Everything, Again
My rabbit died at around noon on Wednesday. I had had it for under ten months. It was less than a year old. He was also the only thing in the world that was truly important to me. I thought constantly about how short a time he would be in my life, how brief are the lifespans of rabbits. But I expected that in the worst case he would pass away after three years, but that I could be confident that he would make it to five, and that if he stayed in good health, remained happy, and was lucky, he’d make it ten. So I considered it my greatest responsibility to see that Patches was comfortable, and well-fed, and widely experienced, and loved for as long as he was on this Earth. At that, as at everything that I do with clarity of purpose and the best of intentions, I utterly failed.
In my effort to give him a good life, a life uncommon among domestic rabbits, I put him in harm’s way. I tried to take him outside most nights, when the weather was fair. Usually, I kept him on a leash, but when after months he had made it clear that he never ran very far, and that he didn’t like being harnessed, I began letting him out without it. I don’t think that was a mistake. I was less than three feet away when he was attacked; the mistake was that I was sitting in front of my building, where that cat couldn’t see me. And I wasn’t paying close enough attention. I don’t think the leash would have mattered.
As a matter of fact, the consequence of having him off the leash was that until the moment of the attack, our last night out together was the best night ever. Patches stepped out tentatively, taking his usual measures to make sure that he would be able to get back in whenever he wanted. It was part of the reason why I stopped using a leash - it seemed clear that he knew where his home was, and always wanted to return there. But when he ventured out, naked and free, he danced as he ran, leaping up and kicking his powerful back legs. We were outside together for more than an hour, and between the times when he chewed the grass, or dug in the dirt, or lay down to rest, we ran side-by-side for long stretches beside the school across the street, circling and chasing each other back and forth. He seemed as happy as he had ever been, and I was happier than I had been for many years.
Before the attack, Patches seemed uncertain as to whether he wanted to be inside or out. He lingered by the door, and went into the hallway when I opened it, but then climbed back out when I opened it again. It occurred to me that we had been out a long time already, but on a night like that I didn’t want to deprive him of a moment’s enjoyment if he wanted it. And so it is that in being eager to set free and please the ones that I love, I thereby destroy them. In this case, my reward for such accommodation was the unique horror of hearing my bunny scream - a sound that is amazingly just like a human being’s scream, except smaller.
Despite terror of the moment, he seemed to come away from the attack unscathed. When I chased away the cat, Patches took off running with no trouble. I chased him and found him hiding in my garden, then took him inside, where I checked him thoroughly for blood and painful responses to touch, and found nothing. He seemed thoroughly shaken, as would be expected, but he sat normally in the middle of my living room, he moved about from time to time, and I saw him drinking tea from the ceramic cup that I usually left out for him. He seemed unhurt, yet unwell, and I began reflecting almost immediately that that fucking cat had taken my rabbit’s innocence away. Until then, he had felt safe, secure, without worry. He was laying comfortably beside the lilac bushes, enjoying the night air and the texture of the grass, with me right in his line of sight. A moment later, he was screaming as he was tackled across the sidewalk, and then was pulled from the edge of death. I wonder if, in the day that followed that he found himself suddenly and irrepressibly aware of death, and of predation, and of the fact that I had failed to protect him. With no evident physical harm done, I could only suppose that the change in his behavior was psychological.
An added dimension to the pain of this loss is that I have no idea what killed my rabbit. The veterinarians don’t know in absence of an autopsy, which there was no point in having performed, and which I surely couldn’t have afforded. The best thing that the vet could tell me was that as prey animals, rabbits are hard to turn around when they are having a hard time, and that once they start on a downward spiral, their instincts usually take over and let them follow it to its conclusion. Whether phrased in terms of the physical instincts of a small animal or the psychology of a beloved pet, a dominating theory here seems to be that on some level, Patches gave up the will to live.
There is no shortage of guilt for me in this. It’s bad enough that I am at fault for his initial trauma, but there are a bevy of questions and self-chastisements regarding what I could have done differently after the fact. Foremost: I shouldn’t have left him alone. I had made a commitment to go out for the day with my only other friend on Tuesday, and I kept those plans despite my rabbit’s fragile state. I placed him in his room at 7:30 in the morning, fed him, told him I loved him and that I had to go away for the day, but that I would leave the radio on for him and come back to play with him in the evening.
