Home

After a relatively debacle-free day (despite our flight from JFK to Logan being canceled due to the "blizzard" and having to be picked up at JFK, which is the same distance from my house as Logan so it's whatever), I get home to discover that my beloved rabbit, Mr. Bunnykins aka Buns, the greatest rabbit who ever lived, is dying. He is having some type of neurological issue, which is always the hardest to watch in animals (and in people). He doesn't appear to be suffering at this point, except he can't get up. We feed him and help him to his water and give him as many yogurt chips as he'd like and cuddle with him until he falls to sleep, but it breaks my heart when I open his cage to help him do something and he tries to get up to come over to the opening to the cage so I can give him the kiss I always give him every time I get him and every time I put him back, but he can't get up for his kiss. So I melt into a puddle of tears and kiss him and hold him until he is practically drenched in my tears.

I've had Buns since between the fifth and sixth grade, and I'm a junior in college now. That would make him about... ten years old or so, give or take a few years. He's on the high end for the life expectancy of an indoor rabbit, he's been treated well his entire life with us (we adopted him from the Humane Society, his previous life is a mystery), allowed to roam around the living room and to play with the cats. I never even scolded him for all the things he's destroyed, like blankets, shirts, shoe laces, or the time he chewed through the electrical cord for the lamp in the living room (this rabbit must have nine lives).

He's mostly just one of the best friends I've ever had. He always greeted me when I got home. A lot of the time my cat wanted nothing to do with me, my dog is too flighty to care, but Buns always cares about me and comes right up asking for a kiss on the nose, and he always gets it, and I always scratch him in the soft spot right between his ears.

I feel like I betrayed hi by being gone for four months when I knew he was old, and I knew he wasn't terribly well when I left. He apparently just got really sick in the past week, since Friday. I hope he isn't suffering, and if he appears to be suffering we will not allow that to continue. He deserves so much better than to suffer anything, he is such a good friend and a gentle soul.

Now my cat is laying on one side of my legs as I'm lying in my own bed typing these words and my dog is laying on the other side, eyeing me to make sure that I don't leave ever again.

My mom and two of my very best friends picked me up at JFK, which was just too wonderful. I was so happy to see them.

I'm so glad to be home. I wish Buns could live forever, but I know that's an impossibility. Soon, and hopefully with little pain, he will be with my daddy and Candy and Kashi and Ducky and all the little creatures that went before. I firmly believe that God has a special place in Heaven for animals, and I know that Buns will have an endless supply of yogurt chips and enough newspaper to rip up for ever.

What is Real?

It's 12:30, still doing homework, but passing out soon enough.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I love the Velveteen Rabbit somethin fierce.