Ow

The instructions I've read on picking up rabbits offer one of two techniques:

1. Pick the rabbit up by the scruff of its neck and immediately support its back legs, cradling it close to your chest.

2. Pick the rabbit up by the scruff of its neck and support its rear in your hand so that it is in a "sitting" position.

Thula's neck HAS no scruff, and any leverage whatsoever (or even the lack of leverage) is her excuse to go bazonkers and kick wildly. Argh.

--This message brought to you by a refugee from the Don't-Pick-Me-Up-Dammit Rabbit Committee for More Scars on Hermitgeecko's Arms.

ThulaThoughts

We are getting to know our rabbit a bit better.

She does not want to be more than 2 inches off the ground at any time. I can hold her for a surprising amount of time at 2 inches off the ground as long as I do not move her horizontally or vertically. Movement in either direction produces a massive freakout. I am wondering whether she was dropped by her former family, but it would be impolitic to ask, considering that I got her from my sign language instructor. M'love can pick her up and carry her around, but he does this entirely by what he calls the "recalcitrant cat" method -- which is to say by holding her around the chest with no leg support whatsover. It seems to work, but I don't like the way it looks. I'd like to find a better way.

She is not a jumper. Any barrier that she can't step over disgusts her. On the up side, this means she will never break a limb falling off some high place that she jumped up to inappropriately. On the down side, this means she will never be a couch-cuddler.

Also, she hates the smell of Feline Pine (a rabbit-safe kitty litter). I wish we hadn't bought $14 of the stuff. We're trying shredded brown paper bags in the litterbox next, since we had some and she plainly will not tolerate Feline Pine. And it's now a litter tray, because the litterbox's three-inch-high lip required a bounce to enter, which grossed her out. Another $6 gone.

She adores the crate rug. A towel will substitute if necessary, but what she really wants is the crate rug. When she is litterbox-trained, she will have much more opportunity to snuggle on the crate rug in our absence. For now, after far too much laundry in the 3 days that she's been with us, she is crate-rug-less and also towel-less when we are gone.

She does not like having me mess with her crate. I get the most unhappy looks every time I clean it.

She will not accept treats. This is seriously weird. Being a dog trainer's daughter, I had secretly hoped to train my rabbit to a few simple commands (come, home, sit). I've tried both small pieces of banana and apple at this point, and she will neither accept them from my hand nor eat them if they are placed on the ground in front of her. They vanish when placed in her bowl overnight, but with about the same enthusiasm she offers to broccoli (which is to say, not a ton.) Of the various foods she has eaten here (timothy hay, pellets, broccoli, carrot greens, carrot bottoms, apple, and banana) she most seems to enjoy corrugated cardboard, which we didn't deliberately feed her. After cardboard, she likes timothy hay and carrot greens. She won't eat either one unless it has been at least 2 minutes since it last touched a person. People are yucky, I guess.

She likes playing chase. This is also bizarre. She doesn't really want you to CHASE, but she wants you to reach for her, and then she wants to run away and then run back. We finally figured out it was a game because she wandered off to sulk if we failed to reach for her. The lop body language, as feared, is giving us a little bit of trouble.

The worst body language problem we are having is that we cannot read her body language well enough yet to tell the difference between perfectly acceptable sitting versus peeing/defecating. It's the same position! Aiyee. I stuck the FelinePine litterbox in her favorite place to pee inappropriately in hopes that she will knock it off.