Patti's Bunny

Methoblogger Patti has -- against her will -- a pet rabbit. She doesn't like it:

While the cats are willing to interact with him at one level, he often tries to initiate more intimate contact. The fact that the cats object to this is obvious. Even if this were consensual and private it would bother me, but unfortunately, it is neither. The cats are always angered by these advances and have made it clear that they want him to stop, but the rabbit ignores their wishes.

Pippin has no defined territory in the house. In fact, he considers the whole house his territory, upstairs and down. There is no Pippin-free zone. He is everywhere.

Pippin uses his litter box only when he is downstairs. He is downstairs about half the time. And even if he is downstairs, he frequently surrenders to the urge to pee on the couch. It must give him guilty pleasure, because he continues to even though he knows he shouldn’t.

Pippin has eaten all my houseplants except the lemon tree and the cactuses.

He eats books.

He has started chewing on furniture and is trying to take bites out of the floor.

He can jump and land gracefully, and has an uncanny sense of height and distance. Table tops are not out of his range. He steals apples from the fruit basket and eats the candle sticks.

Oh, he also pees on Joseph’s bed.

I know I could try having him neutered or buy him a cage. Both options are currently out of my price range.

It sounds like Patti fell for the houserabbit myth. There is a popular notion among some rabbit people that one can raise a pet rabbit like one keeps a cat. The rabbit will wander about the house and can be trained to use a litter box. It can be trained not to chew on things by spraying it with a water pistol.

If this were true, it would necessitate that my rabbits are exceptionally stupid for rabbits. I do not think that this is the case. My bunnies will use one corner of their cage as a toilet, but they have never taken to litter training. I tried repeatedly in the past, but they always pushed the box out of the way so that they could get to their toilet spot. When roaming free, they will chew on things, particularly carpet and books (Inlehain seems to be particularly fond of Bibles, which may be interpreted as a hunger for the Word of God, or a disrespect for it). When I spray them with a water pistol in response, their reaction is one of "WTF? I'm wet! How did that happen?" No matter how many gallons of water I have used, they have never been able to answer that question. They have never been trainable, and again, unless they are truly very, very stupid by rabbit standards, I suspect that the notion that rabbits can live as cats is a myth [someone will write in and insist that he/she has a free-roaming rabbit. Nota bene: I don't believe you].

For that matter, rabbits should not be living with cats. Or dogs. Period. At my wife's insistence, we did buy a dog, but we purposefully chose one that was (a) small and (b) not bred to hunt. Even still, Sunny cannot be trusted alone with the rabbits. He wants to play with them, and like any dog, he plays rough. Rabbits are very fragile creatures. A rabbit's body mass is 8% skeleton -- vs. 13% for a cat -- so they have very little bone structure. To make the situation even more perilous, rabbits have spinal columns so fragile that they cannot support their own body weight. This is why a rabbit must be picked up with two hands -- one under the pelvis and one under the rib cage -- or the rabbit's back will break. What would be a minor injury for a dog or cat will kill a rabbit.

Cats and dogs, in the wild, hunt rabbits. Someday, your cats will kill your rabbit. You cannot train them otherwise. It is intrinsic to their nature.

It will happen.

Fortunately, there's a simpler solution. Here's what I do: Hyz and Inlehain live in a 18" by 36" cage. For a combined 15 pounds of rabbit flesh, that can be a bit cramped, but unless you pour out the bucks for luxury rabbit housing, it's not too shabby. I can't find a link for the type of cage that I use, but they're always at Pet Supermarket, and they're $65.

My bunnies do not roam free. Every morning and evening, I lock the dog in the bedroom and let the rabbits out. They romp about for 15-30 minutes each session, and they typically put themselves away back in the cage. This may seem more like incarceration than pet-keeping, but bear in mind that wild rabbits spend about 23 hours out of the day underground. Close quarters are natural for rabbits.

Neutering will improve your life. And Pippin's. Shell out the cash and go for it. This will require an exotic animal vet, since rabbits are hypersensitive to anesthesia and prone to post-surgical infections. Call vets in your area and ask them to whom they refer major rabbit cases. Call about 10 vets and you'll know who are the qualified rabbit vets in town. Neutering a buck rabbit costs about $150.

Once you neuter him, he'll be far less inclined to mark his territory with urination. He'll probably still mount the cats, but this will be an expression of domination and not sex. There will, however, be no ejaculate, which will...uh, make it substantially less unpleasant.