When I came home, he was sitting in his litter box and wouldn’t come out. Usually, when I opened the door after being away, he would bound out and hop in circles around my feet, bidding me to chase him through the apartment. Now he barely looked at me. I went in and petted his head, but tried not to be too intrusive. For the rest of the evening, I felt as though I was dealing with a friend who had undergone some serious trauma with which they could not cope. I wondered whether he was angry at me, or just sad, or really sick. I watched him climb out of the litter box and run under his chair, and I was heartened to see that he could still move all right. But still he didn’t come out. I resolved to give him space in hopes that he would come out on his own, and I said as much, naturally speaking to myself more than to him.
Eventually, in my worry, I crawled into his room again anyway, reaching under the chair to stroke his head, which leaned down to accept the gesture. It was then that I noticed he hadn’t eaten any of his food, and I began to worry in earnest. After a couple of minutes, he got up from his pace under the chair and ran under the desk on the far side of the room. I left him alone again and went to have dinner in the living room with my friend Lisa. I was frightened by Patches’ insistence on solitude. If the problem was physical, it meant it was serious and that he might have been expecting to die. If it was psychological, leaving him alone that day was probably the worst thing I could have done to him.
But when we lay down to bed, we heard him in his room, and it sounded as if he might have been playing with his papers. I looked toward the room and watched him run out a few steps, just like he always did when coming out at night. He paused and ran to the head of the bed for me to pet him, and I felt a tremendous sense of relief. It was short lived, though, because as I petted him, I noticed his body twitching. It was then that I determined something must have been seriously wrong with him.
When I got up to get him water, the sound of the faucet spooked him and sent him toward the wall, reinforcing the idea that the problem was psychological trauma. When I got up again to moisten a paper towel with which to cool down his ears, he got up and scampered behind the sofa just as I lay back down. He stayed there for the rest of the night, in the place where he seemed to feel most secure. I wanted to hold him on my chest and pet him as long as he’d let me, but I didn’t want to put any strain on him by picking him up.
When I woke up this morning, the worry set in instantly. I looked for him behind the sofa and he wasn’t there, nor was he in his room. I found him sitting beside the toilet, sort of rocking on his paws, seeming disoriented. It was painfully clear that he was really sick. I carried him to the bed with me, hoping I could pet him a while and monitor his condition, but as much as he was out of sorts when just sitting on his own, he had no trouble getting up and running for concealment behind a large picture that leans against my front window ledge.
Through the first hour of morning I watched him partially emerge every few minutes, either crawling forward or backing his tail out, and invariably turning around to face the other way. The word “vet” came to mind and I began to worry about the prospect of being presented with courses of treatment that I couldn’t possibly pay for and having to let my pet die instead. Still, I kept hoping for the best as I kept going back to pet him and coax him to stay with me and try to come back around.
When he emptied his bladder where he was sitting, I was terrified that that meant the end, and when he stayed responsive despite that, I had Lisa start calling animal hospitals, and then I called my mother to see if she could help me get him there. Lisa left to catch her own ride home, telling the bunny one last time that she loved it, while I waited for my mother to contact a vet that could see Patches today. She called me back to say she’d pick us up at 10:15 for an 11:00 appointment. It was then 9:30. I dressed and got Patches’ box ready. When I placed him in the box to take him outside, he stood on his hind legs for a moment, for the first time in days.
We were a half an hour late for the appointment because we got lost. The entire time we were on our way, I held the box in my lap, covered with a jacket to shield him from the sun, and kept a hand upon him. As we traveled, he became more and more active, shifting position and turning around, responding to my petting, but sometimes laying down one cheek or the other and going cloudy-eyed. Still, he was increasingly cognizant, and I began to be rather confident in his recovery. Is there any loss at all that does not follow a final, grand upsurge of false hope? Is that unique to my experience?
Who could deny that when he was barely conscious behind the picture, taking him to the vet was the right thing to do? But in retrospect I have tremendous doubts. I was going to come away from this experience with terrible guilt no matter how he died. If I hadn’t gone to the vet and he’d still passed away, I’d have wondered if they could have done something for him. I understand that if the result was his death, there’s no course of action that I could have been confident was the right one. But that changes nothing. As it is, I worry that taking him to the vet may have been what killed him.
