Christmas Holidays

I have been waiting for these holidays for a long, long time! Finally, the office is now closed until the 4th of January, so I can catch up with things and spend also more time with the bunnies and my knitting :)

It was a quiet and relaxing Christmas here, just what we all wanted. We watched some films on TV, I did plenty of knitting and spent time spoiling Miss Eve and Neville, who really did see little of me in the last two months.

We had a few of days of snow in Nottingham too, and Miss Eve and Neville had great fun in playing in it:









Going through the pictures taken one year ago, we found some of bunnies of Christmas past:


Hugo's first Christmas with us, still a single bun!

Christmas 2008: Hugo with bunwife Miss Eve

It's some bittersweet memories I've dug out...Hugo did not stay with us long after that.

Visiting Germany

I promised a report on Audrey, and here it is!

I am pleased to let you know that Audrey was a very appreciated help during my recent trip to Germany. She helped me at the airport with some shopping:

and she kept me company in Berlin, here at the Hauptbahnhof (central station):

I went to get a freshly pressed carrot and orange juice, which we shared, and while I was queuing she kept an eye on our luggage:

Berlin Central Station is amazing and we would have loved to explore it in detail, but it was a bit tricky to move around with two wheeled piece of luggage. Because we had plenty of time until our train to Rostock was due, we waited a lot. She was very patient and did not complain, as there was plenty to look around:

Finally, our train arrived and we boarded. Audrey took immediately a seat in front of me, and as it was already too dark to watch the landscape going by, she settled with a good ghost story:

We arrived well on time in Rostock and after a brief taxi drive to our hotel, we checked in. The room was very nice!


And we ended our first day in Germany with room service!

A final note: while unpacking my handbag I wasn't at all surprised to find a pellet and a crunchy treat in my handbag. Surely Audrey consulted Miss Eve and Neville, and they recommended her to smuggle treats in my bag?

Thursday is for bunnies sharing...

...a bowl of salad with some fresh fennel!!

The bunnies have met last week after Audrey had time to refresh a bit after the long intercontinental flight. She didn't seem particularly hungry at first, but when I served the salad there was not much talking going on between buns, everyone tucked in with gusto!

More on Audrey soon!

Tock-tober with Audrey!

Hi everyone, I would like to announce the safe arrival of Audrey in Miss Eve&Neville's household!
Please excuse the lack of pictures and the small post - it is hard to blog when one's on the road... pictures and more on the encounter of the bunnies with Audrey will follow soon!

PS:Special thanks to Cadbury's mum, who provided Audrey with some proviants for the trip (a tub of dried banana slices and a large bag of craisins), plus some literature to entertain bun on the trip, and to share with us :)

Tock-tober in Nottinghamshire

We celebrate Tock-tober too...here in a double whammy, black and shiny and white with ginger and brown/tan spots...tail is coloured too (see what I mean if I say Neville is Orlando's lost brother separated at birth?).

Bunnies' benefit raffle - last hours!

I just found out following a link about this bunny raffle organized by Bridget in favour of the Heartland Rabbit Rescue. Bridget is a very talented jewelry artist (here you can see the goodies in her etsy shop) but also a bunny slave like most of us here. Time is running away, and tonight at midnight the raffle will be over, so...would you like to get a ticket or more for the bunnies?

I will be back later with a bunny memory post. And maybe some knitting.

Binkies...binkies everywhere!

Hoppy greetings to everyone!

We're back!!

Neville and Miss Eve are well (Miss Eve fully recovered from her respiratory infection, and we still do not know what it was, as the culture results aren't back from the lab yet...!), human Mum is well too (but overworked - hey, someone has to pay for bunny salads!) and Mr D did recover well from chickenpox - good thing bunnies can't get it!

We've missed lots and we better start reading the blogs...and later there will be bunny binkies here for everyone ;-)

Disapproval oncoming

Thank you all for the good vibes to Miss Eve and the encouragement...you are all wonderful!
Jo called me when I was about to leave to bring my visiting friend to the airport, to tell me that Miss Eve has passed the sedation with flying colours, no trouble whatsoever. They used the lightest sedation dosis and it worked perfectly. During the procedures, heart and vital signs were monitored and everything was well. The rasping sounds were heard occasionally, when she was breathing in, but otherwise all went well.
The blood work was fine, no anomalies found there, and the x-rays did not show more than a darkening of the lower section of the lungs, no masses shown (phew! so no tumors!), and they shaved her belly (oh! can you hear the disapproval??) to take a scan, to see if the x-rays had missed anything. This was fine, no issues with kidneys or other organs, so there :)
Diagnosis seems to be a bronchitis of some sort, although there is no discharge from the lungs and never had been. She pointed out that it could have been a consequence from pasturella, however she never showed sympthoms...oh these bunnies!
So... we're picking her up today in 3 hrs time after having spent a night at their bunny hotel as I was unable to collect her before their closing time, as I was still miles away from home and Mr D managed to get caught in a traffic jam on his way to the vet and was LATE!!
I shall post more once I am back from the vets with Miss Eve, and have also had a chance to take a look at the x-rays and scan pics...

