Early on during the second month we had Tigger, we had to board her for a weekend. We had an out-of-town committment and started looking into options of caring for her while we were gone.  We didn’t know anyone else who knew how to care for rabbits and when we checked with the vet, although they knew people who did rabbit sitting, they said they couldn’t recommend them.  So we checked into having her boarded by the vet.

It was really hard planning to leave her, she was a little less than four months old and still baby tiny at about three to three and half pounds.  We packed up a bag for her with her pellets and hay.  We brought along one of her small litter boxes with her litter and brought some toys she liked.  We also brought along a small cardboard box with a hole cut in the side.  I had written out a paper that started out, “Hi, my name is Tigger … with what she liked, didn’t like and what really freaked her out.   Never let it be said that Princess Tigger traveled lightly.  We probably had about five to ten pounds of stuff that came along with her.  I even had all her food packed in a cute Tigger bag.

We arranged everything in the kennel cage for her and put her in.  We tried to bring everything we could that would make her feel that she was surrounded with her own things and had all her usual foods.  It was easier that she wasn’t on fresh greens at that point yet.  Then we left for the weekend and it was really hard wondering how she was doing.  She was all alone back in an environment like the pet shop again with lots of other animal sounds nearby.

On Monday when we went to pick her up, as the kennel manager was leading us back to where she was being kept, he told us she had spent the whole weekend hiding in the cardboard box and had only come out briefly at times to eat, drink and use the litter box.  He said they had barely seen her.  As we approached the corner of the aisle her cage was in, we weren’t expecting to see Tigger after what we had been told.  Instead, we saw her right away.  She was in the corner of the cage closest to the aisle and was sitting up on her hind legs stretched out to her full height.  It was pretty clear she had heard and recognized our voices and was begging for us to take her home.

Blaine says it is okay to say that the sight completely melted his heart and turned him into a blubbering idiot.  I have to take his word on that.  All I know is that he bundled her into her carrier and took off with her while I was still gathering things up and then settling the bill.  One minute they were there and the next, I was on my own.  When I got out to the car, Blaine said we were never going to leave her all alone anywhere again and we didn’t.  It made us realize that Tigger was not going to be a good single bunny.  She was simply too unhappy and scared being left on her own.  We realized that we needed to find her a rabbit buddy.  Next week, I will start to tell the tales of how that came to be Shadow.

The spay story together with this ran too long, so I will share that tale on its own tomorrow …