Attempted Bunnicide

Or, How I Got Bitten A Lot By A Neighbourhood Cat

About a month ago we bought an outdoor rabbit hutch. Yes, I have a rabbit. I don’t mention him often because he’s not very interesting. Widget (that’s his name) is eight years old. Yeah, remember that when your kid asks for one. Also they shit their entire body weight daily and sometimes while using the litter box they miss entirely and mist the walls with pee. However, they are very soft, so there is that.

Anyway, over the past 3-4 years of his epically long life I’ve grown more and more allergic to him. Or his hay. Or both. I’m not sure which. But its gotten to the point where if I go into the office where he lives without a mask on I sound like I have pneumonia for the next two days. So we decided to try moving him outside.

Since getting the hutch, I’ve been bringing Widget outside for short periods of time to let him get used to it. It’s been going well, so this past Saturday I took him out in the morning with the intention of leaving him alone for the first time and letting him spend the whole day outside.

I hung out with him for a while, weeding in the garden while he ate his breakfast before I planned to go inside and take a shower.

That’s about when I looked up and saw the cat in our yard. Now, I’m familiar with this cat, he’s very friendly, in that he’ll meow at you, rub up against your legs, but if you pet him, he attacks. So, you know, a cat.

He hadn’t noticed Widget yet and Widget was still eating his breakfast, being chill so I was hoping the cat wouldn’t notice him, get bored and wander off.

No dice.

As I was chatting with the cat, casually trying to obscure his view of Widget, he caught sight of him. And when I say that cat went from lolling about in the grass to full murder mode, I am not kidding.

Widget’s no fool. He went straight into the little closed off room in his hutch (which is there for I imagine this exact reason), and the cat began looking for his way in. It was immediately obvious that murder kitty was not going to lose interest. He was going to figure out how to get those doors open and help himself to a plump, rabbity snack.

At this point, I was pressed up against the door to Widget’s panic room, waiting for the cat to lose interest long enough for me to scoop him out and take him inside. The cat was not impressed. Remember how I said he bites? Yeah.

He had jumped onto the roof of the hutch, and annoyed with my interference, started biting my shoulder.

Oh my God, so much fun.

I should probably mention I’m also allergic to cats.

Between Captain Murder Mittens and my rabbit, the whole ordeal left me covered in enough hives to go undercover as a fairy tale bridge troll.

And to those of you getting nervous for poor Widget, I did manage to shoo away the pissed off cat long enough to get Widget out and bring him back in the house, but the whole “Widget living his best life outside so I get to use my office again” plan is dead in the water.

So if you know anyone who could use a rabbit hutch, let me know.

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