Perform a good deed
February 18, 2010
I am not a generous person. I have a hard time giving up my time, and an even harder time giving up my money. So when it came time to perform a good deed last week, my cavalier side came to the forefront. I noted that February is Pet Dental Health Month and that Robbin Rabbit was at the vet’s to have his teeth trimmed.
Rabbits’ teeth tend to overgrow, and it turns out that Robbin had a couple of doozies. For a while (like, a couple of years), I had seen that his one cheek seemed a little puffier than the other. He has had a chronically watering left eye as well. A few months ago, it began to occur to me that maybe these two things were a result of renegade teeth.
Due to a scratch in his right eye, I finally took Robbin in for a checkup (he’s an active, ridiculously healthy rabbit otherwise). The vet agreed that he needed to have his teeth done, which we scheduled after the course of antibiotics and ointment to treat the scratch.
Early in the day, I interpreted this as my good deed, as it was for a creature other than myself and it would make him feel significantly better.
It didn’t take long for me to begin feeling kind of shallow and frivolous presenting Robbin’s dental work as some sort of altruistic achievement. Maybe I would feel more fulfilled in life if I volunteered and did more good. Yet I don’t get around to it.
So inspired by someone else, I took a rare action and donated to Doctors Without Borders. It was a little baby donation of $20, less than the smallest amount that’s given a radio button on their online form. I could afford to give more, or to give similar small amounts to a number of causes.
I don’t want it to seem like I’m looking for congratulations or pats on the back, but at least I did a little something, and that’s way out of character for me.
[Note: because I haven’t figured out how to replace a photo on an entry, this is a repost with a larger image.]
Houseplant assassination
January 28, 2010
This is the tale of three houseplants. Two have been around for a long time and the third was traumatized by Robbin Rabbit a couple of years ago.
Robbin is a free-range rabbit, and he’s highly motivated by food and also very athletic. Maybe it’s because he grew up with two cats that he feels it’s only natural to scale piles of boxes and get where he really oughtn’t be. The combination of hunger and fearlessness led to his assassination of a perfectly lovely spider plant on the windowsill next to my desk. How can I be sure it was Robbin? Because not long after I got home, I caught him going back for seconds. I’m thankful that the irresistible allure of some fresh greens before I dispensed his legitimate supper didn’t lead to any dire consequences. For the rabbit, at least. I put the sawed-off plant in my sunny front window and it eventually made a valiant effort at recovery. The leaves are now about twice as leggy as before, but it’s once again a reasonably respectable houseplant. Only now it must contend with being the favored gnashing subject of my cats, particularly Dasie. I don’t think they set out to eat it, exactly, but in the course of their teething on it, some of it disappears. But it perseveres under adversity. All of my philodendrons (four at my office and six at home) can trace their roots, so to speak, back to a handful of cuttings that I snipped from my former employer’s office over 15 years ago when Jim, Rob, and I worked together. Those things kind of grow like weeds and they don’t mind at all medium-strength, diffuse light. I keep mine trimmed so that they can put their energy into being full and bushy rather than sending out long runners of leaves. My oldest plants, though, are the pointy ones. I have no idea what they’re call. But I do know that the original shoots came from plants that our nextdoor neighbors the Dawsons had. My mom started some new plants before we moved in 1978, and all six of my plants are descended from the first offshoot she gave me way back when. These, too, grow prolifically and are tolerant of varying conditions. Several of mine are in need of dividing and replanting. If anybody knows what they’re called, please leave a comment below.
Tattooine, aka my non-existant ink mark
January 23, 2010
Heretofore, I’ve never had the desire to get a tattoo. I’m not sure I do now, though perhaps I do moreso than I did in, say, September. That’s when I drew on myself with a couple of different Sharpies. And it turned out that I didn’t mind how it looked.
I have always maintained that if I did more body art, it would 99.9% be likely to happen as a demure nose piercing. I have never thought that I wanted to get a tattoo. But two funny things happened. About a year ago, I accidently discovered that my mom had gotten a tattoo. At age 70! Without consulting my dad! Who didn’t realize for months afterwards! I certainly don’t feel like I have to keep up, or tell anybody if I do. Then we had the marker tattoo mission. And I liked it! I didn’t try to scrub it off. Today I’ve been thinking about it again. If I did actually go through with the real thing (which I’m not saying I will), I would get this rabbit, pretty for sure. I could see having it be about 75% of the pictured size. However, I think the overall line thickness to rabbit-size proportion is exactly right. Maybe I will have it done at Saint Sabrina’s, or maybe I will have it done in Camden. TBD, perhaps sooner than I think.My favorite scar
January 2, 2010
Of my four scars whose stories I remember, my favorite (big surprise) is the rabbit-generated one, resulting from a bunny kiss FAIL.
