‘Guess they won’t be ‘Bosom Bunnies’

[MimzMum]

Quick update on Mimzy and Pip.

So we’ve been leaving them together in the xpen during the afternoons since Pip started washing Mimzy at his request. The cirlcing has stopped for the most part and they seem to love snuggling together under the willow tent…or what’s left of it.

I bought a second xpen to enlarge the first and they now have quite the area to scamper in. Sadly, my cats seem to think it’s their area too and they get down in it once in awhile from the counter when they think I’m not looking. >.<

Yesterday, I thought, what the heck, I’ll steam/clean out Mimzy’s cage and put it in there to see if they would both use it. Unfortunately, it made Mimzy scared and he was bolting around the xpen at a furious pace. When Pip was placed in the xpen with him, she thumped and nudged the cage door and kept lifting and dropping it as if to tell me it was not welcome there…so I removed it.

Going to have to get them a larger/unused cage if I want them to bunk together.

However, I am beginning to notice that, by evening, after having his ears washed for probably the hundreth time, Mimzy seems decidely tired of spending time with Pip. He seems almost thrilled to go back to his cage.

By morning though, I am getting the bunny butt and he seems to sulk until he gets out to see Pip, then by evening again he is done, stick him with a fork. (no, not literally!)

Soooo….not exactly bosom buddies…er…bunnies, are they? Maybe I should wait to get the larger cage?

[BinkyBunny]

So I’m not sure what happened that freaked him out. Was it just the motion of the cage coming into the pen?  How long have they been getting along now in the afternoons?   it might just be they need more time.  Has the time been increasing before she gets ancy to leave or about the same?  The time she wants to leave does it seem to coincide with “feeding” time?

You might try just using their xpen as their permanent space? (how long do they spend time together now?)    In their xpen, have a couple hideouts so they can each go to their “space” if they need some “me”time. Rucy loves Jack, but sometimes she just likes space on her own (especially when he wants to get tooo friendly) She has found that Jack isn’t as comfortable in high spaces as she is, so she’ll hang out up high for a couple of hours out of the day, and then she’ll join him later.  Otherwise, if you plan on having only one cage with the pen, then have them trade time in each other’s cages.  Each night they spend time in the others cages (not together though) so they get used to each other’s place?

Keep us updated.

 

[LittlePuffyTail]

Well I think your just lucky they are not trying to kill one other as my first “intro” attempt went: Stormy vs. Bindi. I would be very happy with the progress made already. I love reading other bonding attempts because I really want to have a bonded duo but I think I will have to keep Stormy by himself as he is aggressive and very set in his ways having been a single bun for almost 4 years.

When did you start bonding the two and were they agressive at first?

I laughed when I read about your cats and the x-pen cuz my kitten thinks my x-pen is her playpen. Whenever it’s set up she sits in there and she loves to be in there when the buns are out. They don’t mind her too much so I just let her hang out although Stormy will chase and growl at her once in a while to show her he is the boss despite being the smallest critter in the house!

[MarkBun]

Some buns never become “Bosom Bunnies” and yet love havin’ the pals about. I know that Maryann and Dono will never be 100% lovey-dovey. About once a week, I find a clump of Dono’s fur that I am certain Maryann has pulled out and this Saturday, i caught her mounting him. And yet, the next half hour, she’s flopping down next to him to give his ears a grooming.

Buns have moods.

[MimzMum]

Oh believe me, Markus, with two teenagers in the house (a 16 yo girl and 18 yo boy), a husband with serious back problems, me going through the change and two bunnies, one rowdy and one not…well let’s just say you can’t swing a cat without hitting somebody’s “mood” and probably not at the best of times! >.<

BB, I think you might be right. I think Mimzy decides it’s feeding (and potty) time by the time he is ready to go back to his personal pen. I usually do give him something to munch and, since he won’t eat or wee in the xpen, I guess that might be why he’s a little stand-offish by about 6-8 PM. The minute he gets back “home” he heads right for the litter box, does his business and then sets to washing and preparing for din-din.

Most days, we get them out no later than 1 in the afternoon and we can leave them together without incident until sometimes almost 10 at night. By then, the chumminess is wearing thin.
Pip seems to love him…they had a few chasing issues at first which went back and forth…Mimzy did a lot of mounting behavior that Pip didn’t like, but I have never seen then be aggressive in any way with each other. Although Mimzy definitely takes the stand of “top bun”, I think Pippi might be more of the “bunny mum” persuasion. She seems to treat him like he was her little boy. They will stay cuddled up together the whole day under the willow tent and only when Pip gets hungry/needs to potty or Mimzy gets antsy will they separate.

I am not sure what startled Mimzy the other day. I happened to be on the phone speaking with my mum-in-law long distance. I saw him sniffing his cage while it was in there and then he just flew around the xpen at top speed and tried to hide behind his cage. The last time I saw him act that way was when I first brought him home and he lived in the outdoor Bun-Galow. I think it was a scary place for him, and perhaps the enlarging of the xpen and then the sudden appearance of his cage inside it may have been too much. It seemed to reignite his need to show dominance, because later that evening he was trying to mount Pip again and he hasn’t done that for weeks.

My daughter seems to think I just haven’t spent enough time with him lately, just one on one with bun stuff, you know? Granted I’ve been trying to assemble my taxes and also help the hubby with a book he’s writing, so I haven’t been available much. ‘Could be Mimzy just still needs some of that close, personal human attention, besides knowing he has a bunny buddy.

Puffy, we began putting the buns together almost a month ago. They actually took to each other quite well from the get-go, for which I am enormously grateful. ^^

[kimberleyanddarren]

i love your sig pic.. i think i said that before ^o).. but i do! lol

anyway have you tried having some sort of link like moving his pen next to that one so he can go in and out when ever he likes and putting the other buns there to so they both have their cages right next to them with like a nic cube or whatever round these so they cant get away? does that make any sense? lol 

Here i did a pic for u! this way they both have something in their of each others, they have a shared area and can go from their cages when they like, just an idea! keep us posted!

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[Kokaneeandkahlua]

That’s a much better picture then I did!! LOL

That’s a good idea too!

[MimzMum]

Actually, I did put Mimzy’s pen into the xpen area last week with rather disastrous results. He was really freaked out that ‘his home’ was suddenly there on the floor in the xpen and so he began this mad tearing about and trying to hide. When Pip arrived to share the xpen, she loudly thumped floor and banged the cage door on the ground to make it QUITE clear she didn’t like it in there either. I’d even cleaned it sparkling for the occasion. So, with my tail between my legs, I removed it and everything got back to being hunky-dory within minutes.
Ah well…I am pretty sure I will have to get some multilevel, new fan-dangled cage for them to spend their years of married bliss in. I know Pip loves to climb, so it will have to be something with a few shelves.
I have thought of the NIC condo idea, but I just can’t bring myself to use anything that doesn’t have a plastic boxlike floor for easy cleaning and no chance of sore hocks, and a sturdy outer bar construction that doesn’t have to be held with zipties and makes for difficult ‘poking’ gestures by either cats or errant children. >.>
And I am so horribly lazy when it comes to constructing things. No Target here either, I’d have to have them shipped and that means dealing with amazon.com, who are getting horribly particular about what they send up here to Alaska. Do you know I couldn’t have a KEYCHAIN sent here because of their ruddy shipping policies? (It was a cute little Miffy one too, thank goodness Binky sent me the sock bunny!)

Ah well…enough of my gassbagging. We’ll work it out. We always do.

[Author]

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