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Pip ~ New Captain of El-ahrairah's Owsla ~ Dec. 27, 2007 to Jan. 6, 2017

MimzMum

Wise Old Thumper
This has to be the hardest post I have ever written. Certainly not one I anticipated writing this soon. I shouldn't be writing it at all. :cry:

It all started with Mimzy. Spring of 2007, he was dropped off with two ruby eyed white bunnies in my husband's business parking lot. Some people had come into his shop the day before and spoken with him at length. He felt they were sizing him up to see if he'd be averse to 'taking on' some stray bunnies. They were moving state and couldn't take them with them.
So when we brought him home I did my research and found all the things he'd need to be happy. One of those things was a companion.

Daughter and I were making our trek through our local chain pet store and we came upon you, and a smaller-obviously baby-bunny and a third bunny atop the glass tanks they cruelly kept you all in. I adored you from the off, because I'd just watched the Watership Down movie all the way through for the first time (it terrified the kids when they were younger) and loved the character BigWig. True to form, since we'd mis-sexed Mimzy, we did the same with you, thinking you were a boy.

We had to leave the store that day without you, but daughter knew how badly I wanted to bring you home. The white hotot bunny atop your pen had over-groomed you and one side of your head was bald, so they'd separated you from her and kept you in with the baby. All the other smaller bunnies had been adopted but the one you were lovingly grooming. It was obvious you enjoyed the company of other bunnies. When we returned to town in the next few days, you were still there but the baby and the hothot were gone. (Ironically we learned at Christmas that the hothot went home with daughter's cousins across town.) You were all alone. We were so sad for you. You seemed so very lonely and your confinement was not helping things.

Husband had said no more pets, so daughter went to work on him. You were to be her Christmas present. And so technically, on the 17th of December of 2007, she convinced him to drive her to town and bring you home. She spent all her savings on getting your kit ready and paying your adoption fee. She still talks about how you snuggled your head right into her neck when the storekeeper gave you to her (she was very nervous about holding a bunny!) and she thought you were going for her jugular! :lol: And how you kept poking your nose and paws through the holes in the carrier box on the way back to ours. I was stunned when they brought you through the door as I was certain there was no way husband would agree to another bunny. Inside, I was screaming for joy. :love:

We made your official coming home day the same day as the 'due date' of the child I lost some years ago, I don't know why, perhaps because I wasn't entirely sure husband would let us keep you, but by the time the 27th had rolled around it was obvious you were going nowhere as C had put her foot down and you were so completely and utterly loved, even by him I thought.

So you became 'daughter's bunny.' We decided after a while that we'd bond you with Mimzy, but you'd still be hers and she would care for you. But I had the secret hope that you would learn to love me also and I could spend as much time with you as I liked and it wouldn't be seen by husband that you had really come home for me, as this was daughter's plan all along.
For a time you did stay in her room, but you always made such a racket that she couldn't sleep and finally had to ask if we could keep you in mine at night, and out in the run with Mimzy during the day. This was okay, but it took away tender moments like when you put your paw up in the air almost like waving one day when she'd come home from being out and you hadn't seen her for hours. Or when you got stuck in the Snapple box we put as a hide in your enclosure and all but disappeared from sight and we wondered at first if you'd done a ninja and escaped. :shock:

I can't remember everything of the ten years you were with us, lovely. I'm sorry. You know me, my chemo brain has been the bane of my existence since my treatment all those years ago. If it weren't for you and Mimzy, much of that early time would've been unlivable for me. To have you both in my life gave me new purpose and I looked forward to getting up in the mornings to greet you both. Although I think to the end of our days together, you never did feel I brought breakfast on time.

You and Mimzy bonded almost instantly, but when he took ill with what appeared to be pasturella I separated you. I should never have done that. I am so sorry. You both deserved to be with one another to the end. You still had places to live that were near one another, but I miss seeing you like this:

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Even in your last moments, you went down the side of the habitats to be near him. You must have known. :(

The day, almost 5 years ago, that you had your seizure, the day before he got ill with head tilt, I thought we would lose you then. I think the temperature had grown too hot for you, not that it was disease related, but we put all three of you (we got Fiver the year after you arrived) on Panacur just to be sure. God you hated that medicine. You learned to love metacam though, for your poorly bladder and arthritis and would even try to climb the side panels of your enclosure recently to get it when I brought it out. Silly bub. You're lucky you didn't break a leg! I have known you to popcorn binky high enough that you almost cleared the top of your exercise pen. That's a good 2 feet high and a little more I think. :shock: You monkey, you.

I wish I'd gotten you more of your favorite hay cakes...the oaty ones from Bunspace. I just didn't have enough savings left for them and didn't know how to make them myself. You always loved your nightly "cookie" and I would hear that nose of yours going a mile a minute trying to get a whiff of them as I brought them. You knew the particular crinkle of the bag that held them. You'd go mad the minute you heard it. It was always so funny. Remember wrestling over them with me? I loved how you tugged on them to get them away from me, then how you'd run amok looking for a place to eat it that I wouldn't see you. :lol:

You didn't approve of Fiver, sadly. He was "the Tito to your Georgette," as daughter once said. He adored you but to you he was always "that little bug-eyed creep." Well, he is pining for you, sweetheart. If you do anything this side of the Bridge, please come and let him know that you are okay. He is so sad and lonely without you. I thought I might even have bonded the two of you with how sweet you were both being the last few months. And should he and Mimzy have left us, as I feared they might do soon, I had planned to take you back to Alaska with me, should I need to return there, and we'd remember our times with them in the old house. But this was not to be.

