After sharing my cat Pece I thought Iād share Cloro, my late rabbit. And a bit of bunny awareness in his memory.
Cloro died ten years ago after having lived a very happy life, and Iāll never forget the experience of having a bunny as a pet. They are amazing creatures, often misunderstood and even more often not taken care of properly. There is still the idiotic practice of randomly gifting bunnies to kids thinking that theyāre just little plushies that sit in their cage and donāt need anything other than mangime. Those bunnies end up in shelters or worse, they die of ugly conditions due to improper care.
Having a bunny was an incredible experience but extremely demanding. Extremely more demanding than having a cat.
A bunny is not a mouse. Bunnies suffer when confined in a cage, no matter how big the cage may be. A cage may be useful to have because thatās where you may want to store the litter box and hay, and occasionally, for very limited time, it may be useful to confine the bunny while you are doing something he should not be messing with for a few minutes (like, cleaning the room where he lives). Bunnies do not necessarily need to have access to your entire apartment, also because making an entire apartment bunny-safe is not so easy, but they should have at least a room where they can run free.
A bunny is not supposed to eat mangime. Heās supposed to eat mostly hay, and youāll have to accept that wherever the bunny has access to, there will be hay everywhere. He also eats fresh vegetables. Thatās another thing that makes bunnies slightly more demanding than cats - with cats, you can buy dry food or canned food that you can stock and store for a long time. With bunnies, you can stock some hay but will have to regularly buy fresh greens every week.
A bunny needs a special vet. Not all vets are knowledgeable about bunnies. Perhaps this has changed in the last few years or is different in other countries but back then and where I lived, there was only one vet in the city with credentials for treating bunnies. Generally, whenever somethingās off with a bunny, it is a medical emergency. Itās almost never something where you can just wait and see for some hours or half a day. And for those things you need an available vet who knows how to handle bunnies.
A bunny needs a bunny-proof environment. Some bunnies like to chew on electricity cables. Most bunnies do not understand the difference between what they can eat and what is poison for them. If they have access to a garden, theyāll have the best time in their lives but only as long as their outside environment is safe from plants they should not eat and protected from predators.
Speaking of which - a bunny is a prey. This is the key difference between bunnies and cats/dogs. Being a prey is what makes their behavior feel odd to us, humans used to deal with predators as home pets. The most skittish cat will still be more confident than a bunny when it comes to new things and people in their environment. Bunnies donāt even close their eyes completely when they doze - I caught Cloro sleeping with his eyes completely closed only a handful of times.
A bunny also needs a bit more care in his environment. I mean, a cat litter box needs regular cleaning, too, but you can generally clean bits of it regularly and then do a major cleanup less often. Bunnies have this odd habit of liking to eat hay while being on their litter and doing their business, making things very messy. And their pee stinks, oh does it stink. So basically youād spend a lot of time always cleaning the litter box and hay corner. Assuming that the bunny is perfectly litter box-trained - itās more often not the case even with the best intentions and youāll have to clean more than just the litter box.
The bunny language is something that always fascinated me and itās incredibly different from the language of cats and dogs. Bunnies are not very vocal. They emit some sounds but they are rather subtle. When happy to see you, they will run to you and start running in circles around you. They show you their love by licking your hand or your face. But they donāt want to be picked up. They also donāt like to be touched everywhere. They are unlikely to come sleep on your lap. They have zoomies but they look different from cat zoomies - they would run back and forth or in circles at lightspeed and do binkies (like, little hops while they twist) and flops (they suddenly roll to their side and pretend they just died of excitement). Hereās a short demo:
All in all, if you have the right space at home, ideally even a small garden and the willingness to make some spaces bunny-proof, and you are ready to clean hay and litter and to run to a specialized vet if the bunny doesnāt look alright, I would recommend adopting a bunny from the shelter - preferably a pair. Itās an eye-opening experience that will make you look at pets from a different, very fluffy angle.