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This is Sassy:
My husband and I found her abandoned in the park a couple of months ago. We made an honest effort to find her owner, and reported her to the police and the Humane Society. They said that if no one claimed her after two weeks, she’d legally be ours, but she stole our hearts right away!
I just happened to have Rabbits for Dummies and The Houserabbit Handbook laying around, so we knew what we were doing right away. (I had a couple of pet rabbits when I was a kid, but I lived on a farm, and the rabbits were in a shed, not house rabbits.) We had been talking about getting a rabbit for a while, but Hubby really thought it would be hard on my change-phobic elderly cat, and that it would be best to wait until Kitty is no longer with us. Hubby jokes that I planted Sassy in the park for us to “find!”
I took her to the vet the day after we found her, just to make sure she was healthy (she is). Then a week later she started limping, and a lump near her front “shoulder.” It turned out to be a cuterebra (a type of fly egg that probably got into an open wound, the larvae hatch & chew their way out). So the vet cut it out & put her on antibiotics for a bit. She was limping only because of the lumpy area by her shoulder. Her foot was uninjured. There was only one cuterebra in her, so we didn’t have to worry about an infestation. She got it when she was still “in the wild.” They can be present for a while before hatching or chewing their way out, so that’s why the first vet didn’t see anything wrong right away — there was no swelling at that time. Sassy’s doing great now. She’s getting spayed next week. I’m pretty nervous about that, but I know I have a good rabbit vet, and I’m just a nervous bunny-mom.
We turned our guest room into a bunny room (no more overnight guests, I guess!). She gets the entire room. I let her out with me into the (bunny-proofed) living room/kitchen for an hour in the morning, and several hours in the afternoon/early evening, and Hubby usually hangs out with her for an hour before bed. When we do that we just leave the gate to her room open so she can go back to eat or drink if she wants. We’d eventually like her to be out with us whenever we’re home, but we’re still working on cat-bunny relations. Sassy seems eager to make friends with Kitty, hopping after him, but Kitty was scared (a 12 pound cat scared of a 2 pound bunny!) at first, and now mostly seems annoyed by her. Kitty hasn’t been aggressive yet, but I can tell by his body language that he does not like her following after him, and I worry he’ll snap at her & hurt her. So for now we have to alternate Kitty-time and Bunny-time, except for a few short, closely-supervised visits.
This picture doesn’t show it the best, but I suspect Sassy is at least part dwarf hotot. She’s all white except she has the black “eyeliner,” black on her ears, and an “exclamation mark” right on her spine.
This is getting long for an introduction, so I think later I’ll make separate posts to get advice regarding the Kitty issue, and to post pictures of our guest room re-model and bunny room set-up.
Sassy is so friendly and usually well-behaved. I wish she could tell me where she came from, but I’m so glad she’s living with us now!
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