Walden — a mostly white mixed dwarf rabbit, with a few handsomely placed black markings — whom Mina had entrusted to me while she is in Iran, passed away on a cold muggy morning just before Christmas. He had been sick for less than a day. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognise the his symptoms immediately, and in rabbits illnesses kill quickly. In retrospect, his behaviour had been somewhat strange since the previous morning, and maybe even the evening before that. By night it was obvious, but it was too late. The necropsy showed that he had died of a stomach infection, which could have been caused by just about anything. He was just under one year old.
Walden had been living with me for several months. In that time, a lot of people have asked me whether rabbits make good pets, especially parents who see Mina and myself walking Walden outside. If the intended caretaker is a child, my answer would have to be an emphatic “No”. Contrary to the stereotype of bunnies as cute little furry living plush toys, a rabbit is a very poor choice for a starter pet. If anything, rabbits actually require more caretaking experience than either cats or dogs.
I should note here that many animal lovers dislike the use of the terms “pet” and “owner”, and prefer alternatives such as “animal companion” and “human caretaker”. Some people even refer to their animals as the “owners” and to themselves as the “servants”, but I think that’s perhaps a bit much. I also think that it depends a lot on the species. Dogs have a concept of social hierarchy and look to the dominant human in the household (who is not necessarily the adult male) to be the leader of their pack; it would not at all be inappropriate to refer to a dog’s human caretaker as its “master”. Cats are more aloof and independent, and regard humans almost as equals. They will make requests, such as to be fed or to be let inside or out, but in general they do not take orders.
Like dogs, rabbits have a strong sense of social hierarchy; but unlike dogs, humans are not automatically on top, and have to earn their place, a fact which I find very, very funny. A rabbit’s human caretaker actually has to put in quite a bit of effort to become accepted as an “honorary rabbit” — and what an honour it is! It means permission to groom the rabbit and, perhaps, to be groomed in return. But to earn a rabbit’s trust, one has to communicate on the rabbit’s level. Rabbits are not as facially expressive as humans or even as cats and dogs, but they have their own way of communicating through body language, by the way they move or hold their bodies, wriggle or wrinkle their noses, stamp or stomp their feet, and flip or flop their ears.
Rabbits are prey animals and thus behave as if their lives are constantly in danger. This is something that a lot of people, and especially children, seem not to understand. Rabbits really dislike being picked up and handled, which is unfortunate because of their resemblance to plush toys. Actually, what surprises me isn’t that rabbits don’t like being picked up but that other animals don’t seem to mind it. Put yourself in the rabbit’s place: imagine that you’re just going about your business chewing up the furniture, when suddenly, this lumbering giant that’s forty times your size comes along and swoops you up into the air to a distance of four or five times your height. Never mind rabbits; if something like that happened to me, I would be freaked out. And from the perspective of a prey species, being lifted up or embraced by a larger animal normally signifies certain death.
In nature, rabbits spend most of their waking hours foraging, feeding, fighting, frolicking, and engaging in the other activity beginning with the letter “f” for which they are justly famous — that’s right, flaunting their fecundity. A house rabbit behaves in pretty much the same way, and a human caretaker has to be properly prepared for this.
When Mina first brought Walden home from a pet store, neither of us knew how to “speak rabbit”. Incidentally, I should mention that while we didn’t know any better at the time, it’s much more preferable to adopt from an animal shelter than from a pet store, for a lot of reasons that should be obvious. We named Walden for one of my favourite books, after we had determined (somewhat to Mina’s disappointment) that he was a boy. The first while was very frustrating, as we didn’t understand much about Walden and he didn’t understand much about us. But over time, we began to communicate and he started to accept us.
