From commentor Redshift:
These are Leland (the dapper gentleman in the grey and white) and Georgia, his trophy wife. They are two of our three current adopted rabbits. Leland had been turned in to a shelter; we don’t know his story before that, but he was a shelter workers’ favorite before he was liberated by the House Rabbit Society of Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia ( http://rabbitsinthehouse.org ). He is now eleven and a half. Georgia I met several years ago when a friend called me up and said “I have this rabbit living in my yard, and I don’t think it’s wild because it’s black and white and eats carrots out of my hand.” She became a foster bunny for a short while until I decided I couldn’t let her go, and we got her matched up with Leland.
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I’ve never had any regrets about life with rabbits. There have been “learning experiences” with phone cords and stereo cords, but they are litter-trained, they are fun and entertaining, and have quite distinct personalities. Georgia wants constant attention, and will sit with you to be petted for as long as you’re willing, or sit at your feet and beg for more attention if you stop. When she gives up on that, she’s energetic and inquisitive, running around and leaping and dancing, and only occasionally getting into trouble. Leland is a bit more reserved, but is still pretty sociable if you approach him. He was an incorrigible carpet-chewer in his younger days, but he’s grown out of that. Leland enjoys running around the living room, playing tag with Georgia.
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In addition to these two, we have Isis, a tiny black girl, and we also foster for HRS, so we almost always have a foster bunny living in the kitchen, too. Everyone says their favorite animal is smart, and are house rabbits are no exception. They know their names, they know us, they learn (sometimes too quickly!), and they are an important part of our family. I wouldn’t want to imagine living without them. I would encourage everyone who’s looking to adopt to expand their horizons beyond dogs and cats; you won’t regret it!
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(Though I don’t have direct experience with chapters other than my own, you can find other House Rabbit Society chapters through the national organization at http://www.rabbit.org )
BrYan
So cute. I’ve heard rabbits and cats get along really well.
MeDrewNotYou
Drugstores sell rabbits now? ;)
I like Leland. He has a noble air about him. His gaze says, “Yes, these lodgings will do. For now. I expect a carrot for my wife and myself with with my morning paper.”
I didn’t know you could have a ‘lap-rabbit,’ which is pretty nifty. I’m also surprised they’re so smart and trainable. My only experience with rabbits is an ex-girlfriend’s outdoors bunny. Thumper (too cliche, I know) was a fat grey one with floppy ears. He was pretty friendly, but seemed terrified of other animals. I remember bringing my dog over once, and once he smelled Thumper, he walked (not ran!) over to his cage and started sniffing to see what the heck this new thing was. The rabbit hid in his little box and was so terrified he peed everywhere. Even though Danny was just curious I felt awful for scaring the little guy.
stuckinred
Silly wabbits!
Keith G
@BrYan: My former neighbor had a house bunny and a cat that grew up (mostly) together. They wrestled and played chase together.
My cats saw the bunny once through a window. That chase would not have ended well.
WereBear (itouch)
BUNNEHS!
I’ve heard lovely things about rabbits, though I only had an outdoor bunny who lived in the cats’ outdoor chainlink room. (we had big dogs who terrified him)
But the cats liked him, and treated him as a slightly challenged cat (don’t mention the ears) and a couple of times I would see Bernie the Bunny sitting up with his cat friend Myron, with their arms around each others shoulders.
J.
@Redshift: My daughter is totally obsessed with rabbits and will love seeing the picture of Leland and Georgia and hearing your/their story, which I am going to send to her. Of course, this will mean renewed pleas for us to adopt a rabbit or two, which is so not happening (especially with two cats), but still, nice to share a good story.
