Playtime and a New Friend

Walter made a new friend yesterday, in the form of a stuffed giraffe that I have. In lieu of getting a second rabbit, I’m determined for Walter to become BFF with a stuffed toy.  He’s already rejected Little Blue Bunny, he shows very little interest in Eeyore, and he only occasionally grooms Moley Lamb (a stuffed lamb that also looks like a mole).  So last night, I tried the giraffe, whose name is Woodrow.  It seemed successful! Within a few minutes, Walter was giving Woodrow a good sniffing and, subsequently, a good cleaning.  He didn’t freak out when I positioned Woodrow so that he was snuggling up next to him.  And when I “hopped” Woodrow around the room, Walter got pretty excited and showed off some hops of his own.

Woodrow!

To be fair, the excitement could have been more from Walter’s enjoyment of having me pay him a lot of attention.  This morning, he wanted my attention so badly that he cuddled with my shoe while I was trying to put it on my foot.  And then he followed me to the front door and tried to hop out into the hallway of my apartment building and come with me to work!

I don’t know what it is. It’s not like I’m never home or never trying to play with him.  Last night, I lured him out of hiding and we sat together for a long time, watching TV.  But, on a typical night, by the time he’s done hanging out by himself in his box fort, it’s time for me to go to bed!

Do you have a playtime schedule for your rabbit?  Do you ever find that your schedules are out of sync?

Year of the Rabbit

Happy New Year, blogosphere!  2011 is, in fact, the year of the rabbit.  My Google research, via Stan's Sewing Supplies, of all places, tells me the following about the year of the rabbit:

"According to Chinese tradition, the Rabbit brings a year in which you can catch your breath and calm your nerves.  It is a time for negotiation.  Don't try to force issues, because if you do you will ultimately fail.  To gain the greatest benefits from this time, focus on home, family, security, diplomacy, and your relationships with women and children.   Make it a goal to create a safe, peaceful lifestyle, so you will be able to calmly deal with any problem that may arise."

Here's to a healthy and restorative year of the rabbit! 

In other news, Santy Paws was very good to Walter this Christmas (and by Santy Paws, I mean my parents).  I left Walter at the kennel for six days while I went home for the holidays.  It's the longest I've ever left him, so I knew I was in for a world of rabbit revenge when I picked him up.

When I came to get him, the veterinary staff were all disappointed to see him go, saying that he had been such fun company while I was away.  Apparently, there was a girl bunny in the cage next to Walter and the two of them played all week long. So, when I brought him back to our apartment and Walter began his usual tirade of stomping his feet at me and chewing on walls, I wasn't sure if it was because he was mad that I left him for a week, or because I took him away from his new girlfriend.

In order to soften the blow, I gave Walter his Christmas presents as soon as we got settled in at home.  My parents had gotten him three things.  The first was a box of sweet meadow apple sticks. Walter seemed a little more interested in the box itself rather than the sticks within, though.  His next present was a toy made out of wooden blocks connected by wooden rods.  It's designed to hang from the top of his cage, but Walter had so much fun picking it up and tossing it around, that I decided not to hang it up.  Now the sound of it being thrashed about the cage wakes me up almost every morning.  I constantly find it in his water dish, where the rabbit-friendly paint on the toy turns his water various shades of orange or blue.

His last present from my parents was a Snak Shak.  My dad was really excited about giving this to Walter.  It's an edible tunnel, made from fresh alfalfa and honey.

Image courtesy of Google

The thought was that Walter would snack on it while also hiding in it, but the rabbit has yet to try to squeeze himself inside.  Truthfully (and disappointingly), I think Walter is too fat to fit in the tunnel.  But, Walter likes to lick the Snak Shak and occasionally give it a nibble or two.

My present to Walter was a stuffed Eeyore toy that I found in the closet in my old bedroom.  I thought it would be nice if my bunny had a new friend to play with, and Eeyore has these cute, floppy donkey ears, and such a sad, "please love me!" look on his face.  Walter was not so interested in his new friend:

Maybe I shouldn't have presented Eeyore and a Brussel sprout at the same time..

Rabbit Cage Set-Up: A Diagram

I love browsing the web for fun rabbit pictures. My favorites are those that show rabbits enjoying their cages and habitats. I love seeing what kind of crazy set-ups people have provided for their rabbit. Because I live in a 700-something square foot apartment, I don’t have the luxury of donating an entire room as my pet rabbit’s domain. So, given this limitation, I try to make his cage as much of a bunny haven as possible.

So, here’s a replication of Walter’s bachelor pad:

We originally bought Walter the Clean Living Large 2-Level Cage, but after doing some more reading, decided that a rabbit might prefer a longer cage rather than a taller one. So, despite Paul’s pleas to keep the prettier, more adventurous cage, I returned it and picked out the Super Pet “My First Home for Rabbits” cage in extra large. I hated that it was purple, but it was my only option.

Next, I picked out the WARE Small Animal Bungalow as a hiding place for Walter. He rarely uses it to hide, but instead likes to lie half-inside, while keeping his head out in order to see (and hear!) what’s going on in the apartment. He also likes to use it as storage for his favorite toys. I routinely find his favorite ball in the bungalow, and since the sound of him playing with this ball often wakes me up at night, I think Walter hides it in the bungalow so I won’t take it away from him at bedtime. Walter uses the bungalow as a look-out as well, hopping on top of it to see what’s going on in the other room, and watching me as I prepare his meals in the kitchen. When I walk back to the cage with his food, he hops excitedly from the roof to the other side of the cage and back. Walter’s strangest use of the bungalow, though, is squeezing his body between the side of the bungalow and the side of his cage, hiding between the two, with only his one ear perked up to hear what’s going on.

