Well she’s moving in order to work on her doctorate, so I can’t really fault her for that. And for some reason I’m either very secure in our relationship or I’ve matured enough that if things do go bad, I know I’ll only remember the good times and be really happy/grateful for the time we had together. So it isn’t as hard as I’d imagine it would be. What’s hard is seein’ Fitzgerald depressed in his litterbox. Funny thing is that I’m so going to spoil my own buns as I try to keep up on what Fitzgerald has become accustomed to. Compared to how she treated her bun, my rabbits are like prisoners of war!

She is going back for at least a year. She apparently has a VERY lucrative job lined up for her when she returns so she’ll be able to make a really nice nest egg in a short amount of time. Then she is hoping to transfer her credits back out here where she can then have some money to help her live. Out here, she can’t find a two bedroom apartment for under $1,500 while in pittsburg, PA, she’ll be renting a two bedroom HOUSE for $650.

She’s going for poly sci.

Well I have no fear of Fitz liking my place better.  He’s not free roam like he is at my gal’s house.  He’s stuck in a very large dog kennel.  About 95% of his time is spent in this position (sorry for the darkness – he’s sitting in his litter box in the corner of the kennel).

When I’m not in the room or not moving around, he will come out and explore very tentatively but will immediately hop back into his litter box if he sees me moving.  He’s eating the greens I give him but very little pellets and hay.  He is used to unlimited greens though so he has been slowly nibbling on the pellets when his greens are gone.  He is very spoiled though about not having them all the time, as well as having free roam, and has decided to show me his displeasure.

I was a little worried as he had not pooped or peed in over a day since I had him.  However, I know some buns take a couple of days to ‘relax’ in a new place before using the potty.  So I set up a x-pen run attached to his kennel so he could have a bit more space.  The run went right next to Maryann and Dono’s condo and they decided to sniff one another.  Fitz could care less.  My buns however were less than impressed.  I think that Dono thought Fitz was there to try and steal Maryann from him so he showed Fitz that Maryann was HIS girl… by immediately mounting Maryann.  This SHOCKED Maryann as she is the dominate one in the relationship and she took off running in the condo, with Dono quickly behind her, trying to get on top of her again.  I decided after that that Fitz didn’t need to be so close to my other buns.

During one of his runs when I was in the doorway to the room, he sat down and looked at me.  I was hoping that he was warming up a bit.  That’s when he lifted his tail and emptied himself on my rug.  Okey, he’s upset.  I understand that.  Thank you for pointing it out to me, Fitz.  Of course, when I had to use the vacuum to clean up his potty, he nearly went catatonic in fear from the sound of the vacuum – since he had nowhere to flee to.  When I was done, he decided to begin thumping nonstop for three minutes (apparently he’s never thumped before).

Needless to say, this will be a most interesting time having this spoiled lil bun at my place.

Yeah, I had a friend yesterday say that usually he’d tell someone like me to go out and get a life but the buns seem to be more entertaining than most other activities so…

Well I now have a second litter box in there with him so his old one is his ‘safe haven’ and the new one is a place to go potty. I think he’s learned that he’s not going to get unlimited greens anymore and has begun to eat his pellets. He’s reached a point of comfort that he’ll not go off to hide in his litter box unless I actually touch the cage so maybe there’s some hope. Things seem to be settling down to a routine. Tonight’s cleaning night though and I’m sure he’s going to freak again about the vacuum – although it won’t be near him (my other buns are the ones making the mess due to molting and such like).

The girlfriend is going to be back on October 3rd, so that’s not a lot of time for me to get him to a good weight – and I’m not going to crash diet him since that could be dangerous. The only thing I’m worried about is what will be happening in my apartment when I’m here at work. I now not only have to bunnyproof my entire apartment but I also have to girlfriend proof it so that when she lets Fitz out freely, he can’t get to placed to potty on. My buns are 100% litter trained so I have no issues with them running about but I know the white devil is just waitin’ to even the score with me.

Well I made a mistake and let maryann get too close to Fitz and she bit him good. He has a small puncture on his upper right lip and just to the right of his nose. There was a very tiny bit of blood but everything seems good. I’ll be taking good care of him for the duration.

When I went to seperate them, Maryann turned and didn’t lunge at me, but lept at me – all four paws were off the ground as she went for me. She is ONE REAL BEOTCH and I have to remember that!

I spent a good amount of the evening with Fitzgerald and he seemed he really needed some comforting. He took treats from me and let me pet him without running away and hiding. I checked the wounds this morning and they are hardly noticable so I hope they will heal on their own without further intervention – but I am keeping an eye on things just in case.

She has a family support structure back in Pittsburg. Although I’d love to help her, I can barely take care of myself, let alone my buns too. Adding her and her bun to the mix would be next to impossible.

She is actually flying back tomorrow for a couple of weeks – to finish tying up some loose ends. She’ll be takin’ Fitzgerald back with her when she flies home. At least he’s no longer running from me in terror. We actually had a 10 minute pet time last night. Although as soon as he left my lap, he made a beeline for Maryann. There are two fences seperating them so they can’t reach one another but all I could think of was that he was lookin’ for some payback…

Here ‘s some more pics of Fitzgerald.  You might see the small divit in his fur on the left side of his nose (our left, his right) from Maryann’s bite

Yeah, I wasn’t big on the REWs either, but between him and Nadia at SaveABunny, my mind’s been changed. It will still be a matter of which bun likes me more but I won’t be basing it on looks anymore.

