A year ago around this time we went to the Toronto shelter and adopted two more little bunnies.
It was pretty quickly after Teela died...we needed to do so more than words can tell after that loss.
My honey picked these two lovely ladies out and after much conversation with shelter people
it was clear that they were the right two babies to bring home.
Sweet precious baby Misa (named Aspen at the shelter)
was only two years old & a bundle of shaking nerves.
I felt so bad for her but was also instantly super nervous to adopt her at the same time
because I really really really just wanted a super cuddly bun after loosing my Teela.
But that's not how we work this, we adopt and choose based on gut, whose been there the longest,
whose a bit more 'unlikely to be adopted' than the rest etc...
Misa was there at the Toronto Humane Society from another shelter,
goodness knows what she had gone through before all of the shelter stays, poor baby.
I picked her up and she jumped out of my arms, crashing into the wall, the cage and the floor
OMG I was so embarrassed and shocked, I had never ever dropped a bunny before!
It was clear from that point that she was an all 4 feet
on the ground kind of rabbit if we ever did see one!
365+ days later have all been a blessing with her. She is the first thing I think of when I wake up.
She is my new best friend.
She helps me with missing my Teela and she's beautifully a whole lot like Teela.
She still hates being picked up with a passion so we only do so to trim her nails or to administer meds
and sometimes that feels like an all day affair of stress and flying scratching fur!
But she also loves to be snuggled on the floor.
She LOVES company & has bonded strongly to me.
She loves licking her stuffed toys, she loves food, she loves to flip over and
she has the most fun when she's allowed the run of Henries rooms too, oh boy does she fly than.
She is very sensitive to noise, especially nose sniffing, book pages turning and jazz thimbles!
and she has this weird thing with feet, she's very fussy about where she wants them, ha ha
She's been pretty much the very best thing for me about this whole past year
and I can't imagine that I was ever nervous or trepidatious to bring her home...
for me this little grey and white bug is a blessing.
On the same day that we adopted Misa Adora, we also adopted Leisel (her shelter name was Emily).
On top of her situation there at the shelter not being a normal one,
She was also a 'problem rabbit' biting everyone around.
She was sent to a foster home for awhile to give her a shelter break because she had been there so long, but that did the trick only for a short spell apparently & she started biting her foster family too.
But we have ALOT of experience with rabbits who bite and we felt ready to take her on & be her new family and boy oh boy it's good that we have that experience of naughty monkeys because
she is pretty much the worst behaved bun we've ever had and boy oh boy she bites super hard!!!
When we went to get her at the shelter, Jonathan left me to meet Misa for her felt pulled to Leisel.
He walked into the adoption room,
opened up her pen and scooped her up and he felt her melt into him
as the volunteers nearby stood and watched, ha ha. Those two bonded instantly.
When I walked up to them standing there together kinda clutching each other,
my honey had tears in his eyes
and I knew his missing Frenwyck would get just a tiny smidgen better with the help of her.
When she first came Misa was soooo like Teela and Leisel was soooo like our Frenwyck
that it kinda took our breathe away and it was also so strange because Teela was bonded to me
and Frenwyck was bonded to Jonathan but these two new ones so like their predecessors were the opposite! I was the one sleeping on the floor with Leisel and Jonathan was with Misa etc.
Than all of the sudden, a couple weeks in, on the same day for unknown reasons they both switched
and I became Misa's favorite and Leisel started biting me and chose Jonathan as her person!
Now over a whole year with her, she is still naughty but we understand her a lot better.
Apparently before her long shelter stay she wasn't in a very nurturing or stable home.
Her humans would not only constantly leave her with strangers but with people who didn't know
how to care for bunnies on top of everything. So you can see clearly that she has separation anxiety.
She will lunge at you and grab your pants when you leave the room and when your gone for
a while she needs to be held and calmed down for a bit afterwards...poor girl.
You can tell, you can just feel it in her body language and in her face etc that she is terrified still
of being left behind. She was also very clearly teased with food, that much is apparent
and she must have been in a household with a lot of tension because even when we are watching tv
and get excited about something and raise our voices, Leisel will start harrumphing and stomping.
We were hoping that one or even both of the girls would bond but no bunny has, yet!
We were really hoping that one of them would bond with Yuuji who has been lonely without Teela
but that hasn't happened and we aren't pushing anything at the moment.
So we have 7 little bunnies, all from the Toronto shelter except for Jaks, who are cage-free
and doted on and happy and playful and healthy (knock on wood) and whiles none are friends,
some of them do lay together at the gates (whiles others hate and fight each other at the gates!).
Shelter bunnies seem to come with their own set of baggage more times than not
but as we always say, we are like the island of misfit toys,
my honey and I and all misfits are welcome heavy baggage or not!
Bunnies are so fickle. They are adorable and they are vicious.
They are strange little creatures....beaming such bright light with such huge personalities.
I adore them more and more even amidst all the sacrifice and struggle and stress and destruction!
but my whole point of this post today, ha ha was to say "Happy 1 year Anniversary babies"
We love love love you and are so blessed and happy that your here,
nerves and quirks and biting and everything that makes you both your wonderful unique selves XO
