Amanda Ryan's Website

My cats brought me a rather fantastic Easter pressie.

Ever since my cats were old enough to go out exploring they have brought me a plethora of pressents. Not the gift wrapped kind, these gifts are usually squishy, half consumed, barely recognisable blobs of dead stuff. Kind of like 'build-your-own-small-animal' kits, but invariably with parts missing.

Last summer I could here Carbonel, the smaller and slight deranged looking cat, growling slightly under the kickboard in the kitchen. I know he had something cornered and whatever it was was going to meet a gristly end and start to smell unless I retrieved it. On removing the plinth a discovered a rather gruesome graveyard of assorted dead things and the cat has been refered to as Fred West ever since.

The larger cat, Salem, likes more of a challenge and has several times brought me large wood pigeons, and once even brought me a rook. These gifts are never received with the gratitude that I think the cats expect. There is normally a bit of swearing, some vacuuming, scrubbing of carpets, and scowls from me but rarely word of praise or appreciation.

A few weeks ago I spotted both cats sitting by the piano staring intently at the pedals. I made a mental note to dig out the humane mousetrap as soon as I'd got the kids off to school.  I was upstairs getting dressed when the kids suddenly started shouting....the cats had a rabbit!

I groaned inwardly, it's one thing having to clear up a puddle of mouse guts, or a bundle of bloody feathers, but having to dispose of something as cute as a rabbit was not a job I was happy about. A dead thing was bad enough, but what if the rabbit was badly hurt and needed euthenasing? I'm just not that brave.  I ran downstairs, expecting the worst.

There, crouched behind the bin, shaking but otherwise completely unscathed, was the sweetest looking baby rabbit I'd ever seen! It was clearly in shock and was happy to be scooped up and held close while the cats were ushered outside and the doors shut. It burrowed into my jumper and I carried it around while I continued to get the kids off to school, putting it into a carboard box out of the way of the cats while I left the house.

For the next few days I um-ed and ah-ed over what to do next, I called the vet for advise, they gave me the number for a wildlife rehabilitation centre, I called them who said that the rabbit would always be wild and viscious and would not make a very good pet. I considered this fact as the rabbit sat on my lap, eating dandelion leaves and clearly enjoying being petted. Really? Hmmm, not sure I agreed..... I told the kids that we'd think about what to do for the best over the weekend and that we were not to name it whatever happened.

I considered taking it down the Forest Way to a field that always seems to be covered in rabbits and letting it go, hopefully it would be accepted into a new bunny community and that would be that but it just seemed so small, and so tame, that I quickly dismissed that plan. Meanwhile the kids were smitten and begged me not to get rid of it, and the longer I spent with her snuggled on my lap, or hiding in my pockets, the more I realised I didn't really want to give it up either.

By the Sunday I had bought all the food, a hutch with a run and looked at it's bum long enough to conclude that 'it' was actually a 'she' (although I could easily be mistaken) and we finally gave her a name.

She is now called Florence, after Florence and the Machine. She's the original Rabbit Hearted Girl :)