The other three stories that I remember, in age order are as follows:
Right eyebrow: My parents tell me that when I was about five years old, I fell out of the car head first into loose gravel. I don’t remember the incident, but there is a slight bare spot in that eyebrow, so I’ll have to take their word that something happened.
Left knee: Virtually immediately after getting a brand new, red Schwinn 3-speed bicycle when I was about 9 years old, I rode it down to the end of the street, made too sharp a turn to come back, and promptly wiped out.
Left breast: When I was in college, I had a small lump removed. Nobody ever thought it was cancerous or had the possibility to be, but it was one of those peace of mind things. My surgeon was Dr. John Najarian, a pioneer in organ transplant. I did not know that at the time. He went from fame to infamy to acquittal.
Lower lip: My second rabbit was Hilda. (For those of you keeping score, she is the rabbit who Chris Gargan named. (I should really give Chris his own tag!)). She was a regal Checkered Giant (aka Papillon to you Europeans). The breed is described as “lively” and it’s no lie!
I had decided on her breed long before it became necessary to have something in mind, and picked her up at a rabbit show in Hutchinson, Minnesota, when she was about eight weeks old. She was a large personality from the get-go. She and the cats (my two former cats, Dhia (tortoise shell) and Yul (black)) had a mutual admiration society.
Hilda and I got along just fine, too, after I learned about her personal space issues.
One evening when she was still fairly young, she was lounging (rather than chewing) on the couch. She just looked so adorable that I had to lean in for a bunny kiss. My previous rabbit Hazel had been good at that, my current rabbit Robbin is very good at that. You meet the rabbit halfway, and he or she bumps noses with you.
Well, not Hilda, bless her sweet heart. There were still inches between us, but she lunged up and grabbed my lip with her pointy teeth. I think we were both surprised. I looked in the bathroom mirror and through the blood, discovered that there was a V-shaped piece of skin flapping in the breeze.
In hindsight, I certainly should have gone to get stitches. Instead, I’m left with a permanent reminder of my Peanut.
Favorite vacation pic
December 27, 2009
Whatever vacation I’m engaged in is my favorite at the time, but regardless of the pleasure of subsequent vacations, the UVIC rabbits rate close to the top of my favorite vacation moments ever.
In 2004, my parents and I went on a Canadian Rockies train trip extravaganza. We flew to Seattle, motorcoached to Victoria BC and then to Vancouver, where we boarded the Rocky Mountaineer to traverse the Rockies by train.
While toodling around Victoria, our motorcoach driver took us through the University of Victoria where there was a population of feral rabbits. Well, you can imagine how my mom and I were squealing about that. Later, I took the city bus back to spend more time with these rabbits.
It was novel to me, but both the rabbits and the humans were quite blasé about each other. I stalked the rabbits and got good photos. The fellow in the large picture was more curious than the rest and was quite happy to cooperate with the photoshoot. In fact, he hopped right up and nibbled on the rubber ring around my lens.
I liked Victoria generally—because it was very British, imagine that!—and I’d love to visit again.
Nobody eats anybody else, so it???s alright
November 26, 2009
Okay, just so you know, it wasn’t my choice to finally write about my furry sweeties. Honest. I am merely a slave to the random topic that came up. So let’s not waste any more time.