Walden essentially litter trained himself, which was a very good thing, because he defecated a lot. He was basically a machine for converting food into droppings, which, unlike human or cat or dog excrement, isn’t really that dirty. He left droppings around the room, but he mostly defecated in the litter boxes, and, more importantly, urinated only in them. An interesting fact about rabbits is that they actually produce two kinds of droppings, fecal and cecal. The latter kind, called cecotrophes, are re-ingested by rabbits as they soon as they exit the anus — ick! (This fact is even alluded to in the Bible — the ancient Hebrews apparently observed rabbits chewing on their cecal droppings and classified rabbits with ruminants; see Lev. 11:4-6, Deut. 14:6-7.) Rabbits will occasionally eat the fecal droppings as well.
We placed litter boxes in strategic locations and soon Walden was using them. It amazes me that a rabbit could grasp such a concept as “this is my toilet”. This may not seem so surprising, because there are certainly several obvious advantages to keep defecating in the same spot in the wild, such as not allowing predators to track your movements through a trail of your excrement. What is surprising to me is not the mere fact that Walden would use the litter boxes, but that he would order us to clean them when he has deemed them sufficiently soiled. He would tug at us until we followed him to a dirty litter box, and sit by it (sometimes stomping his feet) until it was cleaned. And not only that, but he liked to supervise the cleanup! When we set down the newsprint and litter and scoop next to the litter box to begin our work, Walden would pick up various objects and place them where he wanted them. Through this, I learned that he prefered to have several layers of shredded newsprint on the bottom, with litter on top, rather than the other way around or having them mixed together.
To me, this is absolutely incredible — not only does he know that “this is my toilet” and “my toilet needs cleaning”, but he understands that “I’d better go grab one of those giant lumbering creatures over there to help me with the cleanup”. It isn’t just incredible, it’s downright bizarre. Who do the rabbits order to clean their toilets out in the wild when there are no humans around? The moose?
We learned some important things about the choice of litter that I should mention here. The first is that there is some controversy about whether pine and cedar shavings are safe for rabbits. The second is that clay and clumping litters are definitely unsafe. We found that out when, after we started to use clumping litter, Walden’s droppings began to decrease in size, which indicated an intestinal blockage. We got rid of the litter right away, and fortunately he recovered quickly. We eventually settled on CareFresh and similar products, and these seem to be safe and work pretty well.
Anyone who adopts a rabbit has to be prepared to do a lot of litter box cleaning. (Also, rabbits shed four times a year, and when they do, there is going to be a lot of fur.) And of course, in order to produce so much bodily waste, a rabbit has to eat a lot. That brings us to a very important topic from the rabbit’s point of view, that of food.
Most of the food and snacks for rabbits sold at pet stores are junk — that is, they are the rabbit equivalent of junk food. All a rabbit really needs is plenty of fresh water, access to a large supply of timothy hay and some pellets, some fresh vegetables daily, and the occasional piece of fruit as a treat. But that’s not very exciting, so the pet stores package up bottles of nuts or glue them onto a stick with honey, slap pictures of rainbows and flowers and smiling children or hopping bunnies on them, and sell them for exorbitant prices. The truth is that anything you need to feed a rabbit, you can find handily at home, at a farmer’s market, or at the grocery store. Also, despite what a certain cartoon rabbit may have brainwashed generations of children into believing, rabbits don’t snack exclusively on carrots. Walden’s snack of choice was in fact fresh parsley.
A rabbit’s teeth and nails grow continuously, so a rabbit will chew and dig just to chew and dig. This means that a rabbit’s human caretaker pretty much has to say goodbye to any crisp sharp edges on the wooden furniture. It’s also very important to tie up any loose strings (such as hanging from curtains) or stringy materials (such as attached to some cushions), and hide all electrical wires, which to a rabbit appear to have the size and crunchiness of delicious twigs. We had to provide Walden with a lot of things to chew on and dig into to keep him occupied. We discovered that it wasn’t really worth the money to buy any toys from the pet store, as he would inevitably be more interested in the boxes than in the products they contained. So we just collected cardboard and wooden boxes, cut holes in them, and arranged them in different configurations so Walden could crawl through them, chew on them, rip them up, and toss them around. That made him very happy.