I’ll never know whether it was his mind or his body that gave out. When I think about him coming out of his room for the last time, or pulling himself back up each time he started to fade, I wonder if he was struggling to pull himself back together, to beat his illness with will power. And knowing that he seemed to get better before they took him away, I wonder if it could have worked. Without being able to ask the poor creature what was wrong, it was impossible to know what could have saved him and what could have killed him. If he was struggling to keep himself going, to fight the instincts that drag a prey animal down towards death, the last thing he needed the morning after the attack was to be left alone, and the last thing he needed the morning following that was to be taken to a veterinarian for the first time, taken away from me and placed on an exam table surrounded by unfamiliar faces who prodded him and placed tubes inside him. Even if the damage was purely physical, it seems clear now that if recovery was possible at the time that I took him away, it was only going to happen by his own efforts. The added trauma of emergency care did nothing but speed his death.
And God was it quick. The vet told me that he was having a hard time and that it’s hard to turn prey animals around, then her assistant told me that they’d gotten a catheter into him so they could get fluids flowing, and two minutes later the vet came back and told me that he had passed away. Another assistant brought me the body so that I could say goodbye, and when the door closed and I was left holding him, lain on his side swaddled in a blanket, his eyes seeming clamped shut, I broke down and wept in a way that I simply didn’t think I was capable of. I’ve done the same more than once since then. I insisted that I was sorry and that I had loved him more than anything.
When we laid my grandfather to rest last month, there wasn’t a dry eye at the funeral except for mine. I was completely at peace with his death, and I even smiled during most of the service, seeing how well at rest he appeared in the casket, and watching the butterfly that circled above us for much of the morning. It was my earnest belief that there is no tragedy in the death of a very old man. My grandfather was over ninety years old. He had served in World War Two, married a refugee, immigrated to America, lived a long, full life, and lived to see the births of several great-grandchildren. He’d had the fullness of time, and though that time can never be enough, his last years were little more than a process of losing strength and loosening his grip on life. The impact that my grandfather had on me was already done, and there was little left to do for him, little more life that he could enjoy in his state. At the end the pain was not watching him die, but watching him barely cling to life. He just had to stop fighting and go to his rest, because to come back from the brink again and again would only have left him with less of himself at each turn.
My pet, however, could have had as much as ninety percent of his life still ahead of him, if he had pulled through. Why do prey animals even have defense mechanisms if they’ll just give up life after they’ve survived being in the clutches of a predator? Patches ran so well right after the fact that it would have been easy to imagine him running for miles thereafter. But now that I know that it killed him, I wonder if the course of events is indicative of tendencies that I somehow managed to teach him - to run away only after the threat has passed, to let it hurt you and kill you only after the damage has already been done. Only he has taken that skill to a level I could have only hoped for, in that he gave up on living and actually died. Frequently, and for long stretches of time, I’ve found myself in a state where I have no will to go on willing, but not reason enough to commit suicide. It seems a shame that if I were like my departed rabbit, that would be enough. I expect I’ll suffer through another period like that now, and come through it alive, again. I’d be surprised if I didn’t take such a severe turn for the worse again at this point. I’ve lost my only emotional and moral anchor. It may have just been a pet, but it was the only thing in the world that could still give my life purpose, and that made me feel anything less than alone from day to day. He was the only thing that I felt I could still affect positively, and so the only thing that imbued me with a modicum of self-worth. For companionship like that, I would have given up the promise of a thousand years for myself in favor of just five more for him. But of course, no one is given that chance. I was only given the chance to protect him, and I didn’t know that I had failed until it was too late.
I don’t think anyone should have wept for my grandfather if giving up on life was what ended it for him. He was too old for it to be tragic. If that was good enough to end my life, I hope that no one would weep for me. I am too sad and broken for it to be tragic. But Patches was in the prime of his life. He was experiencing things that few rabbits could, and I think he was happy most of the time. There was so much ahead for him, and so much I could have given him even though I have no money and no social support with which to improve my own life. That didn’t matter much with my pet. All that really mattered was love and commitment.
Thursday morning, my dreams were populated with animals. In part, I dreamed that two Dutch rabbits appeared in my apartment. They were black and white, with conspicuous black spots on the white portions of their fur, like Patches’ own, but distinct unto themselves. I awoke and speculated that they were the children that Patches never had. I had never neutered him and had no intention to do so, and I’d hoped he would have a chance to breed just one litter at some point in his life. I figured there would be time. He was less than a year old. I’d thought about having one rabbit throughout my life, all in the same bloodline, so that even though they would be short lived, I’d be able to trace every one back to the last, and back to the first. So much has been lost: a pet, a friend, a constant companion, my sense of self-worth, perhaps a barrier to my insanity; nine years of an innocent creature’s life, a world of possibilities, and a family both for me and for my dearly departed pet. I can’t think of what I’ve got left. Bringing home Patches was the only thing that ever made the hopelessness go away.
