As kids, me and my brothers always had some sort of pet.  When I think back I remember a parade of pets.  We tried turtles, fish, lizards none of which lasted very long.  They fade from memory without a mishap at least on the human end. 

When we got older we had hamsters that inevitably got loose and found their way into the walls of the house.  Being kids, we would cry that our cute little pets would starve to death in the walls and our dad would give in to our anguished cries and drill holes into the walls to coax our pets out.  We eventually found their way into the walls through the gap above the kick plate on the kitchen cabinets and would set out food luring them back to their cages.  My creative dad would build mazes for our pets to find their way through, gaining them a handful, or in a hamsters case, a cheek full of sunflower seeds.  It was fun.

We bought a large house in the suburbs and added a kitten to keep our little dog company.  Soon, a rabbit and Guinea pig followed.  They were friends and shared a cage.  The rabbit developed eye cancer and had to be put to sleep.  Fearing the Guinea pig would be lonely, we bought him a mate.  On Christmas morning when I went down to feed them, there were three new little fuzz balls staring curiously at me.  It was a lesson in genetics.  One was curly like it's father, one was smooth like it's mother, and the third was curly around the head and shoulders and smooth on the back end.

Our pets were entertaining.  They taught us about responsibility, nurturing, love, and death.  When we grew up and had kids of our own we tried to have pets to teach our kids the things we learned about pet ownership.  It was hard being renters for 10 years.  We were limited to fish but we did sneak in a Guinea pig. 

A neighbor a street over had a rabbit that she would walk on a leash.  It was so cute and well behaved.  I vowed when we bought a house we would have a more "interactive" pet.  A few years later we did buy our own house and the same lady with the rabbit was giving away baby bunnies.  We bought a book and learned that bunnies could be house trained to use a litter box.  We had a cage to keep him in when we weren't able to watch him.  Then we put a couple of litter boxes in corners where he seemed to hang out.

He would follow us around the house.  He learned to go up the stairs.  If we called him he would poke his head through the spindles of the stairs with his lopped ears pitched forward like he was listening to us.  We named him Kitty.  He was sort of catching on to the litter training.  He was good about peeing in the litter but we were finding "raisins" here and there through the house.  We would have to work on litter training.  As he became bigger he would run (or the bunny equivalent) circles through the rooms ending in a dive with a twist into the litter boxes.  See the picture above.  Ok, litter training didn't seem to be working.

I would tell everyone what fun we were having with our new pet.  We were doing a paint job in the next city over and the woman was so fascinated with our bunny stories that she was going to get her kids a bunny too.  That would change shortly.

That night, after dinner, we let the bunny loose from his cage.  I was laying on the floor reading the paper when the cute bunny started hopping by.  I said, "Oh look at the cute little bunny."  It might have been the baby talk or the eye contact but the next thing I knew the bunny lunged at my face with his mouth wide open and those big bunny buck teeth bared for battle.  I've provided a short video that accurately describes the attack:

It bit right through my lip which immediately swelled to the size of a softball, which in turn only made the wound gape and bleed even more.  The X and the kids stood in shock and horror as blood gushed through my fingers.  The X recovered enough to grab the rabbit, shove it in it's cage, and heave it out the back door into the yard.  He growled that the damn rabbit was born outside and he would have to learn to live outside.  He inspected the wound and proclaimed that I needed stitches.  Unfortunately, due to a previous run in with a child eating coffee table, we learned that hospitals don't stitch lip tissue.  So we saved a couple hundred dollars by applying pressure and ice. 

I have a scar in my lip, to this day, where that rabbit attacked me.  But what was even worse was going to the customer's house the next day and having her do a double take at my appearance, then not ask how it happened.  The X jumped into the uncomfortable silence sensing that she somehow thought he was responsible.  He told her, "you might want to rethink that rabbit purchase," which opened up the retelling of the vicious rabbit attack.

Back home we built a cover for the rabbit cage and I painted it to look like it had a shingled roof and windows with flower boxes. "Kitty" seemed happy outside and enjoyed hopping around the yard nibbling at weeds.  We didn't have to pick up the trail of "raisins" and we found he did double duty as a garden fertilizer.

The only problem we had with "Kitty" was that he was a male rabbit.  Mature male rabbits like to spray their territory with urine.  I was his territory.  Feeding and exercise had to be done BEFORE I took a shower.  The vet said we might be able to cure the spraying by having him fixed.  That was one thing the X wasn't going to go for and not because he was against altering male genitalia.  It was that we got the bunny for free so beyond food and hygiene expenses there would be no fixing. 

We also found that rabbits were destructive little chewers.  The book cautioned owners to hide electrical wires from house trained rabbits.  They didn't say anything about lips and I discovered when brushing and clipping his nails that he would bury his head in my clothing and chew holes. 

The only other mistake I made was one morning on my way to feed him I slipped my daughter's fuzzy cat slippers on my feet.  You could almost hear him screaming, "OH MY GOD TWINS," as he chased me around the yard and up the stairs of the deck before I slipped into the house.

He eventually settled down and made himself a member of the family.

We bought the restaurant and moved up to the forest where everyone cautioned us that coyotes, bears, bobcats and the like would probably love to feast on our bunny.  We found a nice corner in the back hallway to keep his cage.   At his advanced age he would stay in the rooms where we were or out in the yard by us.

My son picked up a kitten from one of the neighbors and hid it in his room knowing his father wouldn't approve of a home roaming animal.  We surmised that a couple weeks of feeding would let the kitten become accustomed to our place being it's home and he could then become an outdoor cat.  The X's anger eventually wore off and the kitten became quite attached to him.  Sleeping with him on the couch.  Curled up in his lap watching TV.

I had the rabbit out in the yard and was letting the kids that worked for us play with him.  The X let the kitten out and he being the curious cat that he was, came over to see what we were playing with.  The rabbit, remembering the visit from "the twins," immediately raped the kitten.  We were shocked but managed to separate the two animals. 

We have concluded that this early kittenhood trauma set him down the path of rampant rodent murders in our little corner of the forest.  While the cat left hundreds of trophy chipmunk tails on all the walkways, it seemed like he took great delight in leaving the heads and feet of rabbits on the deck just outside the sliding glass doors.  It was almost like a warning for the rabbit in the house.  "This could be YOU!"

That winter "Kitty" the rabbit died of old age.  When the kids came back to work the next summer they asked about the rabbit.  I told him he died.  They wanted to know how.  I told them he was eight which sounds to a Pennsylvanian like "he was ate," because they all asked, "what ate him?"  I switched the explanation to, "he died of old age."  That made eight a number again.

Despite the mishaps and scars, I loved that little animal just like I love my cat.  It's when I forget that they are animals and some basics of animal behavior that I've run into trouble.  I say that because I sit here with scratches on my face and head from trying to perform the cat switching by myself.  For those who may not know, my male cat and Honey's male cat do NOT get along.  We switch them daily at 7pm so they each have equal access to exercise and interaction.  The sight of the other sends them into male dominant behavior.  And, wounds from killer "Nightmare on Elm Street" cat claws to the face and head still gush blood just like rabbit bites.

I hope I haven't scared anyone away from pet ownership (Nutsy Fagan).   The moments of love and joy far outweigh the scrapes.  Besides who doesn't like to bond over scar stories ala Jaws (the movie, scene where Quint and Hooper are showing scars and recounting the stories)?

And Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there! 

tags: pets  hamster  rabbit  bunny  guinea pig  cat  kitten  dog  attacks  bite  claw  scratch  

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