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Basil Bunny, 1999-2007
By Greg | March 6, 2007
With us since January of 2000, when she was a youngster bunny of just 8 or 10 weeks, our house rabbit Basil had to be put to sleep yesterday. We’ll miss her jumping, wiggling, racing, mischievous personality; her penchant for long hugs; her life-long quest to become friends with the cat; even her discovery that an effective way to get our attention was to find something not meant to be chewed on by bunnies and chew on it.
Basil in January 2000
(click for full-size)
I remember her best as Adventure Bunny, who specialized in getting into things and exploring in ways that bunnies don’t normally do. I remember her jumping onto the futon and climbing up the back of it — almost three feet off the ground — apparently just to see what was there. That seemed unusual for a normally ground-dwelling prey species. I think of her chasing the cat across the room, running in circles around her, ‘humming’ in a barely-audible bunny display of affection. Eventually she learned the cat had claws, but even that didn’t stop her trying to be friends. And I can picture vividly the way she would zoom across our back garden when we’d take her outside, spontaneously leaping into the air and wiggling sideways. Actually, she didn’t need the back garden for either her zooming or her leaping. One place we lived had a squarish sitting room, perfectly shaped for her to make 3 or 4 circuits around the perimeter at top bunny speed, a cartoonish look of determination on her face as her long slicked-back ears flapped up and down.
But she was also Snuggly Bunny, who liked to sit alongside us on the floor and have her head stroked or her fur groomed. I can still picture the very first time she allowed me to pet her nose and head, ever so briefly, thereby establishing her in terms of rabbit social etiquette as ‘top bunny’. (In the rabbit social vocabulary, the bunny who is groomed is the top bunny.) Within weeks, this social exchange was no longer tentative or brief, and as soon as one of us would sit down on the floor, she’d hippity-hop over to our right side, immediately turn around, and back in and a little sideways, so she was facing away from us with her whole left side snuggled up along our leg. Clearly she found this to be the best bunny petting position, allowing us to reach forward to her head and her back at the best angle.
Basil in April 2006
(click for full-size)
Whether she was playing with a plastic flower pot (grabbing it by the rim and tossing it up in the air), chewing up an old phone book, seeking out her hugs, or just flopping down and stretching both back legs straight out behind her, she seemed to have just the right attitude toward life. I think she calmed us and made us laugh even when she was just tending to normal bunny business, like sitting up and washing her ears, grabbing each one in turn with her paws and pulling it down to be licked.
Then this past December, she suddenly wound up with a tumour that turned out to be a large, nasty, rapidly-growing extra-skeletal osteosarcoma. So rare that such a tumour had only been reported once in the literature, the lump appeared outside her rib cage and within 5 days necessitated the removal of a mass of tissue about the size of her head. We really deliberated at the time whether subjecting her to a general anaesthetic and a major operation like that was the right thing to do, especially giving the uncertainty of whether that was the only tumour and whether it might have already begun to spread. But we soon realized it had been absolutely the right thing to do. The surgeon did an excellent job with the operation, and Basil recovered better and more quickly than even our most optimistic hopes. She had a great couple of months, returning to her old adventurous self and seeming to enjoy life even more than before. I have no idea why this was the case, but after the lumpectomy she truly seemed more happy and sociable than ever before. We are so grateful to have had that extra couple of months with her.
But then just a week or so before her death, her appetite tapered off, and we tried all of her favourite foods in an attempt to get her back to normal eating. She lost weight rapidly, and two days before we put her to sleep, it became apparent that her breathing wasn’t right either. A chest x-ray later revealed masses scattered all through her lungs, and so much additional tumour occupied her chest cavity that the volume left for her lungs had been reduced to just a fraction of normal.
On her last night with us, she hadn’t eaten at all — none of her favourites like carrot tops, or parsely, or even mint could tempt her — and she was very obviously unwell. (Again, as a prey species, rabbits are extremely good at hiding any signs of distress, so it’s not unusual for a very unwell bunny to look perfectly alright.) The next morning I had my breakfast next to her before we all set out for the vet. Struggling as she was, she still managed to make her way to my side (more of a walk than her normal hippity-hop), turn around, back up, and snuggle in for 45 minutes of hugs.
There was that familiar feeling of her head under my hand, and even a few ‘tooth crunches’ (tooth grinding signifies a contented bunny). It was cozy and comfortable and familiar, and I think we both needed it. I don’t suppose she knew it was our last hug together, but I did. I tried to take a page out of her book, just enjoying the moment and the hug and not worrying about anything else. I didn’t really succeed at that, but I’m glad she did, and I am grateful for that last 45 minutes and the preceding 7 years.
She was a great bunny.
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