Waiting

Miss Eve is now at the vets and there isn't much to do now for us apart from wait. This is truly stressing us all - even Neville is not happy to be all alone in the large crate! I have been told by Jo that I will definitely get a call before lunchtime with the results, although Miss Eve won't be ready to be picked up home until later in the afternoon. I packed her favourite lunch that I left with her at the vet this morning: tender romaine, spring greens, fennel greens, pellets and giant organic oats.
This should be enough for her to eat while she waits to come home...
Here's a picture of the perfect couple taken this morning - they were engaged in mutual bum grooming!

There's Neville's fur everywhere...will you think I vacuumed just the day before?!?

Tuesday Bunday news

Miss Eve developed a strange sound last weekend...sort of a grunt, mostly heard when she's grooming herself and when she's eating, sometimes also when she's petted. I brought her to see Jo the vet yesterday, and she's booked in for tomorrow morning for x-rays, blood work and evtl. a scan, if the x-rays proved to be not enough. Jo could not hear the heart because the breathing was so noisy when she checked on Miss Eve, and wouldn't say what it could be. I did a search on the internet and on Etherbun for similar sounding buns, and the scariest things mentioned were congestive heart failure and thymoma, followed by pneumonia and lower respiratory tract infections. Jo excluded the last two, as she said the sound she heard wasn't a wheezing sound at all, which is apparently what you get when you have a lung infection. Please do send your vibes to Miss Eve, especially because the whole procedure is going to be done under light sedation. I am so afraid that, just like Nik, she will go to sleep to never wake up again... and then of course I am scared by what Jo may find, but alas, this has to be done to see if Miss Eve can be helped.

No pics of Miss Eve and Neville, but one of Freddie, a tiny wild bunny that was raised by my bunnysitter Amy - Freddie was handed over to a pet shop when her eyes were still closed and she had hardly any hairs on...now look how cute she is, at 3 months!

Furry Butts Fursday... on Saturday!

When Hans of the honorable house of Furrybutts left this world and the blogosphere to cross the bridge, all of a sudden and so shockingly for all of us, but mostly for her bunny parents, there has been a subdued mood in every bunny home. We've all been thinking of Hans and remembering his vocality (he was a talkative bun who liked to speak out when he felt like it) and his determination not to contaminate his lean body with junk food or any odd green vegetable, but it wasn't quite enough, as he had such a huge personality, although he was a small bun. We've been thinking of a good post to commemorate his life, but only when Diana of the House of Spots contacted us bunny friends with the Furry Butts Fursday plan we knew we had hit gold.

So, here it is, especially for Hans de Furrybutts and for Buttons, Yohji but mostly for his grieving pal Bailey, S and Mr S, our belated "furry butts on a Saturday morning"....


Sir Harvey of Glasgow's furrybutt, sticking out of a timothy hay hessian bag

Shedding furrybutt owned by Bobo, who lived in Germany near the Audi factory

BillieBun's furrybutt was a legendary one...

they say the white tail is now a beacon of light in the evening at the Bridge

Nik's furry butt in motion

Hugo's furry butt in stretched position....

...and relaxing...

Miss Eve's and Hugo's butts in a tunnel...

...and in parallel relaxation!
And finally...

Neville's furry butt descending...

...resting...

...and showing off!

Binky free, little Hans, and do say hello from us to Sir Harvey, BillieBun, Nik and Hugo - we miss you all but one day we'll meet again... x x x

For a fistful of pumpkin seeds....

...and a piece of cracker we climb all over mum!

Update and bunny thank you

It has been a month since my last post... how the time flies when you're busy!
On the positive note, no news is good news, I'd say...apart from the odd scare I got last Sunday morning, when Miss Eve refused to eat and looked very sad and uncomfortable for about 4 hours. I then said to Mr D: "If she doesn't improve in the next hour I am calling the emergency vet service"...and look... half an hour later she started gobbling down on her salad!

Miss Eve is getting two drops of metacam suitably placed in a hole of the banana piece she gets in the morning for starters, and it seems to help with her mobility quite a bit. We're yet to pay a follow-up visit to the vet, but it is no high priority right now. Miss Eve does binkies and runs bunny 500s (well, her versions of the bunny 500 is not as vigorous as Neville's, but then again she's a lady and Neville is a boisterous young bun!), and when it comes to run for pumpkin seeds and banana or even a piece of wholemeal cracker she's very very fast (and often without ABS!).
After the runabout time, they can be found like this:

and then...

groom...groom...groom...

