Shall We Grow the Menagerie
Every day, I contemplate getting another pet. [Author’s note: If you are Andrew, please stop reading.] This feeling of needing to expand the animal portion of our family has been going on for several years. When we got Farrah in 2019, we talked often of getting another doodle; in the years since, we’ve seen many available doodles that have captured our hearts, have even come close to driving to New Jersey to snag one. This is the curse of continuing to follow Farrah’s breeder on Instagram: a constant parade of adorable puppies. Our desire to have a second doodle was never shared by Farrah, which she demonstrated by her extreme reaction to Molly’s visiting dogs this Christmas. Farrah is our queen, and she does not deign to share her throne. She is meant to be an only doodle. That is clear.
What’s less clear is whether Nutmeg would like a bun-pal. She seems pretty content, but I know she must be lonely, being alone all day in Greta’s room. She demanded to be a full-time free-roam bunny (by thumping and rattling the bars of her enclosure to show she was SO OVER being enclosed at night), and she’s made Greta’s room her own, spending her days hopping around or hiding under the bed. It’s unclear whether she’d like to share this space.
I’ve come close, very close, to adopting another bun. (“Bun” is how bunny owners refer to a rabbit.) I even put in an application for a particularly adorable mini lop who’d been found in a cardboard box by a dumpster. But my extensive reading and research into the art of bonding rabbits has, so far, deterred me. Here’s what you might not know about buns: if introduced to another bun without going through the correct bonding process, they will fight to the death. They will literally kill each other. Or not! Sometimes the bond forms instantly. Usually it doesn’t, though, and to bond a rabbit is to undertake a monthslong process of short spells of interaction in a neutral space, like a bathroom, with constant supervision. A lethal fight could break out at any minute. Owners are advised to put tennis shoes over their hands to break up the fights unless they want to “lose a finger.”
Once these short, supervised periods can proceed without fights, they continue, but the space they’re allowed to be in is expanded by an inch. After a few weeks, two inches. After several months, three inches. Then you can introduce a toy, some hay, a litter box. If they’re able to finally cohabitate, you must sleep by their shared enclosure for some time so you can break up fights in the middle of the night.
And then--hark!--the bunnies are bonded. Announcing a Bond on one of the rabbit-bonding Facebook groups I follow results in hundreds of congratulatory comments.
The bond can be broken in a hot second if one of the buns has to go to the vet, or if you have to move them to another place to live, or if you look askance at one of the buns. Then you must begin the entire process again.
This sounds insane! It really does! Even to me, a person who feels a kinship with the people on Instagram who have little crowds of bunnies in their kitchens. I would like a little crowd of bunnies, hopping around and lying together in a little row of loaves. Maybe it would be okay; maybe Nutmeg is an easygoing bun who won’t fight to the death in a bid for bun-dominance. Who knows? Stories abound of buns who can’t be bonded, buns who exist in separate rooms of a house. There are bun owners who describe setups of a bun in each bedroom, a bonded pair in the sunroom, and a bonded trio in the basement. Little fiefdoms.
So we shall see. I continue, unwisely, to look at Petfinder each day, scouting out the mini-lops at nearby rescues. I do this while blinking my eyes painfully because wispy threads of Nutmeg’s dramatically shed fur sometimes lodge themselves under my contacts. Last night, I was combing Nutmeg, collecting great tufts of fur in a pile. The pile of fur could, to the untrained eye, be mistaken for another bun. Someone, in one of the bun groups I follow, said they save all the shed fur and use it for needle-felting. At this juncture, I still find this almost inconceivably eccentric. But that may change. That may change.
What’s less clear is whether Nutmeg would like a bun-pal. She seems pretty content, but I know she must be lonely, being alone all day in Greta’s room. She demanded to be a full-time free-roam bunny (by thumping and rattling the bars of her enclosure to show she was SO OVER being enclosed at night), and she’s made Greta’s room her own, spending her days hopping around or hiding under the bed. It’s unclear whether she’d like to share this space.
I’ve come close, very close, to adopting another bun. (“Bun” is how bunny owners refer to a rabbit.) I even put in an application for a particularly adorable mini lop who’d been found in a cardboard box by a dumpster. But my extensive reading and research into the art of bonding rabbits has, so far, deterred me. Here’s what you might not know about buns: if introduced to another bun without going through the correct bonding process, they will fight to the death. They will literally kill each other. Or not! Sometimes the bond forms instantly. Usually it doesn’t, though, and to bond a rabbit is to undertake a monthslong process of short spells of interaction in a neutral space, like a bathroom, with constant supervision. A lethal fight could break out at any minute. Owners are advised to put tennis shoes over their hands to break up the fights unless they want to “lose a finger.”
Once these short, supervised periods can proceed without fights, they continue, but the space they’re allowed to be in is expanded by an inch. After a few weeks, two inches. After several months, three inches. Then you can introduce a toy, some hay, a litter box. If they’re able to finally cohabitate, you must sleep by their shared enclosure for some time so you can break up fights in the middle of the night.
And then--hark!--the bunnies are bonded. Announcing a Bond on one of the rabbit-bonding Facebook groups I follow results in hundreds of congratulatory comments.
The bond can be broken in a hot second if one of the buns has to go to the vet, or if you have to move them to another place to live, or if you look askance at one of the buns. Then you must begin the entire process again.
This sounds insane! It really does! Even to me, a person who feels a kinship with the people on Instagram who have little crowds of bunnies in their kitchens. I would like a little crowd of bunnies, hopping around and lying together in a little row of loaves. Maybe it would be okay; maybe Nutmeg is an easygoing bun who won’t fight to the death in a bid for bun-dominance. Who knows? Stories abound of buns who can’t be bonded, buns who exist in separate rooms of a house. There are bun owners who describe setups of a bun in each bedroom, a bonded pair in the sunroom, and a bonded trio in the basement. Little fiefdoms.
So we shall see. I continue, unwisely, to look at Petfinder each day, scouting out the mini-lops at nearby rescues. I do this while blinking my eyes painfully because wispy threads of Nutmeg’s dramatically shed fur sometimes lodge themselves under my contacts. Last night, I was combing Nutmeg, collecting great tufts of fur in a pile. The pile of fur could, to the untrained eye, be mistaken for another bun. Someone, in one of the bun groups I follow, said they save all the shed fur and use it for needle-felting. At this juncture, I still find this almost inconceivably eccentric. But that may change. That may change.
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