So rabbits can be kept entertained for cheap, but I would still consider them somewhat high-maintenance, because they’re so very destructive. This was made worse later when we adopted cats. Cats will make a mess but will generally not do any permanent damage, but the combination of cats and a rabbit turns out to be quite deadly. Walden was normally unable to reach our bookshelves or the tops of our desks, but the cats would knock books and papers onto the floor for him to chew on and rip up. Between the cats and the rabbit, a lot of little things ended up being misplaced, damaged, or destroyed.
But I would have to say that any negatives to having a rabbit companion are by far outweighed by the positives. It took a long time to earn Walden’s trust, which is precisely why it was so rewarding when he began to show that he trusted us completely. When a rabbit is happy, it’s quite a sight to see. Walden would be zooming around when he would suddenly hop in the air kicking his feet together — the move is called a “binky” — and he would do this again and again, performing a “happy dance” that could have come straight out of a Fred Astaire feature film. And when he was tired and felt completely comfortable, he would look for a quiet, dark, out-of-the-way place, and literally throw himself sideways onto the ground, the way a man might throw himself onto his couch with a cold beer after coming home from a hard day’s work.
There are many other ways in which Walden’s behaviour was extremely comical and even slightly cartoonish. Whenever he was introduced to an unknown area or presented with an unfamiliar object, he would get on his tippy toes and explore the area stealthily, alternately raising and lowering his head to get a better view (or a better sniff), as if he were a ninja on a secret mission. But his movements were so exaggerated that one could almost hear the Hanna-Barbara-style sound effects — ding, ding, ding, for every step he took. Normally he would be on all fours, but whenever he wanted to get a better look at his surroundings he would stand up on his hind two feet — this is called “periscoping”. When he was younger and just learning how to do this, he would sometimes lose his balance and fall over backwards. He would quickly recover into an aggressive posture, as if to threaten the invisible attacker who had dared to push him or to warn anyone who might have been watching not to laugh at his expense. He was fastidious and groomed himself often, wetting his paws with his tongue to wash his face and ears. When he washed his ears with his paws, he almost looked like a young woman brushing and drying her hair after washing it, in preparation for a date — he was very concerned with his appearance and the sheen of his ears.
But the best part of course to having a house rabbit was his interactions with us, the humans. As far as Walden was concerned, he was the alpha bunny and we were nobody unless he said so. He behaved as if Mina and I were giant rabbits who were completely socially inept. Initially, even to approach him, we had to get on the floor and crawl towards him very, very slowly from the front — otherwise he would stomp his foot and run away. Whenever he was upset with anything, he would stomp his foot loudly, and if he was upset with one of us, he would turn his back on that person with his ears down, as if to shout, “I AM IGNORING YOU” — while peeking furtively over his shoulder to see if the message had been received. We soon learned to communicate in his language. If Walden chewed on something he wasn’t supposed to, one of us would stomp on the ground and crouch down at some distance facing away from him. He would quickly come over and lower himself very apologetically in front of us, nudging us to forgive him. And of course, he would go back to finish the job he had started as soon as we were out of sight. Over time, we were given the honour of rubbing noses with him and having him rub his chin (which has a scent gland) all over us, and he sometimes even groomed us. He also greatly enjoyed having his cheeks rubbed, to which he would respond by chattering his teeth (this is the equivalent in rabbits to purring in cats).
Because Mina had adopted Walden at such a young age, we had the opportunity to observe him go through puberty. Since there were no female rabbits about, he was basically in love with us and would try to court us. This happened in several stages. At first he would hop in circles around us, making grunting noises. Then he would deposit little “gifts” of his droppings at our feet. (Talk about a cheap gift!) I guess he must have been more in love with me than he was with Mina, because he would occasionally blitz by and spray my foot with a most potent formula of musky urine — perfume for a loved one! He even nipped at my foot a couple of times. At around this time, we took him to the vet to have his “operation”. After that, he stopped spraying, but continued his circling behaviour.