All I've got is a webcam, so these are the only pictures I have of him:
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18>
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
In my effort to give him a good life, a life uncommon among domestic rabbits, I put him in harm’s way. I tried to take him outside most nights, when the weather was fair. Usually, I kept him on a leash, but when after months he had made it clear that he never ran very far, and that he didn’t like being harnessed, I began letting him out without it. I don’t think that was a mistake. I was less than three feet away when he was attacked; the mistake was that I was sitting in front of my building, where that cat couldn’t see me. And I wasn’t paying close enough attention. I don’t think the leash would have mattered.
As a matter of fact, the consequence of having him off the leash was that until the moment of the attack, our last night out together was the best night ever. Patches stepped out tentatively, taking his usual measures to make sure that he would be able to get back in whenever he wanted. It was part of the reason why I stopped using a leash - it seemed clear that he knew where his home was, and always wanted to return there. But when he ventured out, naked and free, he danced as he ran, leaping up and kicking his powerful back legs. We were outside together for more than an hour, and between the times when he chewed the grass, or dug in the dirt, or lay down to rest, we ran side-by-side for long stretches beside the school across the street, circling and chasing each other back and forth. He seemed as happy as he had ever been, and I was happier than I had been for many years.
Before the attack, Patches seemed uncertain as to whether he wanted to be inside or out. He lingered by the door, and went into the hallway when I opened it, but then climbed back out when I opened it again. It occurred to me that we had been out a long time already, but on a night like that I didn’t want to deprive him of a moment’s enjoyment if he wanted it. And so it is that in being eager to set free and please the ones that I love, I thereby destroy them. In this case, my reward for such accommodation was the unique horror of hearing my bunny scream - a sound that is amazingly just like a human being’s scream, except smaller.
Despite terror of the moment, he seemed to come away from the attack unscathed. When I chased away the cat, Patches took off running with no trouble. I chased him and found him hiding in my garden, then took him inside, where I checked him thoroughly for blood and painful responses to touch, and found nothing. He seemed thoroughly shaken, as would be expected, but he sat normally in the middle of my living room, he moved about from time to time, and I saw him drinking tea from the ceramic cup that I usually left out for him. He seemed unhurt, yet unwell, and I began reflecting almost immediately that that fucking cat had taken my rabbit’s innocence away. Until then, he had felt safe, secure, without worry. He was laying comfortably beside the lilac bushes, enjoying the night air and the texture of the grass, with me right in his line of sight. A moment later, he was screaming as he was tackled across the sidewalk, and then was pulled from the edge of death. I wonder if, in the day that followed that he found himself suddenly and irrepressibly aware of death, and of predation, and of the fact that I had failed to protect him. With no evident physical harm done, I could only suppose that the change in his behavior was psychological.
An added dimension to the pain of this loss is that I have no idea what killed my rabbit. The veterinarians don’t know in absence of an autopsy, which there was no point in having performed, and which I surely couldn’t have afforded. The best thing that the vet could tell me was that as prey animals, rabbits are hard to turn around when they are having a hard time, and that once they start on a downward spiral, their instincts usually take over and let them follow it to its conclusion. Whether phrased in terms of the physical instincts of a small animal or the psychology of a beloved pet, a dominating theory here seems to be that on some level, Patches gave up the will to live.
There is no shortage of guilt for me in this. It’s bad enough that I am at fault for his initial trauma, but there are a bevy of questions and self-chastisements regarding what I could have done differently after the fact. Foremost: I shouldn’t have left him alone. I had made a commitment to go out for the day with my only other friend on Tuesday, and I kept those plans despite my rabbit’s fragile state. I placed him in his room at 7:30 in the morning, fed him, told him I loved him and that I had to go away for the day, but that I would leave the radio on for him and come back to play with him in the evening.
When I came home, he was sitting in his litter box and wouldn’t come out. Usually, when I opened the door after being away, he would bound out and hop in circles around my feet, bidding me to chase him through the apartment. Now he barely looked at me. I went in and petted his head, but tried not to be too intrusive. For the rest of the evening, I felt as though I was dealing with a friend who had undergone some serious trauma with which they could not cope. I wondered whether he was angry at me, or just sad, or really sick. I watched him climb out of the litter box and run under his chair, and I was heartened to see that he could still move all right. But still he didn’t come out. I resolved to give him space in hopes that he would come out on his own, and I said as much, naturally speaking to myself more than to him.