My first rabbit (#1) was Hazel. He was a couple of years old when Dhia the cat arrived (tortoiseshell). She was six weeks old and imprinted on Hazel. I had never lived with a cat before, so when she was still spazzing out at close to two years old, I decided she needed a feline playmate. That’s when Yul came along (black). He was about three months old, still young enough to be influenced by rabbitly ways. Dhia and Yul were nice enough to each other, but they both loved Hazel. Hazel lived to the ripe old rabbit age of 10-1/2. His mind was still strong, but his little body gave out on him. He sat in a shallow cardboard box when I took him to the vet to be euthanized. He gnawed on the edges while we were waiting, until I stroked his head and told him he didn’t have to fight anymore. Don’t try and tell me we don’t have a connection with our animal friends. I waited a few months before I brought Hilda home as a nine-week-old bunny (#2). She was a Checkered Giant (papillon), a breed I had decided on a few years before, not that I was rushing Hazel. I named her Hilda because one day when Chris Gargan was asking about Hazel, he called him “Hilda” instead. It stuck in my mind. She was a fine rabbit, and Dhia and Yul loved her even more than they loved Hazel. Unfortunately, the breed is relatively short-lived, and we lost her at 3-1/2 to what seemed like a bunny heart attack. We were devastated. What am I saying? We’re devastated every time. I didn’t have any ideas for our next rabbit. One day I brought home Daisy (#3). She was a standard Rex who turned out to be defective in a number of ways. She had a full-blown case of cataracts at five months (successfully operated on), and when she was spayed, the vet discovered she had only one ovary. She only made it to about seven months. I came home from work one evening to find her in a bad way. We went right to the emergency clinic, but it wasn’t long before she checked out. I’m convinced she had fought to hold on until I gotten home and we could say good-bye. Soon thereafter, I contacted Hilda’s breeder for a new bunny, because I really liked the personality of the Checkered Giant. I brought home Belle(#4), and it was an instant lovefest between her and Dhia and Yul. Those cats adored that little creature, and I was convinced that she was going to be the perfect rabbit. She had all of the character of Hilda without the aggression. (Hilda sometimes had personal space issues with me. That’s how I got that scar on my lower lip.) But alas, she turned out to be a hemophiliac and died from post-spay internal bleeding at four months. Belle was our third rabbit gone in less than a year. Maybe you’ll think I’m nuts when I say that I think the cats were jaded by all those losses in their reception to Robbin (#5). He was about eight weeks old and the cats liked him well enough, yet were a little stand-offish with him. It was for that reason that when Robbin was about three, I decided that he needed a companion of his own kind. I took him on some bunny dates to the Humane Society, and he picked Bibi (#6). They doted on each other. Bibi had come from another multispecies household apparently and didn’t seem too bothered by Dhia and Yul, who by this time were in their mid-teens. Dhia had had a kidney attack and had to be hospitalized for five days. The vet was amazed that she pulled through. I visited her twice a day, and then gave her subcutaneous fluids for the last two years of her life. Yul had come down with hyperthyroidism and required twice-daily pills. He developed pneumonia at the end and didn’t make it through treatment at the vet’s office. He was 16-1/2. Dhia developed a bladder infection. She didn’t improve with initial treatment and when I took her back in for more potent antibiotics, she gave me a look willing it to stop. We gave her a different injection. She was 18. That was a hard one. She was my Sweet Pea. I figured it would be a good while before I began looking for a new cat. The universe had other plans. My mom volunteers with the rabbits at her local Humane Society in central Wisconsin and gets me to go to their website to check them out. After I lost Dhia (that was in a March), I casually clicked over to the Cats section and was struck by a bolt of lightning when I saw CJ’s mugshot (black, inset). Look at that little white tuft and that cocked head! It was April and karma kept her available until I could pass through town in May on my annual Chicago bowling tournament trip to pick her up. I kept directing my mom to visit her to see what she thought. My mom is not a cat person, but she and CJ formed an instant bond; so much so that when I met CJ for the first time, she shunned me for my mother. That was a year and a half ago. I don’t know if it was the stress of welcoming a new, young, boisterous cat but within weeks of CJ’s arrival, Bibi developed gut stasis (a common rabbit ailment) and never recovered from surgery. She was such a sweetheart, and I was worried about how Robbin would react. Bonded rabbits often go into steep decline when they lose their companion. But Robbin’s still going strong. I think because he was an only rabbit for a number of years, and was very definitely the alpha over everyone of every species, he bounced back with no ill-effect. We’ll just stay a one-rabbit family now. But CJ and Robbin never hit it off. I attribute that to CJ’s being a twoish-year-old adult by the time she met him. She was inexperienced in rabbit. She knew he was different but didn’t know what to do about it. It was for that reason that I decided she should have a feline companion, because she wanted to be friendly, but there wasn’t anyone to bond with. I went on a few cat dates and finally decided on Dasie (black and white). She was about eight months old when she came home about eight months ago, and has been the light of our lives. She and CJ didn’t take very long at all before they became buddies. I’m certain that they actually like each other, unlike Dhia and Yul who were civil but always a little chilly. You might think that CJ and Dasie would gang up on Robbin, but he’s still large and in charge. Neither cat really understands rabbit. They’re curious, but can’t stop themselves from swatting at his behind. This, in turn, causes Robbin to wheel around and chase the offending cat, sometimes back and forth from one end of the apartment to the other and sometimes not, but always with the result of the cat being treed on the bed, window sill, or other high place. I watch his ears. They’re not flattened against his back, so I think he’s not taking it too seriously. And I think the cats believe that it’s an elaborate form of play.Nobody eats anybody else, so it’s alright.
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