‘They all have very distinct personalities,’ said my friend Hannah, as she invited me to come to her house and pick a bunny. In truth, I hadn’t given much thought to the preferred personality of my forthcoming rabbit.
I confess I wanted a quick fix of a bunny, a companion for Tinkerbell Butch Cassidy, so called because she started life as a girl and then morphed into a boy when, upon closer inspection, I panicked and declared the vet’s earlier pronouncement misguided.
Tinky had been bought as a companion for TT, the two-tone bunny I found in a box by the side of the road. They had been happy when I thought they were boy and girl, and just as happy when I declared them boy and possible boy. To make it a bit more glamorous, I subtitled them Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Tinky Butch was pretty stoical when TT Sundance passed away last year and living in the kitchen she wasn’t exactly lonely. But I never could shake off the worry that all animals in captivity should be with their own kind. It wasn’t important to me what the personality of the new rabbit was, therefore. All that mattered was what Tinky thought.
And so Tinky and I pitched up at Hannah’s house where her big rabbit Bow was sprawled out on an armchair in the living room, a weary look on her face as daddy rabbit hopped around the back of the television chewing cables and clearly taking the responsibilities of fatherhood very lightly indeed.
Hannah went out to the garden and came back carrying a tray full of wiggly grey fluff, which turned out to be three tiny lionhead bunnies. She put them down on the floor and we took Tinky out of her carry case and let them all run round.
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