Back in my 20’s in St. Cloud I had 2 bunnies as my primary pets. The first was a gray Netherland Dwarf named George. He was adorable, mild mannered, gentle and oh so sweet. Dumb me thought he needed a friend, so Betsy the brown Mini Lop came next. She was a lot less sweet and bullied poor Georgie. Little Miss Meanie even pulled out some of his hair at one point. I remember fibbing to a friend and saying that George was going through chemotherapy and that was why he had missing patches of hair.

My family had full sized rabbits in Minnesota when I was a kid. I wasn’t very big, so when I held up Mrs. Cottontail length wise, she was almost my 5 year old height. In kindergarten I was fortunate enough to be able to bring Mrs. Cottontail to show and tell. It was the late 70’s so there weren’t many rules about having live animals in classrooms. Anyway, maybe that is why I ended up getting rabbits as my first adult pets. I was somewhat familiar with them, and they are a lot cheaper to maintain than having a dog or a cat.

When Andrew and I moved to Oregon in 2001, we already had my 2 rabbits, Oliver the cat (he did not enjoy the multi-day road trip from Minnesota to Oregon one bit) and Andrew’s hedgehog Dagny. Our reputation as pet people continued and we adopted many more animals, both small and large, throughout the years. At one point we had 5 cats, which still astounds me to this day.

Before my rabbits were fixed, they lived in separate cages. Eventually we upgraded and our small animals lived in a multi-level cage, but cleaning up after them was always a real pain. Sometimes I would let the bunnies out, but they poop everywhere and chew on everything in sight. After Dagny, Fro the long haired Guinea pig, and both bunnies had passed away, we vowed to never sign up for owning small animals again (I’m not counting Basil the tiny Terrier).

Fast forward to 2025. Our friends needed someone to watch their 3 bunnies during a 3 week vacation to Brazil. They hadn’t seen friends and family in the 3 years since moving to Portugal. Although I wasn’t really looking forward to bunny daycare, we were excited to be able to help our friends. I know firsthand how stressful traveling can be if you are constantly worried about your furry kids back home.

We had concerns that our 2 demon cats Morse and Thursday would eat and/or kill the bunnies for sport, so if they could stay in the garage this just might work. I never would have been able to guess how pampered these bunnies are. It took at least an hour to reconstruct their living area which consists of Tatami mats, a multi level fence, a homemade custom bunny condo, a special lamp that is left on at all times, 2 bunny lavatories/feeding stations, and a water fountain. There were copious amounts of bedding, pellets, and hay – enough supplies for a year. Were our friends really coming back to Portugal? When we asked if they can have treats like carrots, the answer was “carrots have too much sugar, only sometimes they get spinach.”

I was starting to feel like a dead beat bunny mom. Someone should have called bunny services because George and Betsy were really slumming it back in the day. Would I be able to resist giving these bunnies lettuce or an occasional snack? Eating just pellets and hay is so boring.

Back in Medford, I used to jokingly complain that our dogs adored our friend Tom because he fed them KFC during his pet sitting stints (this was never proven, but was a theory of mine). Eventually I turned into my own version of Tom with the bunnies, sneaking them tiny portions of a large variety of snacks. The furry monsters sampled berries, banana, parsley from our herb garden, carrot shavings, wild clover, celery leaves, and lettuce. Blueberries were their absolute favorite. Usually they would pretend to be disinterested while we were present, but the snacks mysteriously disappeared by the time we returned. In my heart I was hoping the snacks would payoff like Tom’s KFC, that the bunnies would become super friendly and affectionate. My experiment failed. I detected no change in their behavior toward me from day 1 to day 19.

The bunnies are heading home in a couple of days and we are ready to say goodbye. They weren’t a huge inconvenience, but they sure are messy. Also they don’t really seem to care who is feeding them hay and pellets or cleaning their bunny playpen. They are cute, but don’t provide the level of interaction or affection some other pets might offer.

Unfortunately this was confirmed by how few pictures I found of my old bunny friends Betsy and George. In contrast, I found scads of dog and cat pics taken throughout the years. Andrew has already taken way more pics of our bunny wards to send to their parents than we ever took of our own. I suppose it is infinitely easier now with fancy phones which take amazing photographs. When we were young we used Polaroids or had to pay to have film developed before digital photos were commonplace. There was very little immediate gratification. I was reminded of all of this as I sifted through boxes of ancient photos (I really must sort through and organize them one day).

One thing is for sure. It is extremely unlikely we will be adding any small pets back into the Finazzo menagerie. We absolutely love our 2 cats and 2 dogs, but are looking forward to days of fewer pets, more freedom, and way less responsibility.