Speaking of rabbits, if you and the rest of the animal-loving Balloon Juice crew have not seen this brilliant video of a bunny photo shoot, check it out. (Warning: it’s highly addictive.)
jonas
We have a little house bunny like one of these and, aside from the fact that small electrical wires are rabbit crack and need to be properly secured, she’s a sweet and gentle pet. One time a neighbor kid brought a new kitten over to show us and we decided to see how the rabbit would react. We set the kitten — who was about 1/3 the size of the rabbit — down about five feet in front of her and the kitten let out a teeny, tiny little mewl. That rabbit freaked out like I’ve never seen an animal freak out before. She absolutely tore back to her cage, bonking into about three pieces of furniture on the way, and didn’t come out for three days.
I think if a dog ever came in the house she would simply have a heart attack and keel over.
JasonF
Rabbits are amazing pets. I’ve got two and I absolutely love them.
Kristine
I’ll never forget the morning I walked outside and looked across the street to find the neighbor’s dog and rabbit playing in the front yard. Well, the dog (a collie, iirc) was lying down, all quiet dignity. The rabbit, meanwhile, was racing around it, hopping over it, and doing backflips. It was sooo cute.
Thanks for the morning brightener.
schrodinger's cat
House bunnies is deh cute. Squee!
Redshift
Thanks everyone!
Rabbits can live with most cats and certain dogs; it’s mostly a matter of introducing them so they get the idea they’re a family member and not prey. Outdoor rabbits tend to be afraid of animals and often people because they have no way to avoid anything that wants to come up and investigate them. Rabbits also live considerably longer indoors away from the weather (and get much more attention, of course), so the House Rabbit Society only adopts to people who are going to keep them indoors (hence the name.)
Recently, Georgia has discovered furniture. Previously, she would occasionally jump up on a chair, but never stay long. Now she has decided the sofa is the place to be, and jumps up on it any time we’re not looking, exploring it, hopping along the back, and so on. We have to keep an eye on her because she could get from there to where all the A/V cords are, and that would be Trouble. (Leland did a bit of climbing in his day, but he has arthritis now and keeps to the floor.)
The Baltimore-Washington HRS recently took in a Giant Chinchilla rabbit, who is about three feet tall when he stands up! I’ll post a link once his photo is up on the web.
Jordan
We had rabbits years ago, actually three rabbits over a period of several years, and they are definitely more trouble than a dog, cat or bird.
Yes, they can be litter-trained, but that doesn’t stop them from dropping pellets constantly, everywhere they go. Rabbits seem to poop 98.5% of everything they eat, and they eat a lot. Be prepared to spend your days sweeping up little round pellets…think of them as Dark Chocolatey Kix.
Rabbits are also cecophagous…that is, they eat their own “night feces” to extract nutrients from cellulose-based food…the same reason that ruminant animals chew their cud. Night feces are a special kind of high-nutrient rabbit poop. Go figure. They’re odd little animals in a lot of ways.
You have to rabbit-proof your house, paying particular attention to electrical cords, as mentioned above. They *love* to gnaw the plastic insulation off of the wires. I think it’s hard for them to have enough ground current to get electrocuted, but having bare electrical wires all over your house is a serious risk of fire, not to mention a danger to other pets & small children.
Rabbits are also very delicate. If they get sick, there’s a very good chance they will die, usually from dietary complications. Once their intestinal flora get out of whack, it’s very hard to get things right again. We lost our first rabbit this way, despite very expensive vet treatments. Rabbits aren’t built to last. Their survival strategy is to mate like…rabbits and hope some of the kits make it to breeding age.
They can be very affectionate, but most rabbits aren’t intelligently social in the same way as a dog or even a cat. A really good breeder raising rabbits for pets will raise them by hand, giving the kits a lot of human contact while they’re very young. Rabbits raised in a hutch generally won’t be as affectionate towards humans.
We had a dog (a cavalier king charles spaniel…about as docile an animal as you can find). The dog and the male rabbit we had at the time got along famously.
They’re obviously cute little things. And they can be a lot of fun. But be warned: rabbits are “specialty” pets, and you have to be prepared to commit a lot of time to looking after them.
asiangrrlMN
Aw! Leland and Georgia make a beautiful couple. I would love to see a pic of Isis, hint hint. What a great story.
