We moved.
We moved out of the house where Coco once spent her mornings, afternoons and evenings resting on the table where her cage also sat or lounging on the adjacent windowsill, snoozing in the afternoon sun.
The one bedroom apartment in which we currently live also has plenty of windows offering the day's sunlight, but now, Coco doesn't live on a table anymore. She lives among the humans, her cage on the floor with its door open at all times, giving Coco access to, well…everything. This, I believe is where the trouble began.
At around 3AM, for the past 16 consecutive nights, Coco has been awake, running amok around the apartment. She's repeatedly leapt into my bed, slapped me across both cheeks, and laughed maniacally as she hopped out of the room...letting out little screams down the hallway.
At first I blamed this on booze, of course. Perhaps she was taking in a little extra these days to cope with her new environment…no big deal. This would pass, I was sure of it. On the other hand when I would rouse myself out of bed at 7:15AM to prepare my morning coffee, Coco was often nowhere to be found…until I spotted her sleeping in the shower, snoozing in a potted plant or snoring in a nest of blankets--but how? It was breakfast time and Coco never missed an opportunity to stuff her face. Her restlessness in the wee hours of the morning was truly a problem.
This past night, I was jolted awake at 3:37am to the sound of breaking glass. I jumped up, and stumbled down the hallway into the living room, tripping over Coco's overturned food dish, to find my little fluff monster chucking fruit at the far wall of the room. She had already broken two panes of glass and launched four pears, two avocados and an apple at the windows. Books were strewn about the living room, hundreds of pages torn from their backing and all the while, little miss bunny was screaming at the top of her lungs, "I'VE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!!!" She threw punches and flying side kicks at an invisible enemy.
Coco was a rabbit insane! She had become completely detached from reality, her reality as a somewhat tame house bunny with an affinity for hard alcohol. I needed to bring her back in.
I reached for Coco, flipped her onto her back, her body lying vertically along my knees and I squeezed her paws firmly, "Coco. You've got to pull it together. This new found freedom has turned you feral."
"I'm completely freaked out, Ma." Coco said, her eyes shifting wildly. "I…I…I need to run, like, really run. I need to dart through bushes. I need to dig a hole, for real. It's just this feeling...I gotta GO."
"Baby love!" I cooed. "This is your home. I know you feel like a rambunctious teen, but you are actually a 9-year-old Elderbun. My old lady bunny. I feed you, I kiss you, I clean your bum, I give you hip massages...you need this. You belong here, not in the wild." I stroked her cheeks and nuzzled her nose with mine.
"I...I...." Coco struggled to get her words out. Her breathing had calmed and she now looked me directly in the eyes. "I need a drink."
"That's my girl! I'm glad you're back Coco."
I carried my soft, sleepy bunny into the bedroom and set her up on a large pillow. I pulled my flask out of the sock drawer and sat it next to her.
"Everything is better now, Coco. Everything is fine."
Coco picked up the flask and poured the brown liquor into her pea-sized mouth. "Everything is better now," she said. "Everything is fine."
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