Chloe: part deux

I spoke too soon. Barely two days after the previous post, Chloe inflicted a significant wound to one of Cassius’ back legs, and he was duly taken to the vet for an expensive stitch-up. He came through that fine but was sent home with medication to be applied and with various follow up appointments, all of which was made more awkward as we were due to be setting off on holiday to Pembrokeshire the following Saturday. We had already booked both Cassius and Chloe into ‘Reggie's Retreat’, a small animal boarding facility in Bracknell recommended by someone in a local Facebook group. Ruth had to contact them to ask if the two could be housed separately, and whether the proprietor Sophie would very much mind administering Cassius’ medication and taking him for a follow up vet appointment the following week. We weren’t at all sure she’d agree to this, but she turned out to be a star, taking him to his vet appointment and phoning through updates to our holiday rental.

Cassius’ leg wound became infected and we weren’t at all sure he’d pull through, but at the time of writing he does seem to have made a full recovery, though the fur hasn’t grown back yet. We kept him caged for a week or so after we returned from holiday, partly to protect him from Chloe and partly to make it easier for Ruth to catch him in order to medicate him. Since being released from confinement, he has been housed in our second bedroom/my office, where he spends a lot of time anyway snoozing at my feet under the desk. Ruth was concerned about muscle atrophy, but he was back almost immediately to jumping onto the footstool and chair in my office, and generally running about. He is an accomplished jumper, certainly given his age, and I realized that he’s able to use the tub chair in the first picture as a launchpad to get onto my desk, so have been having to place barriers in the way of him doing this.

Cassius exploring after his release

Taking the exploring a bit too far

Ruth did phone the Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary to tell them that the bonding had broken down somewhat, and had what seems to have been a fairly ill-tempered conversation with Laura, who (according to Ruth) suggested that it must have been something Ruth had done wrong. We subsequently called in to Reading Rabbit Rescue to seek Sandra’s take on the matter. Her view was that the OAS’ defensiveness might have stemmed from a worry that we were going to ask them to pay the vets’ bills – something that hadn’t even occurred to us, but we gathered that this has happened to Sandra a few times after bondings gone wrong. We ended up jointly concluding that it probably is not a good idea to attempt to put Cassius and Chloe back together. It’s looking like the only option is to rehome Chloe, which is a shame but we do need to have two rabbits who can co-exist. We've shelved the issue until after the Christmas/New Year break but will either need to ask the OAS if they’ll take her back or wait until RRR can take her in, which Sandra indicated they might be able to do from February.

Sandra wasn’t optimistic that Chloe will be a candidate for re-bonding given her record with us and suggested that Ruth works on socializing her to get her more used to people in order to make her more suitable for re-homing as an ‘only’ bunny. Sandra did ponder whether Chloe has actually been neutered, given her aggressively territorial behaviour – we don’t know, is the answer; rescue facilities are supposed to make sure all their animals are neutered before being re-homed but Sandra suggested that animals occasionally fall through the gap on this one. Obviously Ruth and I don't have the know-how to check this, but from what Sandra said we'd expect to have noticed a smell with an un-neutered animal, which we haven't.

As we’d got Chloe with the aim of providing Cassius with a companion, we also expressed concern about him being on his own and wondered whether we should try again. Sandra’s advice was that given Cassius’ age (8), we shouldn’t worry too much – if he’d been a two-year old bunny she’d have advised trying again with a different bonding. So it looks as if he may remain on his own, which isn’t ideal - presumably preferable to being housed with a violent companion, but who knows how rabbits' minds work. Given that I'm working at home most of the time, he has fairly constant companionship in his favoured room. We’ve generally been letting him out in the late afternoon/evening to have a run about the house (albeit keeping the door to the dining room, where Chloe is, firmly closed). Here he is on Boxing Day in the living room, seemingly having a go at accessing a box of Milk Tray. The chocs were taken off him shortly after this.

Ironically, Ruth received this from the OAS in mid-December. She did consider responding with the story of Cassius and Chloe, but suspected it wouldn’t make it through the “feel-good” screening. For balance, they ought to have a “The Ones That Got Away” section, surely.