Inspired by my rabbit!

Florrie

Mum was crying again when I got up this morning. I’m sort of used to it now because it happens so often. I just go and sit in the kitchen and watch Florrie. She has really nice eyes that don’t look happy or sad, and I like that she can just sit in her hutch, crunching the food that I give her, without having to feel anything.

Sometimes, when I get her out and she’s running around the house, her eyes go really big so I can see the white bits and then I know she’s scared. I know she must be scared because she only does it when things make her jump, like when Mum turns the vacuum cleaner on, or I stand up too quickly from the table or the sofa. When her eyes do that I start to move really slowly and put my hand in front of her eyes and then stroke her.

Rabbits can only see sideways, so you can’t touch them straightaway from above or they get frightened. I read that in a book that Grandma got me for Christmas. It’s called ‘Looking After Your Pet Rabbit’ and has a picture of a big black and white bunny on the front. Florrie doesn’t look like that though. She’s all grey, with little white fluffy bits under her chin. Her ears are smaller too, because she’s a dwarf rabbit and they don’t get big ears.

When I first got her I carried her home in a box from the pet shop and she was tiny. The box was white and had little holes in so that she could breathe. Even though she was small, I sometimes had to give the box to Mum to carry, because it was too heavy. She’s a lot bigger than that now though. Mum thought she was supposed to stay small, and now we might have to buy a new cage so that she can fit in it better. I think that might be why Mum keeps crying, because she said we can’t afford to buy a new hutch and that Florrie’s only a stupid rabbit so she wouldn’t notice anyway.

I don’t think Florrie’s stupid though. She can push a ball around with her nose and it has a bell inside so you can hear her playing. I like it because the bell sounds nice and happy so I know she’s having fun. I don’t think stupid animals can play like that. I think things like slugs and flies are stupid because they just crawl around in circles or fly into windows and that doesn’t seem very fun.

Mum says Florrie is stupid because she eats her own poo, but I was watching an animal programme on TV at Dad’s the other day, and monkeys sometimes eat their poo and they’re really clever. They can open coconuts with rocks and give the zookeepers hugs and that’s almost as clever as humans. I think Florrie eats her poo because she knows it’s good for her. Like I eat carrots even though I hate them because I want to be big and strong when I’m older. And I want to see in the dark.

Rabbits can see in the dark. I know because once I heard Mum shouting at someone in her bedroom and it woke me up, so I crept downstairs to see Florrie. Even with the lights off she still stuck her nose in between the bars of her hutch to smell my hand so she must have seen me come in. It cheers me up when she does that, because if I go into Mum’s room in the middle of the night she shouts at me, but Florrie never makes a single sound.

I wish she could make a noise though, like cats and dogs bark or purr when they’re happy. Florrie just stares at me so I don’t know when she’s happy or not. She has a cardboard tube to climb through and a basket full to the top with straw. It’s quite prickly though, and sometimes she wriggles her nose if it itches from eating it. It’s really funny, because she looks like when you see cartoon rabbits like Bugs Bunny on the TV. On some days I’m allowed to give her the leftover vegetables from the fridge. If I were a rabbit I think I’d like that, so I think she’s happy even though she doesn’t bark or purr.

I don’t like it when I have to go to Dad’s and leave her behind. I know Mum feeds her, but she doesn’t stroke her or get her out to play and she must get bored in her too small hutch with no-one’s hand to sniff. Whenever I come home from Dad’s I get her out and cuddle her really close to me. She is so close that I can hear her heart beating super fast and I think it must mean she’s excited to see me.

My heart beats fast when I’m going high on my swing in the back yard. Mum shouts at me that I’ll fall off and hurt myself, but I like it because I can see into my neighbour’s garden and it has loads of pretty flowers in, and a pond with a fountain and fishes like the one in the park where I go to feed the ducks. I can smell all the flowers when I’m high up too, and it reminds me of how the house used to smell when Dad bought Mum flowers and she’d put them in a big glass vase on the windowsill. The garden looks horrid in winter though, because the trees’ leaves fall off, and the flowers go all droopy and sad-looking. Last year when it was really cold I saw one of the fishes floating in the pond and not moving. Mum said it must have died because its heart had frozen. That scared me because I heard Dad shout at Mum before he left that she had a cold heart. I hope that doesn’t mean she’s going to die.

I know she cries a lot, but she can be fun sometimes. When she’s happy both of us sit on the floor and get Florrie out and we make a square with our legs with her in the middle, and she hops over our legs when she wants to escape. That’s when I have two best friends. But I only have one when Mum cries, because then she won’t play with me. Florrie always wants to play and that’s why she’s the bestest friend ever. I don’t care if she’s just a stupid rabbit because I love her.