Dog is My Co-Pilot
These two bunnies look like real sweethearts and I’m glad they are in a loving home. Thank you for sharing this story! I almost dread Easter because I see bunnies for sale everywhere. People’s kids want a bunny for Easter, which is the stupidest thing when you think about it. A live bunny. Do these people not realize that this cute, little bunny can grow up into a full-sized rabbit that requires some care?? Apparently not, because a lot of them are dumped.
Paul in KY
If I could get a litter box trained rabbit (one that could go in a box that smelled of many cats), I would get one. They’re cute little buggers.
Knocienz
We had 2 pet rabbits and fostered one for a while before finding it a home, all while having two cats. The rabbits have since passed away. One made it to the quasi-immortal rabbit age of 13 and until he lost his vision was extremely good about going to the litter box for all relevant activities.
All the animals got along fine, except for the foster rabbit who, whenever he saw the larger cat, would lower his head and charge. The confused cat would always retreat.
JasonF
@Jordan: I don’t want to get into a pissing match with you over rabbits — you’ve obviously had bad experiences, or at least ones that make you think they’re not very good pets — but I did want to address the health points you raised. Rabbits do have delicate digestive systems, and if a rabbit’s digestion gets out of whack, it can lead to death. But the reality is that if you’re an attentive owner and are prompt in giving medical attention to a bunny with stomach problems, it will usually clear right up. The key is recognizing that your rabbit has stopped eating and putting it on metaclopromide (or whatever your vet recommends) immediately, not waiting four days to see if he gets better on his own.
And I hope, Jordan, that you won’t take this as a swipe it you because it is 100% not intended that way — the fact that you talk about the treatments you tried with your rabbit speaks to the fact that you obviously cared for it and tried to get it the care it needed. I don’t intend this post as a criticism of you, but rather to underline the importance of taking good care of a pet rabbit.
abo gato
My husband’s daughter had a bunny when she was about 10. Would bring it over with her and we g ot to experience the pellets everywhere. We called him a hoppenpooper.
Gary Farber
When I attempt to use one of the “Contact” buttons for the blog-posts on the top right, I find it’s Javascript, and clicking it, using Windows, tells me “Cannot Start Microsoft Outlook.”
This is unsurprising, since I haven’t installed Outlook, and have no interest in installing Outlook.
I’d like to write Anne Laurie; if she might drop me a note at gary underscore farber at yahoo.com, that would be lovely. Failing that, a way to reach her would be nice.
“javascript:location=’mailto:\u0041\u006e\u006e\u0065\u004c\u0061\u0075\u0072\u0069\u0065\u0040\u0076\u0065\u0072\u0069\u007a\u006f\u006e\u002e\u006e\u0065\u0074′;void%200” is uninformative.
If I have to install Outlook, and deinstall it, for the sole purposes of reaching Anne Laurie, it’ll have to wait a month or so until I’m moved, and have time for that sort of thing.
To be sure, if she doesn’t want to hear from me, never mind.
Thanks to anyone who can help.
Gary Farber
When I attempt to use one of the “Contact” buttons for the blog-posts on the top right, I find it’s Javascript, and clicking it, using Windows, tells me “Cannot Start Microsoft Outlook.”
This is unsurprising, since I haven’t installed Outlook, and have no interest in installing Outlook.
I’d like to write Anne Laurie; if she might drop me a note at gary underscore farber at yahoo.com, that would be lovely. Failing that, a way to reach her would be nice.
“javascript:location=’mailto:\u0041\u006e\u006e\u0065\u004c\u0061\u0075\u0072\u0069\u0065\u0040\u0076\u0065\u0072\u0069\u007a\u006f\u006e\u002e\u006e\u0065\u0074′;void%200” is uninformative.
