot. Half way there.

The circle of life

So Friday was a bit unusual. A very old and scraggy looking pigeon pecked around our rabbit hutches, seemingly with no energy to fly anywhere. It looked pretty miserable and it didn't seem to want to talk about it's issues. It went underneath the hutch instead.

It was then I remembered that I am really not great with animals and birds. Alive or dead.

I have close to a slug phobia. They actually make me nauseous. Paul has been trapping them in a pool of lager every night and disposing of them. Apparently there is a mass slug grave in front of the bug hotel. I don't want to think about it.

Once I thought there was a dead hedgehog in a groundsheet that had been left rather too long shoved under a bench in the garden. I picked up the groundsheet and put the whole thing in the bin. Paul came home, removed the groundsheet from the bin and the hedgehog ran off. And yes I do know hedgehogs are nocturnal, I'm just an idiot.

Then there was the badger incident. It was trapped in our garden and couldn't get through the gate to escape. We heard the gate bell ringing frantically. I was painting the bathroom at the time and was frankly terrified. Paul went down and opened the gate (with some trepidation however). I heard him saying "Out you go Mr Badger". Very respectful. And much braver than me.

Oh and dead fish. Not great with them either.

So I spent much of the day concerned about the pigeon. Yes about it's wellbeing, but moreover how the hell I was going to remove it from under the hutch when it shuffled off it's mortal coil.

In the meantime one of our rabbits decided to dig a kind of trench (nowhere near the slug grave thankfully) and laid down in it, looking to all intents and purposes, well, dead. Seriously I have never seen it so still. I called Paul. We stroked her and talked in a worried fashion. She didn't move a muscle and her glass eyes stared upwards (well sideways, she is a rabbit). Then she stood up and ran around the garden at high speed refusing to go back in her hutch, like every other sodding night.

Finally, after dark, the time came to remove the pigeon as it had passed away next to the hutch. The decision was taken (after about a second) that Paul was going to deal with it's departure. He scooped it up a child's pink plastic spade after the third attempt and walked it around the house and down the road, dropping it only a couple of times. He then threw it ceremoniously over the end wall. A natural funeral is what it would have wanted, plus I didn't want to dig it a grave in case for obvious reasons. I should add over the wall is a fairly dense wooded thicket not someone's garden.

It's been a couple of days now and no more deaths or near deaths thank goodness. I'm trying not to think about rabbit demise. It won't go well for me when it happens. But they are supposed to live about 8 years so hopefully we don't have to worry just yet.

I am wondering however whether I should seek out some therapy...

Whitby

So this is the bit where I return from holiday and bore you all witless with our family holiday in the UK shenanigans. Apologies in advance but it's all part of the service.

So we went to Whitby. Again. In a house we've stayed in before. Again. And it was pretty much brilliant. Again. Apart from the lack of Jumping Jimmies Trampolines which we are all grieving the loss of. Tragic.

But I'd better start from the beginning. I wouldn't want you missing anything.

The North Yorkshire coast has the following benefits:

1. It's near to Sheffield. My daughters can last the sum total of 2.5 hours in a car which gives us 30 minutes for a traffic jam. It's even better when you can split the journey up by visiting your brother and eating pizza.

2. It's beautiful. Especially when you are staying in a house at the foot of the viaduct over the Esk on the steam train line. A house which also has a playground and access to a swimming pool and is in walking distance of Whitby and rowing boats. Even if it does smell quite strongly of dogs.

3. They drive on the left hand side of the road in Yorkshire.

4. We like fish and chips.

5. Our family are keen on fossils, sand, sea, wildlife and always bumping into at least one person you know.

6. We've been there before. Which, whilst perhaps being a bit boring, does mean you don't waste time in tourist information offices, struggling to find a supermarket or generally getting lost.

So our first evening was a trip to Sandsend and the realisation that 5 years old is the perfect time to go to the seaside. At 5 you are still perfectly happy to wee in a hole in the sand and are blissfully happy leaping waves and drawing in the sand. 7 is a good age too. Although I'm not sure she would have gone along with digging her own latrine.

At bedtime the girls struggled to get to sleep with the excitement. They came downstairs at 9.30pm to tell us there were rabbits in the playground. I checked the information sheet and we definitely weren't expected to catch, feed or clean them out which was a relief. And remarkably they seem much more exciting to watch than the two in our own garden at home. Who knew?

Socks

If you had told me last week that I would have started sacrificing perfectly good socks to my rabbits I'd have...well I wouldn't have been that surprised to be honest. Nothing about these rabbits surprises me any more.

Sufficed to say we are currently on pair four. It's a shame really. I tried to sacrifice only socks from the odd sock bag, but they were either too short (not covering the wound in their tummies) or too constricting (I don't really think limiting their ability to breathe would be a good plan even if they would have had immaculate well healing wounds). So, perfectly good pairs of socks it is. Nowhere on the internet did I read this would happen when I did my extensive pre-rabbit purchasing research.

