Welcome to the Kids Corner.
[Don't end up like me!]
Don't end up like me!
My name is Fluffy. I was born with five other kittens to a kind and loving home. I loved running about the garden and playing with the other kittens in my family, but I knew it was too good to last.
One day when I was eight weeks old I was taken from my mother, with the other kittens, to a local pet shop where I was put on display in a cage. It must have been two or three days before I left that smelly and noisy place. The birds with all their chattering drove me to dispare. They never stopped. I wish I knew what they were saying, but I never found out.
One day, a family came to look at all of us. They kept pointing at me and before I knew what was happening, someone opened the cage and grabbed me, put me in a cardboard box with holes all around it and took me away. I was really frightened. It was the first time I had been separated from the rest of my family.
It was also the first time I had a variety of different experiences like riding in a car, having people shout at me, poke their fingers in my box. I was so frightened and nervous. If somebody only realised how frightening it is to a young rabbit.
The car stopped and I felt the fresh air again. I also heard the sharp noises of children who proceeded to open the top of the box and put their hands in trying to stroke me. Another frightening experience. What are hands, I thought? I struggled at being picked up, because I wasn't use to being handled. It's not natural, I've got my own legs and I don't need to be transported anywhere. I would rather people communicated with me.
From an idyllic beginning, I now found myself put in a hutch, all on my own, at the bottom of the garden. I had no company and was terribly lonely, fed-up and bored. If only I had company. If only I had my brothers and sisters. If only this was a dream. This was the start of the next three years.
As each year went by, I had less and less companionship from the children who would prode me, treat me as though I didn't have feelings and would think I was a toy or something. Everyday was a nightmare. And I hated it. I didn't want to feel as though was just another rabbit, easy to buy another, rabbits don't have feelings, they don't want anything, they don't - how do people know what rabbits want? Does anyone think they do anything?
As the years went on, I lost my will to live. I lost a purpose in life. I began to feel like just another thing. And then I ended up like this. In a rescue having lost the will to live and I doubt whether, now I will get anywhere else to live. Who wants an old rabbit with no life in him when once I was handsome and thought that nothing could change.
If only parents would realise that rabbits are NOT children's pets - they want a life too.
Special Thanks to Sue Hunter for the story and Amy Avis for the pictures.