Hanging on the back wall of the cage is Walter’s hay buffet. It’s great because it keeps the cage clean, but sort of worthless because my rabbit prefers to eat the hay off the ground. As I have horrible allergies, Paul is the “hay manager,” and kindly takes care of removing hay from the buffet and sprinkling it on the floor.

Near the hay buffet are two ceramic dishes: a white one for water, and a blue one for food. Walter started off using a water bottle, but I couldn’t find one that wouldn’t leak. The trouble with the ceramic dish is that, despite its weight, Walter’s antics throughout the cage inevitably knock the dish over and a mess of water goes everywhere. If you have recommendations for a new water bottle, I’d love to hear them! The one for his food works well enough, though Walter often paws it closer to him while he’s sitting in the litter box, and this almost always results in the dish being turned upside down and food spilling everywhere. I thought rabbits liked to keep their habitats clean!

And finally, the litter box. Yes, it’s just a Rubbermaid Take-Along container. We started out with the standard Small Animal High Corner Litter Pan from Petco, but my rabbit would always scoot his little bunny butt over the side and urine would go everywhere. No repositioning could fix this problem, and I couldn’t find another high-backed litter box in the right dimensions. Surprisingly, the Rubbermaid container has worked really well for us; it’s big enough to fit the entire width of the cage to avoid misdirected sprays, but skinny enough that Walter still has ample room to hop around.

I would love nothing more than to give Walter his very own bedroom filled with tunnels and boxes with cut-outs and digging stations. But alas, the reality is that I simply cannot. His set-up works for him though. He makes his own tunnels via furniture that isn’t flush against the wall, and he makes the most of the space underneath the couch as a digging station. He’s a creative rabbit, and he seems happy. It always amazes me, though, that at the end of the day – even if he thinks he should be allowed more playtime before bed – he is content to retreat to his cage and really considers this his own little sanctuary.

Walter Discovers the 1-900-Hotline

I’ve come across a lot of suggestions for simple rabbit toys: cardboard boxes filled with hay, old paper towel rolls, towels and blankets, paper bags, etc. I love these suggestions because all of these things are pretty easy to find around the house, easily replaced, and [mostly] recyclable.

Most importantly, these items cost next to nothing. This is essential, since Walter gets bored of toys within 48 hours. Being able to offer enough of a playtime variety without breaking the bank is critical to both Walter’s mental and physical stimulation, as well as my wallet.

Of all the suggested homemade toys, Walter’s favorite is the phonebook. In the age of the internet, no one I know uses a phone book anymore, but it’s still customary for most apartment complexes to provide one for each unit. Or, in our case, at least two per household. Why anyone needs two phonebooks in a one bedroom apartment is beyond me, but Walter is glad to have them.

He has a great time tearing out pages (and sometimes chewing them, if I’m not careful) and gets excited when he figures out how to flip to the next page. The great part for me is that the book is enormous – no matter how many pages Walter yanks out, there are still hundreds more until the book is devastated.

Walter has two phonebooks. We keep one just outside his cage, in front of a doorstop that Walter likes to nibble when no one’s watching. We put it there to block the rubber stopper and encourage him to play with something else. The other phonebook is in Walter’s favorite hangout spot: under the couch. Walter will spend hours underneath our sofa, and the phonebook gives him something to focus his energy on.

One day, Paul and I decided to give the apartment a good cleaning, including under the couch, which was now full of bunny fur (and dust bunnies). I pulled out the phonebook to begin sweeping. When I looked to see what page he was on, I saw something typical of an teenage boy, but surprising for an adolescent rabbit – the book had been opened to the “Escort Services” section of the yellow pages!

Amused and slightly mortified, I tried turning the page to something more appropriate, but Paul insisted that I let Walter enjoy his "alone time" under the couch. ;)

Bunny Bar Mitzvah

Walter’s reluctant co-owner is my boyfriend, Paul, with whom Walter and I both live. Despite Paul’s hesitation to fully embrace rabbit-ownership, he still refers to himself as Walter’s “dad.” And, like any split-religion family, claims half-ownership of Walter’s religious orientation. My boyfriend is a self-proclaimed “quasi-Jew,” which means that he’s not religious by any means, but was raised amongst the Jewish culture. This means that Walter is half-Jewish. I mean, he does eat Kosher, after all.

In Judaism, a celebration is thrown in honor of a person’s thirteenth birthday. For males, this is called a bar mitzvah and, according to tradition, is the moment when a boy officially becomes a man. In the rabbit world, from all I’ve read, this moment can be equated to the day a rabbit reaches its seventh month of life.

Today is Walter’s bar mitzvah. He turned seven months old today and earns the title of “rabbit” instead of “bunny,” though I told him he’d always be a bunny to me. In celebration of this occasion, I bought Walter two new toys: a willow ball and a timothy lounger:

The ball was intended to entertain him by rolling on the floor and making fun noises. Instead, he’s already chewed it apart and made a giant mess of willow sticks on our carpet. Alternatively, the timothy lounger was meant for being chewed, and Walter cautiously puts his front legs in the lounger while taking a few chomps, but is a little tentative about committing to full-on lounging inside the toy. At any rate, I consider a toy to be successful for Walter if he plays with it for three consecutive days. He has some serious toy-related ADD.

Part of me feels like something magical should happen when a bunny reaches his bar mitzvah: he miraculously stops chewing wires, digging our hardwood floor, and going to the bathroom on the couch. But as I type this, I’m watching him hop around the apartment, eyeing the baseboards for an afternoon snack. I just heard him scratching the floors underneath the couch. I guess it takes more than a bar mitzvah to make a perfectly-behaved rabbit.

Happy seven-month birthday, Walter. And, of course, Mazel Tov.