Incidentally, we also had him microchipped at the time, because we thought he might be travelling with Mina later. The microchipping company apparently can handle only cats and dogs in their database, and so we had Walden registered as a cat of the breed “rabbit”.
Just before Mina left for Iran, we adopted two kittens, a boy named Heisenberg (whom I named) and a girl named Yafa (which is Hebrew for “beautiful”). At that time, Walden was living with me. We were at first concerned that Walden would not get along with the newcomers, but it turns out that house rabbits and domestic cats get along just fine — in fact, they can make excellent friends if they are introduced properly. This may seem very surprising given that cats are predators and rabbits are prey, but we had at least two things working to our advantage. For one, Walden had already established that my room was his territory, and so it was the kittens who had to work to be accepted. Secondly, the kittens were still young and thus quite small, and therefore were not very much of a physical threat. They would become used to each other by the time the kittens became comparable in size to him.
Walden was very much like a big brother to the kittens. They would chase each other around the room, often with Walden doing the chasing. I think what’s interesting is that the two species got along so well despite misunderstanding each other’s behaviours — or perhaps precisely because of it. For example, a rabbit would run circles around the object of his or her affections. A cat, on the other hand, would slowly circle a target he or she intends to attack. The kittens were apparently baffled by Walden’s rapid circling and would run away from him hoping to avoid any trouble. Walden would in his turn run after them and try to mount them. The kittens considered this to be a form of wrestling and played along. Walden and Yafa in particular were very fond of each other, and even appeared — to be anthropomorphic — to be involved in a romantic relationship. Walden was quite bossy and would push the kittens — and us, the humans — around.
Walden was very spirited and lively. On the day before he died, he was somewhat lethargic, but I didn’t pay any attention to this at the time; now I wish I had. Normally, when I went to get his food in the morning, he would run up to the cabinet excitedly, radiating with curiosity, even though I did pretty much the same thing every day. It isn’t very clear in my mind now, but I don’t think he ran up to me that morning. He was certainly in hiding for the rest of the day.
The first sign I had that something was wrong was a partial imprint of a kitten smeared in urine and feces on a wall. That one of the kittens had jumped on that wall was not surprising: there is a cat toy, a stuffed mouse on a stretchy string, danging from above that spot, and Heisenberg jumps at it all the time. I determined from the smell and appearance of the excrement that it had come from the rabbit rather than from the kittens, and then I made a mistake in judgment that I now wish I had been more thoughtful about. I assumed that one of the kittens, probably Heisenberg, had stepped in one of the rabbit’s litter boxes and then tried to grab the toy. I don’t know why I assumed this, because now that I think about it, I can’t imagine the kittens walking around, never mind jumping and playing, with something like that stuck to their fur — they were as fussy about grooming as Walden was. Furthermore, it would actually take some effort to mix the rabbit urine and fecal pellets together so that they became a sticky mass, and while I had seen the kittens play in and around Walden’s litter boxes, I have never seen them perform any sort of chemistry experiment. I did have the presence of mind to check all of the litter boxes — the rabbit’s as well as the kittens’ — but I discovered nothing wrong.
So I had it in my mind that the problem was with one of the kittens, rather than with Walden. An unfortunate coincidence compounded my error — I happened to have an appointment with the kittens’ veterinarian that afternoon. After she gave them a clean bill of health and I came home, I was so relieved that nothing was wrong with them that I completely forgot about the matter until the evening. At that time, I discovered that Walden had in fact built something of a makeshift litter box inside one of the “rooms” in the cat tree, from scraps of newsprint and whatnot, and had been using that instead of his usual litter boxes since earlier in the day. That explained how one of the kittens had stepped into that sticky mixture — the cat tree was their territory and they had no reason to think that it had been sullied — and also why nothing appeared to be wrong in Walden’s litter boxes. I searched around and found several other spots that had been smeared with the mixture of urine and poop. At the time I still thought that Heisenberg had tracked it around the room, but after I finished cleaning I realised that some of those stains must have been left by Walden himself.