If I have to install Outlook, and deinstall it, for the sole purposes of reaching Anne Laurie, it’ll have to wait a month or so until I’m moved, and have time for that sort of thing.
To be sure, if she doesn’t want to hear from me, never mind. And if she doesn’t already know me, and is a different Anne Laurie, then never mind, save that it would be nice to confirm that.
Thanks to anyone who can help.
ruemara
BUNNEHS! IT MUST BE BUNNEHS!
Ahem. Sorry. Must’ve been the furry cuteness of the above. I once raised them in my apartment in NYC. Yeah, urban rabbits. We would take Thunderball Bunbun out to the diner and he’d have some pancakes with syrup and a few bits of the hash browns. He’d go for some bacon, but we weren’t having any weird carnivore rabbits in our place. He’d sit in the shopping cart as we did grocery stuff and grab some nibbles on the greens and generally be adorable in public. We’d take him out to stuff in his own army surplus bag with extra snackies. Thanks for introducing us to your lovelies and bringing back memories.
schrodinger's cat
@ruemara: I once saw a woman with a bunny on a leash on the subway in NYC, was that you?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Rabbits are food. If god had not intended us to eat them, he would not have made them out of meat.
Jordan
@Jason et al.
Hope I didn’t come across as too negative. I like to warn prospective bunny owners what they’re getting into…they are fairly high-maintenance pets. Some people are looking for exactly that; others might be in for an unpleasant surprise. It’s those latter people I’m talking to. Did I mention they eat furniture too? :)
Gumbo* died 15 years ago…maybe our vet didn’t know what to do back then. Or we messed something up. We didn’t wait, though. We took him in at the first sign of sniffles.
*We couldn’t resist the food name for our first wabbit…and no, we didn’t eat him. He was a real sweetheart. Used to greet us coming home by hopping in circles, making his little rabbit humming noise. Dropping pellets the whole time, naturally.
Felonious Wench
I had a house bunny, a grey dwarf bunny, that lived to be 14 years old. When my husband and I got married, he said “How long is the lifespan of that bunny?” “I think about 5 years, and he’s 4.” 10 years and 2 kids later….
His name was Varmint. He was litter box trained and used to jump up on my bed and sleep on my pillow when I wasn’t home. He also used to attack remote controls for a reason known only to the Bunny Universe. Every one of them in the house had bunny scratches and bite marks.
I miss the wee monster.
NOLA
Rabbits are indeed a specialty pet, but really so is every animal. If you don’t want to clean litter boxes or spend time socializing an animal, you should probably stick to fish anyway.
We have had 5 free-running house bunnies over the course of many years, and they’ve been a tremendous blessing to our family. I expect to continue having house rabbits in perpetuity. The only real negative is that it is true they can be quite fragile, being prey animals rather than predators as most house pets are. They’re built to be food for other critters. But there are lots of ways to increase their chances of survival, and as we learn more and more about them, we have more and more luck keeping them happy and healthy for a long time. Our older boy right now is around 10, and he’s a tough cookie. He spent the first 3 years of his life in a tiny cage at the rescue, but nothing gets him down. And his girlfriend is around 7.
I would actually recommend getting rabbits from a rescue shelter over a breeder or pet store, as we have found that rescue rabbits are the survivors of the bunch. The two (very sweet and wonderful) bunnies we got from a breeder/store lasted the briefest time, but although it was terribly sad to lose them, I wouldn’t trade the time we had with them for anything. It is also vital to find a veterinarian who specializes in rabbits, as their systems are quite different from dogs or cats. They cannot take the same medications, and a non-rabbit vet will not know the signs to look for or how to quickly treat a rabbit illness, and when they do get sick time is of the essence. However, simple things like making sure they are fixed, always have clean hay, giving them pineapple juice to drink when they are shedding, and figuring out the right kinds of chew toys (phone books!) will go a long way to keeping them healthy, happy, and hi-larious pets for a long time.