Miss Eve also would like to let you know that she is an expert chiropractor - see her here practising on Neville:

perfect paws positioning...and press...

More posts about my trips later...for now, thank you to all of you who kept Miss Eve in their thoughts, and let me send some more healing vibes to Fats - bunny kisses to you my dear, and much strength to your mum from all of us :)

Packing...

...to visit Edinburgh for work, but I wanted to give an update on Miss Eve and Neville and life in this part of the world, before disappearing for a bit (bunnies' chorus: AGAIN!!!!OH, NO!!)

Miss Eve is getting two drops of Metacam hidden in a small hole in her piece of banana every morning - it seems that it is keeping her more mobile, but there are days when she doesn't feel like moving much despite that. Having said that, she's eating with gusto (hoovering away the oats faster than Neville can say "Yum!") and running for treats when it is time. If I am taking my time with the treats and dealing with other tasks in the kitchen, she will come over to the kitchen door to see why it is taking me so long...bless her!

At the end of the month we're going to the vet for x-rays and hopefully we'll find out what is not right with Miss Eve - but in the meantime thanks to all of you for all the good healing vibes, thoughts, prayers and candles (even the Spots had their slave Diana to light up one for Miss Eve!), as they seem to be very effective and our little bunny girl is more like herself these days!

While I was in Sardinia I had the chance to go to a special party: it was called "Naturalmente Bio: biologico, equo ed etico in Sardegna", a festival of organic, fair trade and above all local produce at Monte Claro in my hometown of Cagliari, a park that has opened a few years ago after a lovely work of restructuration of the site.

There were stands about alternative energy (solar panels mostly, as my town is also known as "the city of the sun" with approx. 300 sunny days per year) and mostly local produces sold by the producers themselves - see the lovely (and tasty!) organic veggies, wine and award-winning olive oils:




It has been a lovely week and got to spend a lot of time with my sisters and my parents - I even had to give some head rubs to the local inhabitants:


...yes, we know...cats are weird!!

Deserting the buns again..

I am off today to Sardinia - Miss Eve and Neville will be taken care by Mr D, and hopefully the wrath of the buns will be not too much for me to cope with on my return.
Thanks again to all of you who are supporting of our situation with Miss Eve - I shall see you in a week, hopefully with good news as well!

blur of bun activity

Miss Eve's mystery

I have been to the vets in April with both bunnies for their vaccination (they need a myxi and VHD jab twice a year, just as a precaution even if they are houserabbits, because the UK is sadly a country where both illnesses make many victims among bunnies every year) - this is what happens then:

Miss Eve is definitely the boldest of the two when it comes to leaving the safe environment of the house - she hates car rides and travelling, but she needs to check what is happening around her. Neville, on the other hand, is a bundle of fur, all scared, squeezed at the bottom of the carrier and no ambition to see what is that place he's been brought to.

Before the vaccination both were checked, weighed and got a clean bill of health. This was on the 20th of April.
For almost three weeks now, Miss Eve has slowly changed her behaviour: she seems to have problems in turning her head towards the back to groom her upper back, and sometimes she is reluctant to stand on her hind legs to groom her ears. At the beginning it wasn't so obvious, but it has become so more apparent last week, in addition to a general lack of mobility - she still does binkies every now and then when playing with Neville, and runs like the wind when there's banana or pear or apple on offer, but she was less in the mood for "explorations" in the house, running up and down the stairs, and in general preferred to stay near to the crate and groom her legs and paws, or just lay down stretched. She didn't look like being in pain, but we all know how buns are masters of disguise, so off we went last Friday to the vet.
Because of her behaviour it was obvious to me that unless the vet could find out something whilst listening with the stethoscope, not much could have come out of the visitation - I had gone through all the pages of Frances Harcourt-Brown's Textbook of Rabbit Medicine, but found nothing that would resemble Miss Eve's change. The vet who saw her was not a resident one, but he also had treated rabbits and was very interested in listening to everything I said. He tested her gait on the floor, and surely there's nothing wrong with Miss Eve's gait - she hops and walks as usual on a hard floor with no wobbly behaviour, as it could be if she was affected by EC. He agreed with my suggestion, that it could be the beginning of arthritis, and prescribed some Metacam to give orally once a day, and asked to see her again in two weeks time. By then, if there is going to be no improvement in her condition, he would be taking some x-rays of the spine and joints and see further.

Metacam is so far not changing Miss Eve's behaviour - in fact, it looks to me as if she is getting even less mobile in terms of happy behaviour, although there is no change whatsoever in her appetite or her "output". We will have to wait until next week to see what happens - please do send your "get well" vibes to Miss Eve and hopefully there's nothing sinister with her.

"I made the salad - it got my fingerprints!"