Walden was huddled inside his cage, under his house (which is really a tunnel made of branches cut to size, attached together to form a hollow hemicylindrical shell). I had, since Mina went away, been leaving his cage door open for longer and longer periods; by that time, he had been completely free to roam my room for about a week. I felt badly about confining him to his cage, and he was really happy to be free, even though he expressed this joy through an orgiastic symphony of destruction. I didn’t mind. I hadn’t seen him return to his cage for any significant duration for that entire week. Now I realised that he must have been huddled under his house for some hours, and upon closer inspection I could tell by the way he was huddled that something was wrong with him. I tried to goad him out with some treats, but he ignored them.
I petted him for a while, then picked him up and out of the cage. Normally, I would not do this — the cage is his territory, and I’m supposed to respect that, especially the sanctity of his house, which should be a very safe place where he should not be disturbed. But it was an emergency. As soon as I got him out, he began to struggle vigorously, and I had to set him down. However, he felt slightly cold to the touch, and his underside was wet. I dried him off with a towel. I put some food in front of him, but he wouldn’t eat. I gave him some water in a bowl, and he lapped at it for a bit, but he had difficulty drinking. So I hand-fed him some water through a syringe, which his veterinarian had given to me. Then he began to eat a little bit of hay and pineapple, so I felt relieved. It was past midnight by this point, and Mina came online on the instant messenger, so I told her of the situation. Unfortunately, the closest emergency veterinarian is quite far away; I thought that the ride there would be more damaging than the wait of a few hours until the morning.
So I went to sleep. I awoke in the morning with a knot of dread in the pit of my stomache. When I looked over at Walden, I knew that he had passed. He had apparently died in his sleep. He had the same cold-beer-on-couch posture that he always assumed whenever he was very relaxed, only except his eyes and his ears were not right. His ears were flopped over; there was no life in them. His eyes — I cannot explain his eyes, but the spirit in them was gone. There was no movement, no up and down heaving of his sides, and when I touched him he felt icily cold to the touch. The kittens stood by his cage silently; Yafa slowly poked her paw through the bars as if expecting a response, but none was forthcoming.
Looking back, there were many things I could — and should — have done differently on the day prior to the morning of his death. The worst part of it was that Walden had died just right after I had made a visit to a vet. He and the kittens actually went to different clinics, but I could have easily added an appointment for him at his clinic to the trip. And if I hadn’t been so focused on the idea that something was wrong with Heisenberg, I might have realised sooner to check Walden out more thoroughly.
I knew before from reading that rabbits, being prey animals, hide their illnesses. But even when I found Walden’s makeshift litter box, I didn’t realise the urgency of the situation. Even at night, when he had returned to his house, ostensibly to die there, he had put up a struggle when I picked him up and convinced me that he still had some fight left in him.
I don’t know what caused the illness that killed Walden, and the post-mortem examination was inconclusive. It could have been any number of things. My housemate had done some cleaning on the previous day with pine cleaner, and the fumes are known to be toxic to small animals. But since the cleaner wasn’t used in my room, the fumes should not have been concentrated enough to be lethal; and furthermore, they would have caused respiratory rather than digestive problems. I had been feeding Walden the same diet with only minor variations every day, but I may have indirectly caused a major change in his diet by letting him out to roam around my room at night. On the other hand, even before I allowed him to stay out all night, he was out in my room during the entire day, and had the same access to anything he might have eaten at night. He had found his way to the snacks before, and even eaten through my papers, without experiencing any digestive problems. In the end, Walden died due to what was probably an unfortunate confluence of factors, and an inexperienced caretaker.
Walden’s death was tragic and unnecessary. But his last days in this world seemed to have been very happy ones, and that is how I choose to remember him.
– davinci
A great tribute to Walden’s life! Here are some pictures of him:
http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~mrazaghp/album/Walden/
Poor Walden. I miss him so much.