We are day five post op. Not that I'm counting down to the magic ten days of course.

It really has been the best five days of our lives. Two days of thrusting all manner of veg, fruit and soggy nuggets at them to ensure they didn't die from not eating. Then three days of checking poo, putting socks on rabbits, catching rabbits who escaped into the hall, readjusting holey socks , setting right the litter tray (that Betsy tips over every five minutes) and mopping up wee that has leaked on the kitchen floor (see litter tray).

We've worked out that the rabbits are the equivalent of teenagers in animal years. And they clearly currently hate me. I'm not really surprised. I wouldn't like someone heading towards me with the express intention of shoving my head and front paws into Sainsbury's best hosiery. And since they are still too poorly to be left alone or even let out of the hutch, we won't be rebuilding our relationship any time soon.

The nurse said today that it "could be worse" and we "should keep doing what we are doing". Excellent news. More trauma all round.

Apart from anything else, five more days of this and I'll have reached the bottom of my sock drawer, and possibly Paul's as well.

So there we go. Half way to the bit where they start to get better. £158 plus several pairs of socks worse off. Having pets is terrific.

And now? It's time to adjust socks and mop up wee. Again not a sentence I thought I'd ever write.

So so tired: It's still the rabbit's fault.

I'm sitting at the computer now having got the kids to school only just in time. I'm eating banana bread and drinking a vat of tea from my mug that says "You can't scare me I'm a mother" on the front. I thought it might give me some oomph but so far not so much.

Yesterday we were a bit foolish and left the girls together in the pen most of the day. I have just re-read this and realise you may think I mean Tilly and Phoebe. I mean the rabbits. Perhaps my attentions have more than a little unbalanced this last week.

Anyway the girls (rabbits) had been grooming each other and sitting together - all seemed positive and very sweet. So we took our eye off the rabbit ball, so to speak. This it turns out was a rather big mistake.

It ended in a quick angry, fluff on the lawn sort of battle that I could have avoided if I'd separated them quicker. Needless to say whilst I had read for the need of a water spray bottle and a towel to throw over them (just think Rocky) I had neither of these to hand and clearly they don't respond well to stern instructions. In the end I pushed them away from each other, in slight fear for my fingers, and put one on the lawn. Which was another error as we then spent the next ten minutes trying to herd her away from the bike hut and the plants she's not supposed to eat.

We eventually caught her and put both away, but not before noticing two minor cuts over a rabbit eye each. Plus the whole thing seemed to start Betsy going back to attacking her own stitches at night.

It puts sisterly bickering over swings into quite some perspective. Although we might try a jet of water at T and P when they start screaming next time.

Anyway at 3am I woke up having had a nightmare about starting work (oh excellent) and then panicking about how Betsy was. There was no chance I could go back to sleep without checking so for the next hour Paul and I took turns to go downstairs. We looked at her, moved basil so the web cam might work (it didn't), wrapped and re-wrapped her in bandages and custom designed t-shirts which she promptly got stuck in and then took off, and generally fretted about the insanity of it all. I honestly think human babies are less stressful.

By morning she was naked again (seems like an odd term for a rabbit but hey ho) and the wound was bleeding slightly. So more wrapping and constant checking on her all day again. Joy. My sense of humour is waning more than a little.

To make matters worse, as they reach sexual maturity the fighting is likely to get even more dramatic leading to the need for spaying them both at quite some cost and most post operative angst. Times two.

I honestly thought getting them from babies would be better - but it really is a challenge. It's so difficult I feel like I should be raising money for charity - it's like my own personal three peaks or half marathon. Anyone want to sponsor me?

Rabbit Trauma - It Goes On

So Betsy no longer minds us putting the coat on her. This is because she can remove it in about half an hour.

When I went to bed at midnight last night she was wearing it. By 5.30 she had taken it off. I put it back on bleary eyed.

By 8am she was no longer wearing it so I sewed bits together and put it back on. By 9am she had removed it.

So then I put it on backwards with the velcro on the top and it's still like that now which is boding well. But she's probably just humouring me.

The trouble is she needs it on. She's obviously been bothering her stitches in the time she's had without it, so I'll persevere.

The other thing to persevere with is her sister. Apparently they may fall out with each other because they have been apart. So now we've got musical hutches (not literally although I might market that idea along with rabbit jackets). The hatch is shut and the ramp removed and I swap over the rabbits and their toys several times a day. Plus I make sure when one is in the run she can see the other one through the wire. It's like a medium security rabbit prison with an easily confused prison warden letting them out of their cells for exercise time. If one of them starts digging out like the Great Escape I might have a meltdown.