As for the injury, I guess it is just BLAZINGLY obvious to me because the Girlfriend is coming back tonight for a couple of weeks and I know she’ll see them. That little black spot on his lip is dried blood/scab from the bite.

Oh, and he has become accostumed to his surroundings finally. I found him up on the second floor of his cage demolishing the willow tunnel there and the 7 inch willow ball I gave him last week was decimated into nothing but half circle willow sticks. Until yesterday, he never touched them nor went up to the second level.

So I got the girlfriend home at 1am in the morning. She went immediately to the cage and spent about 20 minutes IN it because Fitz didn’t want to come out. I got to listen to a half hour of “He hates me. I’m a bad mom” crap because he didn’t hop out of the cage and into her arms the moment she opened the door. I tried to tell her that it was late, he was getting ready for bed and that buns take a little while to ‘forgive’ the person for being away for so long – but nope, got to deal with the tears of her baby rejecting her.

This morning, I let him out to run around the apartment and guess what? He hopped over to her and laid down so he could get pets from her.

No offence to everyone here but sometimes you women…

She’s bouncing between my house and another friend’s house while she stays here (she has stuff to do in the city and doesn’t want to inconvience me) so I’ll be keepin’ Fitz until she leaves.

Unfortunately, she’s already started food spoiling him again.  This morning, from just what I saw, was 2 raisins, 2 peanuts, a couple of large slices of bananas and 4 baby carrots were left on his plate before we left.  I’ve tried, Marcy and Joann from SaveABunny have tried, Dr. Harvey has tried but I don’t think anything is going to change her in this regards. 

I’m trying to keep his diet close to what I expect her to continue to do while trying to keep it as healthy as possible. I feel that I am giving him too many treats as it is so I’m trying to keep them to the less stressful types – such as herbs and so on. I’m not too worried about the statis issue although I am keeping an eye out for it.

My girlfriend tends to be the type that doesn’t really look towards the future. She’s the type that would put off going to see a doctor about a pain in her knee until her leg fell off – then hate herself for not going sooner, even if everyone else had been encouraging her to do so for months. She has two containers of bunny ashes (from previous buns) but because of the outlandish ways she had treated them beforehand, the above diet is a huge improvement so she feels that she’s doing right by him.

I constantly tell her about how Fitz will live a longer, healthier life if she follows a different diet, and she says she knows she’s doing wrong and will try to watch out. But she wants a cuddle bun and if Fitz isn’t showing her the affection that a dog would, then she pulls out the treats to coax him into loving her.

She’s a poly sci major with psych minor – attempting to try and ‘manipulate’ her is like trying to hide a bale of basil from the buns. She’ll sniff it out in a heartbeat.

The good news is that Fitz is still doin’ well. He keeps trying to get to the other bun’s condo. I think that he just likes to start crap and watch as they go ape crazy in their own condo, attacking one another when they can’t reach him. He just watches them like a stoner while it goes on. Meanwhile I have caught a couple of binkies when he’s been out. They’re very small but they work. He SO hates his cage. Oh, and he’s finally eating more pellets!

Just as an update. Over this weekend, Fitzgerald has become ‘a normal bun’ in his diet. He is no longer snubbing the pellets and he’s always eaten them all by the morning. He is also munching away all of his hay – which he now sees more as a treat than the fresh veggies I give him. I don’t have a scale available for me to use, nor do I think he’d hold still long enough for one, but I think he’s lost about half a pound. I can now feel the top of his spine and a tiny bit of his ribs.

On Saturday, he performed a leap that I didn’t think was possible for him. From four feet away, he leapt from the floor onto the bed, over a pile of books. It may not sound like an amazing leap but for a bun that I have never seen jump, it was quite a feat. He still doesn’t like me but will tolerate some pets from me after he keels over from running around. He also lets me know when he’s done with his pellets by placing his food cup into his water bowl and pushing both to the far side of his cage. He’s done this two days in a row.

I have talked to my girlfriend about all of this and if I can show her when she comes over that he’s a happy, healthy bun – she’ll continue with the diet I have for him. I have no illusions that this will probably go away the moment he gives the “I’m STARVING!” routine all buns do but with all of bad situations buns are in, he’s in great spot.

Well today was goodbye to Fitzgerald.  The girlfriend flew out this morning for PA and took the lil white poof with her.  I had to take him to the vet yesterday in order to get his travel papers.  The good thing about it is that they weighed him and it seems that he lost a full pound while at my place!  So my diet worked.  Unfortunately, I think that he’ll just gain it back within a couple of weeks with my girlfriend doting over him.  But, as far as buns go, he’s well taken care of. 

Byebye Fitz.  I’ll miss you but my buns won’t.  Dono took off two clumps worth of Maryann’s fur trying to reinforce the idea that she was his and not for Fitz.