Eventually, in my worry, I crawled into his room again anyway, reaching under the chair to stroke his head, which leaned down to accept the gesture. It was then that I noticed he hadn’t eaten any of his food, and I began to worry in earnest. After a couple of minutes, he got up from his pace under the chair and ran under the desk on the far side of the room. I left him alone again and went to have dinner in the living room with my friend Lisa. I was frightened by Patches’ insistence on solitude. If the problem was physical, it meant it was serious and that he might have been expecting to die. If it was psychological, leaving him alone that day was probably the worst thing I could have done to him.
But when we lay down to bed, we heard him in his room, and it sounded as if he might have been playing with his papers. I looked toward the room and watched him run out a few steps, just like he always did when coming out at night. He paused and ran to the head of the bed for me to pet him, and I felt a tremendous sense of relief. It was short lived, though, because as I petted him, I noticed his body twitching. It was then that I determined something must have been seriously wrong with him.
When I got up to get him water, the sound of the faucet spooked him and sent him toward the wall, reinforcing the idea that the problem was psychological trauma. When I got up again to moisten a paper towel with which to cool down his ears, he got up and scampered behind the sofa just as I lay back down. He stayed there for the rest of the night, in the place where he seemed to feel most secure. I wanted to hold him on my chest and pet him as long as he’d let me, but I didn’t want to put any strain on him by picking him up.
When I woke up this morning, the worry set in instantly. I looked for him behind the sofa and he wasn’t there, nor was he in his room. I found him sitting beside the toilet, sort of rocking on his paws, seeming disoriented. It was painfully clear that he was really sick. I carried him to the bed with me, hoping I could pet him a while and monitor his condition, but as much as he was out of sorts when just sitting on his own, he had no trouble getting up and running for concealment behind a large picture that leans against my front window ledge.
Through the first hour of morning I watched him partially emerge every few minutes, either crawling forward or backing his tail out, and invariably turning around to face the other way. The word “vet” came to mind and I began to worry about the prospect of being presented with courses of treatment that I couldn’t possibly pay for and having to let my pet die instead. Still, I kept hoping for the best as I kept going back to pet him and coax him to stay with me and try to come back around.
When he emptied his bladder where he was sitting, I was terrified that that meant the end, and when he stayed responsive despite that, I had Lisa start calling animal hospitals, and then I called my mother to see if she could help me get him there. Lisa left to catch her own ride home, telling the bunny one last time that she loved it, while I waited for my mother to contact a vet that could see Patches today. She called me back to say she’d pick us up at 10:15 for an 11:00 appointment. It was then 9:30. I dressed and got Patches’ box ready. When I placed him in the box to take him outside, he stood on his hind legs for a moment, for the first time in days.
We were a half an hour late for the appointment because we got lost. The entire time we were on our way, I held the box in my lap, covered with a jacket to shield him from the sun, and kept a hand upon him. As we traveled, he became more and more active, shifting position and turning around, responding to my petting, but sometimes laying down one cheek or the other and going cloudy-eyed. Still, he was increasingly cognizant, and I began to be rather confident in his recovery. Is there any loss at all that does not follow a final, grand upsurge of false hope? Is that unique to my experience?
Who could deny that when he was barely conscious behind the picture, taking him to the vet was the right thing to do? But in retrospect I have tremendous doubts. I was going to come away from this experience with terrible guilt no matter how he died. If I hadn’t gone to the vet and he’d still passed away, I’d have wondered if they could have done something for him. I understand that if the result was his death, there’s no course of action that I could have been confident was the right one. But that changes nothing. As it is, I worry that taking him to the vet may have been what killed him.
I’ll never know whether it was his mind or his body that gave out. When I think about him coming out of his room for the last time, or pulling himself back up each time he started to fade, I wonder if he was struggling to pull himself back together, to beat his illness with will power. And knowing that he seemed to get better before they took him away, I wonder if it could have worked. Without being able to ask the poor creature what was wrong, it was impossible to know what could have saved him and what could have killed him. If he was struggling to keep himself going, to fight the instincts that drag a prey animal down towards death, the last thing he needed the morning after the attack was to be left alone, and the last thing he needed the morning following that was to be taken to a veterinarian for the first time, taken away from me and placed on an exam table surrounded by unfamiliar faces who prodded him and placed tubes inside him. Even if the damage was purely physical, it seems clear now that if recovery was possible at the time that I took him away, it was only going to happen by his own efforts. The added trauma of emergency care did nothing but speed his death.