Right I'm off to clean out their cells, I mean litter trays and then to design a range of rabbit ear warmers.

Rabbit Trauma - Continued

Well it's two days post op, give or take, and things have moved on slightly.

Betsy and I have become close having lived in each other's pockets for 15 hours. I have learnt that rabbits never close their eyes and they "sleep" (with eyes open) for approximately ten minutes at a time. Usually waking up the instant you stop looking at them. I also have a strong feeling you cannot train a rabbit to do much. Certainly not to stop licking their stitches.

The nurse rang again yesterday to check she was alright. I regaled her with tales of 'bunny watch' whether she was interested or not. She suggested finding a dolls t-shirt which we all found hysterical, but clearly we tried anyway. What the heck.

The girls agreed to give up an old dolls t-shirt which does up with velcro. We wrestled her into it. She jumped out with quite alarming speed. Perhaps it was a bit dull for her. Tilly suggested drawing a basketball on the front.

Paul pointed out it was miles too big so then the tailoring began. I can only say Peter Rabbit's mother must have had excellent sewing skills. I don't have paws and I found it hard to fashion a coat that the rabbit couldn't get out of. It's no wonder she was cheesed off when he didn't come back wearing it.

We cut bits off, inserted darts (sort of) and ended up with something that looked like a cross between a Michael Jackson outfit (cue Tilly breaking into "Heal the World" for the billionth time), and Matthew Wilder's leather jacket ("Nobody gonna breaka my stride..."). It was on and it looked natty. I didn't bother with brass buttons.

Then we went about our business and eventually went to bed.

This morning Paul went to check on her and...drum roll...she was just in process of taking it off. It was like she'd waited all night to reveal her escapology skills in front of an audience. I'm worried all this attention is going to her head.

So I've sewn it up again and added bits on. She's been back to the nurse who basically seemed impressed with our efforts and said to try and keep it on her for five days. We have not a hope. I think she'll get faster at removing it as she gets more practiced. I suspect I'll need several on rotation.

On the upside by the end of the week my sewing skills will have improved and she will have moved on in sartorial elegance to be wearing some patchwork garment made out of colourful offcuts. Like Betsy and her amazing technicolour dreamcoat. I can hardly wait.

Rabbit Trauma

My coffee has gone cold. Just like when the girls were tiny and you never got a hot cup of anything. Today is a bit intense.

So to catch you up, in case you are interested in rabbit issues, Betsy's lump seems to have been a reaction to the vaccine. She was prescribed antibiotics initially in case it wasn't - apparently the same sort you get for children (banana flavour). Funny then that it cost £8.90 for about 140ml.

Getting her to take it wasn't easy. The vet suggested one of us hold her lower back down to the table and the other give the medicine by syringe. It worked once or twice but overall I wouldn't recommend this method. Unless you want a) biting, b) kicking and c) a great sense of frustration. At one point she jumped out of my arms and onto my shoulder like a parrot. I couldn't use my tried and tested child medicine method and give her a Chewit afterwards. She isn't allowed.

Google advised wrapping her in a towel and holding her legs under and forward which was more successful. By the end of the week we had the method down which was typical because of course the antibiotics did nothing whatsoever.

So yesterday it was back to the vets and he decided it was necessary to remove the lump (at the cost of the people who make the vaccine apparently, which is a good job taking into account the cost of the medicine). So I left her there. I felt like a bad mother on all sorts of levels and spent the day achieving little and fretting a lot.

At 3.30 we picked her up. The girls did well I thought - they didn't seem horrified by the large bald patch and sewn up wound. The nurse told us we have to keep an eye on her to ensure she eats and drinks, and to keep her apart from Petal as her sister might try and bite her wound. She assured us Betsy couldn't reach her own wound to bother her stitches.

Wrong again. This rabbit is like Houdini. She is stretchy and bendy and on returning home I realised she was not going to leave them alone. When she started pulling at her back with her teeth I rang the vet and he advised trying to stick a plaster over the wound. This advice, it turned out, was not wholly sound. I managed to scare the living daylights out of Betsy chasing her round her hutch trying to stick plaster after plaster to the patch of skin. Each one I put on she tore off in seconds. Eventually I built up a sort of plaster patchwork - I used everything I had. Tiny round ones to hold on massive big ones, joined together by normal long ones. She ripped them all off. I hoped the kids didn't choose that moment to fall over as our supplies were running low.

Then she managed to rip a stitch and I stuck the final plaster over the bleed while I checked the opening times and rang the vet again. By the time I was back downstairs she had ripped it off and there was no sign of it. So now I was  panicking about the stitches and the fact that she has clearly eaten a Boots plaster. Which I'm sure doesn't fit into the category of only hay, grass and nuggets.

