Nikolai and Eco from Toronto

[Nikolai]

Hello all!  We’re new here, but not new to bunnies.

My name is Jenn, and currently my partner and I have two bunnies – Nikolai and Eco (both named after authors).  We also have 2 cats (Lear and Esme) and 2 dogs (Luc and Neb).  

I’ve had several bunnies in the past, and used to foster for a rabbit rescue – in fact, Nikolai is a foster failure who when I got him (‘temporarily’) was quite aggressive, but I realized he needed a stable environment so kept on fostering him and adopted him.  I never was able to bond him to a female bunny I had who had lost her partner, so once she passed on I adopted Eco and they became best friends.  I knew they were ready to be together full-time when I came home and discovered they’d chewed a bunny-sized hole in her cage and were going in and out freely in the bunny area.  Currently they’re not ‘free-range’, as Neb is over-enthusiastic about bunnies and I don’t feel it is safe.  

Nikolai is at least around 11 years old, and I’ve had him since 2003 (he was an adult when I got him).  I believe I’ve had Eco since around 2006, and I got her as a baby, so she’s about 6 years old.  

We had a house fire (well, our apartment was in a semi-detached house, and the apartment in the house next to us caught fire – gutted next door, smoke and water damage in our place) a few months ago.  We’ve found a new apartment, and the bunnies have been living in a temporary emergency cage we got from the Humane Society.  Their new bunny condo is on it’s way and I hope will be here shortly!

Nikolai has recently been diagnosed with cataracts, and I’m hoping this forum can offer guidance here.  I’ve had a disabled partially paralyzed bunny before, but not a vision-impaired bunn.  Nikolai is now blind in one eye and a cataract is forming in the other.  Obviously he’s had time to adjust to being one-sighted, but I’m a bit worried about switching his home on him again – the emergency cage is smaller and easy to find his way around, versus a multi-level condo.  I’m scared he’ll fall off the ramp!  He’s been in a bunny condo before, so it should be a bit familiar, but still.  I’m planning on introducing him to the condo slowly, and keeping the bunns to one level to start – thoughts?

We are also going to see an ophthalmologist, I hope soon – I’m waiting for the referral.  

Nikolai has been less interested in exploring when I take him outside on leash, but I thought that was partially because it was winter.  But it’s true even in the house.

Other things about my loves – food-wise, lots of hay – the cats get into it, and have started over the past couple of months having some funky hay balls (despite me picking up stray pieces) so we’ve special ordered a 50lb bag of the Oxbow hay ‘bricks’ to feed Nikolai and Eco, and then we give them adult timothy hay pellets and mixed fresh greens.  The occasional bit of fruit or carrot as a treat.  They’ve got lots of wood toys but their favourites are willow baskets and timothy hideouts.  I’ll try to post some pictures later.

[Nikolai]

Some pics!

Ack!  Never mind, pics on this don’t work the way they do at other forums I am on.  I will try to figure out later.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Hi and Welcome to you and your bunnies!

I always like to meet other Canadian BBers. I’m in NB and have 2 bunnies.

We have a couple of members here who have had experience with blind bunnies so hopefully, one of them will be able to give you some advice.

Would love to see pics. The way I post pics is upload them to Photobucket.com to resize them, save them to my desktop and then click “Reply” on your thread and upload the images from your browser and insert into the text area.

[CinnabunMom]

Welcome to BB!! Would love to see some pics

[Author]

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