I will never forget the horrible images of the morning of January 6. I never enjoyed the beginning of the year before, but now I have extra reason to loathe it. I tried, Pippi, I really tried. I thought you just had ileus, you always seemed to get it during moult. I remember racing you to the vet with husband when they got back from daughter's surgery in 2015 and how angry he was with me because I'd stayed up feeding and irrigating you all night and was too tired to drive in, they'd barely stepped off the plane from Anchorage and here I was begging him to help me get you to the vet. He didn't see the point, said I should've just let you go, but then he wouldn't have been the one to have to break it to C that you had died while she was away, was he? I saw how she sat by your enclosure and sobbed her heart out after you left us. She will never be the same without you. I will never be the same without you. :cry:

I don't know why or what I did wrong, if I did anything wrong, but you are not here, my lovely...and my world is all the darker for it. Your beautiful eyes, that is what will haunt me. Once you were gone, they held no light, no spark. I will never stop seeing them. I had noticed about a week ago that the white spectacles you had were getting larger. I wondered as I had many times just how old you were? How much longer would I have with my Pippity-Poppity-Poo? I will never sing that song again without weeping. I still go to your enclosure and think I need to clean out your litterbox and put down a new floor mat...it is still there, beloved. You box sits empty and your carpet hangs on the side as a shroud. I put away your water bottle and last chew toy. I cannot bear to look at the spot I last laid you down. And yet I do because I hope I will see your spirit sitting there, disapproving, wondering why breakfast is late.

I will not be able to just leave this tribute as it currently is, as I recall other things I may have to add them here. I'm working on getting your beautiful face up here in the many pictures I've taken of you over the years, if I can find the ones where the flash didn't red your eyes...gosh that always made you look terrifying! I promise I won't put up any where your pelt was not perfect. I know you always hated me taking pictures of your "ghetto booty." :roll:

Beautiful girl, please forgive me. I would do anything to bring you back, whole and healthy...anything at all in the world. Wait for me, precious. I will miss you till the day we are reunited at the Rainbow. In the meantime, enjoy Paradise, my queen. All the delicious things you always wanted to eat but couldn't are there for you. Be happy until we meet again.

Love you to the moon and back, Pip. I hope Prince Rabbit is happy to have you in his Owsla. For in taking you he has broken my heart beyond repair. It has joined the Thousand, for you, my love...my Thlayli bunny, have stopped running. :cry::cry::cry:
 
Always eating something :roll:

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Or wearing it...she used to dig under her hay and use it as a hat...will have to see if I have any of those shots.
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One of the last I took of her a few months back
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And her candle lit for her that first night without her :cry:

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That's all for now. I can't cope.
Sleep well, my beauty :cry: xxxx
 
A beautiful tribute to a beautiful rabbit :love:

Binky free Pip xx

Thinking of you and sending hugs xx
 
Beautiful tribute with beautiful pictures :love: I am so sorry you lost her :cry:

Sending lots of hugs.
 
A beautiful tribute to a wonderful rabbit and friend.

I know there are no words to ease your pain so I am sending my love and thoughts to you.

((((((( hugs )))))))
 
I really feel for you, I'm so sorry you lost her. Hopefully Pip and Billy are playing together with all our other fluffy friends on the other side <3 xx
 
What a beautiful tribute. She was a gorgeous girl, who was obviously much loved and a friend to you all. I'm sorry she had to leave you.

Sending my love and thoughts x
 
Thank you so much, everyone. Truly, all these lovely posts, it means so very much that there are those out there who understand and do not judge, nor insist that it's "time to get over it" because she was "just a rabbit." (No one on here or at my US forum has said that, just to clarify.) She was never just a rabbit...she was my very dear friend and companion...one of those who was really a "people's rabbit", she enjoyed human company as much as another bunny's. And she was, of course, my lovely Diva. :love:

I do get a smile off the comments of "wee Pip" because I do know that the word 'pip' in Britain refers to a seed. (Daughter actually named her after the squirrel in Enchanted because she didn't like the name BigWig.) I was looking through photos taken around the time Mimzy was recovering from head tilt, about 2012, and she was hardly a seed then! :lol: I think at her best weight she was around 6 lbs? A hefty, big figured girlie. Thinking of how she was this last few weeks/months, she had lost more body weight than I realized despite being full of beans regardless. So yes, something was afoot. It isn't comfort I feel knowing this, but it does begin to fit some pieces in that have been missing.
As far as giving them hell, well...I did come across this doctored photo of her from around 2008 that I made so my daughter could put it on her bedroom door when she was at "that stage" where privacy was a huge issue...I questioned posting it because it was taken in her very old and long cast off night habitat, and I hate bunny pictures with bars in them, but maybe it will give you all a laugh and an idea of just how bossy our 'wee Pip' could be! :lol:

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I hope no one will mind if, as I find them, I maybe add more photos...most of these were from her first days with us, a few from the last few years. None of them do her justice of course, especially with my crummy photography. :roll:

Jane, thank you so very much for the lovely framed image. It's so very kind, you do this for many here who have lost dear friends, always beautifully arranged and captioned. Thank you. :cry: xxxx
 
A wonderful tribute to a dear bunny. She reminds me of my bridge bun Squirrel, a chinchilla lionhead with the same kind of lovely face and fur.
 
I am sure Pip feels honored that you have given her such a lovely tribute and have posted, and plan to post more, lovely pictures of your sweet bunny. Some bunnies light up our lives in a special way and it is wonderful Pip could give you so much comfort. I suspect her spirit will remain with you always.
 
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