The nurse was amazing. She agreed to come over on her way home, bringing with her a cone even though they don't normally put them on rabbits. Apparently the situation she has had is extremely unusual being so little and she has to leave the stitches alone. She explained everything, chatted to us and put the cone on Betsy, then went home.

At this point everything got a bit out of hand. Betsy, as predicted, hated it. She threw herself about and generally looked extremely stressed. The kids got upset. It was awful.

Eventually the girls went to sleep and we decided to trim the cone down so she could drink and eat properly. This we did and we left her for a while to get used to it, feeling extremely guilty.

When we went back outside before bed we discovered she had managed to push the cone up so her mouth was sticking out, but the cone was over her eyes and ears. It was a bit of a surprise (I told you she was like Houdini) and the approach did have it's merits. She couldn't reach her stitches but could eat and drink. Of course it was stuck around her eyes so she couldn't see and it was still fastened round her neck so we decided her plan wasn't a great one. The decision was made to bring her indoors and take off the cone. Not least because we'd worked out we might have to hand feed her her own poo. 

Paul stayed up until 2am working next to her, with a window open on his laptop showing a webcam. Everytime she went for her stitches he stopped her, until he came to bed exhausted. At 4am I came downstairs and took over. I've never slept on the kitchen floor before. It reminded me of camping. What with the sound of the pouring rain on the roof and me wearing more clothes than I had worn in the day including a pair of hiking socks. I'm not sure being down here helped much with the stitches but it did at least make me feel like I was trying to help.

And today? Well today I still can't bring myself to put the cone back on. It's too distressing. So instead I am doing things that take place in the kitchen. Blogging and minute writing, cleaning, I might even stretch to a bit of ironing. Interspersed of course with telling Betsy off every three minutes for biting her stitches. And for eating the carpet. She really hasn't a clue about this restricted diet for junior rabbits things. Deep joy. I'm hoping the sound of the washing machine will make her fall asleep like it used to for Tilly, although so far it's not looking promising.

Oh well it's only for a couple of days until she will apparently lose interest in the stitches as they start to properly heal.

It's just as well I like a bit of camping. 

Rabbit Rabbit

Oh my it's been a long time since I've typed anything. It's as if I can't do it when my head is so filled up with other things. Anyway all the other things are moving over to make room so it's time I caught up, in no particular order.

Get ready to go aaaaah. We have baby rabbits. Well ten week old ones anyway. One is called Betsy, the other has been through a couple of personality disorders but is now called Petal. Currently.

I'm not big on furry things to be honest. We had the school hamster home one weekend and I refused to touch it, frightened it would bite me (because that would have meant a trip to a&e surely), run up my cardigan sleeve or disappear under the piano for three weeks. Or die spontaneously. But then hamsters are a bit odd aren't they? They only live for about five minutes and they are awake at night. The wheel rattling noise would be a bit annoying if you were trying to watch 'Endeavour' in the other room.

I had goldfish when I was little. I remember clearly winning the first one at the fair (is that even allowed nowadays?). I loved them but they didn't exactly do much.

We also had a tortoise allegedly, not that I can remember him to be honest. He has become the stuff of legend. The tortoise who arrived in our garden one day without a word and disappeared a while after while Dad was digging in the rhubarb patch. I like to think he is a bit like the 'Littlest Hobo' and went off to help a family in distress. It's more comforting than any other soil related possibilities.

But I digress.

So we didn't have rabbits. I suppose there was a little part of me that would have liked a more substantial pet than a goldfish and maybe that is why I didn't say no when Tilly asked for a rabbit for her birthday.

Our rabbits are gorgeous. Fluffy, friendly (so far) and extremely cute. They chill me out when I'm mardy and I'm hoping they provide the girls with two pairs of large listening ears when ours won't do.

I am also hoping they will help overcome Phoebe's phobia of animals and so far that seems to be the case as she interacting with them loads. She'd still rather walk into the road than go past a dog though so we have some way to travel on that one...

I recognise that I will undoubtedly be the one cleaning them out for most of their lives, but that's ok. I'm used to a bit of mess. The fondness I have for them so quickly has surprised me a little. It's a lovely feeling.

Not so lovely is the fact that I saw a fox walking down our road in broad daylight. In the space of a week I have gone from thinking foxes fabulous to never wanting to see one again.

So far the only real negative I can see to having rabbits is the cost. We've already spent a small fortune. And I suppose there is also the fact that we are inevitably going to have to increase the size of their run to take over most of the garden. On the plus side they are excellent lawnmowers.

Having two new family members more than makes up for the cost. Just please don't let them die anytime soon, and when they do please let it be quietly and calmly in their old age.

Right now I'm off to give them a hug and to talk them through my anxiety over starting a new job (of which more later).