And God was it quick. The vet told me that he was having a hard time and that it’s hard to turn prey animals around, then her assistant told me that they’d gotten a catheter into him so they could get fluids flowing, and two minutes later the vet came back and told me that he had passed away. Another assistant brought me the body so that I could say goodbye, and when the door closed and I was left holding him, lain on his side swaddled in a blanket, his eyes seeming clamped shut, I broke down and wept in a way that I simply didn’t think I was capable of. I’ve done the same more than once since then. I insisted that I was sorry and that I had loved him more than anything.
When we laid my grandfather to rest last month, there wasn’t a dry eye at the funeral except for mine. I was completely at peace with his death, and I even smiled during most of the service, seeing how well at rest he appeared in the casket, and watching the butterfly that circled above us for much of the morning. It was my earnest belief that there is no tragedy in the death of a very old man. My grandfather was over ninety years old. He had served in World War Two, married a refugee, immigrated to America, lived a long, full life, and lived to see the births of several great-grandchildren. He’d had the fullness of time, and though that time can never be enough, his last years were little more than a process of losing strength and loosening his grip on life. The impact that my grandfather had on me was already done, and there was little left to do for him, little more life that he could enjoy in his state. At the end the pain was not watching him die, but watching him barely cling to life. He just had to stop fighting and go to his rest, because to come back from the brink again and again would only have left him with less of himself at each turn.
My pet, however, could have had as much as ninety percent of his life still ahead of him, if he had pulled through. Why do prey animals even have defense mechanisms if they’ll just give up life after they’ve survived being in the clutches of a predator? Patches ran so well right after the fact that it would have been easy to imagine him running for miles thereafter. But now that I know that it killed him, I wonder if the course of events is indicative of tendencies that I somehow managed to teach him - to run away only after the threat has passed, to let it hurt you and kill you only after the damage has already been done. Only he has taken that skill to a level I could have only hoped for, in that he gave up on living and actually died. Frequently, and for long stretches of time, I’ve found myself in a state where I have no will to go on willing, but not reason enough to commit suicide. It seems a shame that if I were like my departed rabbit, that would be enough. I expect I’ll suffer through another period like that now, and come through it alive, again. I’d be surprised if I didn’t take such a severe turn for the worse again at this point. I’ve lost my only emotional and moral anchor. It may have just been a pet, but it was the only thing in the world that could still give my life purpose, and that made me feel anything less than alone from day to day. He was the only thing that I felt I could still affect positively, and so the only thing that imbued me with a modicum of self-worth. For companionship like that, I would have given up the promise of a thousand years for myself in favor of just five more for him. But of course, no one is given that chance. I was only given the chance to protect him, and I didn’t know that I had failed until it was too late.
I don’t think anyone should have wept for my grandfather if giving up on life was what ended it for him. He was too old for it to be tragic. If that was good enough to end my life, I hope that no one would weep for me. I am too sad and broken for it to be tragic. But Patches was in the prime of his life. He was experiencing things that few rabbits could, and I think he was happy most of the time. There was so much ahead for him, and so much I could have given him even though I have no money and no social support with which to improve my own life. That didn’t matter much with my pet. All that really mattered was love and commitment.
Thursday morning, my dreams were populated with animals. In part, I dreamed that two Dutch rabbits appeared in my apartment. They were black and white, with conspicuous black spots on the white portions of their fur, like Patches’ own, but distinct unto themselves. I awoke and speculated that they were the children that Patches never had. I had never neutered him and had no intention to do so, and I’d hoped he would have a chance to breed just one litter at some point in his life. I figured there would be time. He was less than a year old. I’d thought about having one rabbit throughout my life, all in the same bloodline, so that even though they would be short lived, I’d be able to trace every one back to the last, and back to the first. So much has been lost: a pet, a friend, a constant companion, my sense of self-worth, perhaps a barrier to my insanity; nine years of an innocent creature’s life, a world of possibilities, and a family both for me and for my dearly departed pet. I can’t think of what I’ve got left. Bringing home Patches was the only thing that ever made the hopelessness go away.
All I've got is a webcam, so these are the only pictures I have of him:
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18>
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18
By chunasperendao at 2011-08-18