My recent post about my stepdaughter mentioned her sense of humor and cited a letter of introduction she wrote about me to a group of ladies we didn’t know, but with whom we were embarking on a trip to Italy.
Among the many (excellent) qualities she related regarding her stepmother, there was this:
Also, RWKJ puts up with me and sometimes writes letters from the personae of some of her pet bunnies. What could be better than having a travelling companion who, while lost someplace with you, will share a nice stiff drink and then help you write postcards home in the voice of a cantankerous rabbit with tooth problems? Now that’s a great time. And certainly memorable. Isn’t that what everyone wants from their trip?
So there you have it.
This got me thinking about Oliver, a pet rabbit from long ago. A little background:
Rabbits have what are called open-rooted teeth. This means that their teeth never stop growing. Under normal circumstances in they wild, they wear them down in the course of chewing on young saplings, and, if they’re pets, by chewing on things like your dining-room table legs. In those cases, there’s rarely a problem (for the rabbits, anyway). But if you have a bunny whose teeth are ‘squirrely’ (to mix a metaphor), you’ve bought into a whole lot of trouble. A rabbit with bad teeth is prone to dental abscesses, and requires frequent tooth trimmings (because the damn things just keep growing and growing . . . .).
Young Oliver was such a bunny.
He’d been abandoned on the streets of Pittsburgh and brought to the Western PA Humane Society by a kind lady who rounded him up. I adopted him because it was clear that no-one else would. A few months later, I found myself looking for a more cost-effective way to take care of his teeth which were decidedly ‘squirrely,’ as visiting a veterinary professional every few weeks to get them trimmed was becoming prohibitively expensive.
I ended up purchasing a cordless Dremel tool, a flexible shaft extension, and a package of #13 sandpaper disks. (Total financial outlay, about $70 at the time, for something that looked like a primitive dentist’s drill.) Fortunately, Oliver was fond of lying on his back on my lap so I could tickle his tummy, and by holding him firmly in that position with one hand, and using the Dremel in the other, I could sand down his teeth. Hey, Presto—the problem was solved!
But wait! There’s more!
This very sickly rabbit, that everyone had given up on, and who was not expected to live more than a few months, thrived. By the time he died, almost eight years after I brought him home, I figure that, by Dremeling his teeth, I’d avoided 121 trips to the veterinarian at $80 a piece, or a total of $9,706 in bills.
So, $9,706 minus $100 (I’ve rounded up to include the occasional purchase of another package of sandpaper disks)—and a total savings of over $9,600 over the life of the rabbit!
If only I could have thought of a similarly useful home-grown solution when Xena had both her back knees replaced about eight years ago….💰💰💰
While Oliver was still living with me, I learned of a joint project between Borders Booksellers and the ASPCA to create a book of “rescue pet” stories. I could send in a photo of my pet and his story, and the judges would select several of them for publication.
So Oliver and I went into the promotion business. He posed beautifully for the camera. (That’s him, center, lower row, on the book cover in the photo at the top of this post. Click the photo for more information on the book.) And his story made it in!
He was–as you might imagine–something of a character. Obstreperous. Stubborn. Opinionated. Fierce. No doubt all those traits stood him in good stead when he was abandoned on the streets of Mount Oliver (within Pittsburgh city limits), and had to fend for himself. And, in all his nine years on this earth, he didn’t mellow a bit. When he died, we buried him in the garden, and Mr. RWKJ sent him off with a three-gun salute.
But back to Jenny’s remark about my writing, sometimes, “in the voice of a cantankerous rabbit with tooth problems…”
Guilty as charged.
One of my finer efforts occurred one day after I got done cleaning out what I referred to as “Oliver’s condo,” a rather magnificent structure that I’d built and which–as it was 4’x4’x4′–occupied a rather large portion of the living-room real estate and was quite often very much in the way. Not that Oliver minded that at all.
But when it came to the cleaning, he bitterly resented the intrusion into his personal space, and the disruption of his plans for the day, and the resulting exchange generally went something like this:
O: (Sigh)
RWKJ: (Sigh)
O: Must we go through this again?
RWKJ: Yes we must. I know you hate it.
O: It’s not that I hate it. It’s just that I find it totally unnecessary.
RWKJ: Well, you may think it’s unnecessary, but there’s too much fluff floating around in my living room —
O: (interrupting) — that’s from the dogs —
RWKJ: — and your litterbox is starting to smell —
O: (interrupting) — that’s the cats —
RWKJ: — and, honestly, if I wanted to live in an environment that wasn’t quite so, well, to put it bluntly, ORGANIC, I’d probably have to move into the barn with the sheep, unless I clean out your condo.
O: (deftly changing the subject). Why do I have to have this silly cage, anyway?
RWKJ: (taking the bait). Cage? CAGE?? It’s 4 feet in all directions. It dwarfs everything else in the living room. It’s got three floors and several rooms. It’s got carpeting and vinyl flooring. It’s got hardwood floors. It’s got carpets. It’s even got STAIR RAIL for heaven’s sake! Calling it a ‘cage’ is like calling Brad and Angie’s place in the South of France a ‘house. Get over yourself, why don’t you?
O: (muttering)…cage, cage, cage…
RWKJ: And you have to have it because I’m not leaving you here with six dogs running around, when there’s no-one in the house.
O: I could take those dogs in a heartbeat.
RWKJ: (sigh). I know. Trust me, YOU’RE not the one I’m worried about. Come over here so I can put you in the exercise pen.
O: (pretending deafness) What?
RWKJ: The Exercise Pen!
O: I’m not going in there!
RWKJ: Yes you are, otherwise you’ll be in the way the whole time I’m cleaning this out.
O: I’m! Not! Going!
RWKJ: Come out of there. See what I mean? Stop jamming your feet against the door.
O: Well, only for a minute then.
[Time passes, as the condo is cleaned, vacuumed and mopped. No one speaks. Oliver explores all the corners of the ex-pen and then amuses himself by peeing in several different spots on the living room floor.]
RWKJ: Whew, that’s done then. Come on, you can go back now.
O: I don’t know if I want to go back.
RWKJ: What?
O: I read a book once, by someone called Thomas Wolfe. The name of the book was “You Can’t Go Home Again.” I think he might be right.
RWKJ: That was about something completely different.
O: “You. Can’t. Go. Home. Again.” What else could that mean?
RWKJ: It’s about a man’s search for his identity —
O: (interrupting) — You mean, he lost his driver’s license? —
RWKJ: — and, it’s pretty obvious to me that you don’t have that problem.
O: Finally! A problem I you think I don’t have!
RWKJ: Whatever do you mean?
O: Well, you’re always telling your friends how needy I am and that I have issues. Why can’t you just love me for myself?
RWKJ: I do love you, silly rabbit. Come here–go inside and see how nice it is. Stop jamming your feet against the door…
O: Well…it’s not bad. Where’s my stuff?
RWKJ: It’s on the 3rd floor. I thought it would amuse you to put it back where it goes.
O: Hrmph. Look, here’s a piece of bunny poop you missed. And a couple of bits of hay. I don’t know why you keep putting me through this if you’re not even going to do a proper job.
RWKJ: (Sigh)
O: (Sigh)
He was a pistol. I really miss him.
