Fifibutton
Wise Old Thumper
A Norwegian Forest cat, a notorious character in my village, the size of a terrier or bigger and with the traits of a beast was attacked today by one of my rabbits :shock:
We let out bunnies out for supervised play this evening, At one point we had our backs turned to the patio where the rabbits play surrounded by a 70m high metal fence on slabs (no roof though) to watch my son go down his slide when we heard some sort of rumpus. I turned round to see Bilbo chasing this huge beast of a cat off having bitten it's ear and drawn blood in the process :shock::shock: The cat was easily 5 times the size of Bilbo who was protecting his wifey bun Maise. I was terrified but we got a taxi to the vet and both buns were deemed fine,although they had higher heart rates than normal as can be expected. They are being monitored for extended shock symptoms but outwardly seem to have returned to normal.
We are now going to buy a metal run with a roof as this cat might try his luck again. He is a horrible unneutered tom and there have been numerous complaints about his behaviour but the owners don't care. I had to chase him out of the garden with a broom but he didn't seem fazed by me and wanted to go back to the rabbits. Basically he has ruined my garden for me, he hissed at my little boy too. I know this is a touchy subject but this incident has put me off cats even more and I hate roaming cats, they really do ruin it for people with gardens, small pets and wildlife. We have some rare frogs, birds and rodents up here that are constantly killed by cats
All I can say is in my 11 years of rabbit keeping and supervised playtime, nothing like this has ever happened before. I am taking it as a warning though. Supervised is not good enough anymore. That cat leapt my fence in one leap so its got to be a roofed run from now on. That means the rabbits get a smaller play area now :evil: But I can't compromise on safety. Keep an extra eye on your bunnies everyone because it can all be over too quickly and tragically and not just from cats. Foxes and birds of prey can be just as brazen in some cases.
We let out bunnies out for supervised play this evening, At one point we had our backs turned to the patio where the rabbits play surrounded by a 70m high metal fence on slabs (no roof though) to watch my son go down his slide when we heard some sort of rumpus. I turned round to see Bilbo chasing this huge beast of a cat off having bitten it's ear and drawn blood in the process :shock::shock: The cat was easily 5 times the size of Bilbo who was protecting his wifey bun Maise. I was terrified but we got a taxi to the vet and both buns were deemed fine,although they had higher heart rates than normal as can be expected. They are being monitored for extended shock symptoms but outwardly seem to have returned to normal.
We are now going to buy a metal run with a roof as this cat might try his luck again. He is a horrible unneutered tom and there have been numerous complaints about his behaviour but the owners don't care. I had to chase him out of the garden with a broom but he didn't seem fazed by me and wanted to go back to the rabbits. Basically he has ruined my garden for me, he hissed at my little boy too. I know this is a touchy subject but this incident has put me off cats even more and I hate roaming cats, they really do ruin it for people with gardens, small pets and wildlife. We have some rare frogs, birds and rodents up here that are constantly killed by cats
All I can say is in my 11 years of rabbit keeping and supervised playtime, nothing like this has ever happened before. I am taking it as a warning though. Supervised is not good enough anymore. That cat leapt my fence in one leap so its got to be a roofed run from now on. That means the rabbits get a smaller play area now :evil: But I can't compromise on safety. Keep an extra eye on your bunnies everyone because it can all be over too quickly and tragically and not just from cats. Foxes and birds of prey can be just as brazen in some cases.
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