Discolor Online

This is what I spent all day doing yesterday. Well, excavating Kate's room so that everything could be moved around, moving the bed and the desk and the computer set-up and all that...that took a while. But the bunnies now have a new bunny enclosure and they seem pretty pleased with it. I made sure they could still look out the window, too.

The new cage has two panels on the front that open into a pair of doors that swing out. It's big enough that Kate can crawl all the way inside. The first shelf is an L shape and really just a way for them to get up to the other bigger shelves. The second shelf is a C shape with just one hole in the middle to serve as entrance/exit. It's lined with auto floor mats which work great to provide stability to the floors and cover the holes in the wire squares. I've supplemented the flooring with towels, too. The top shelf is just along the back side a long shelf that they can lay on to gaze out the window, which they love.

Labels: bunnies

I'm pretty beat. I spent several hours moving crap around Kate's room, taking things apart, putting them back together, etc. I've removed the original bunny cage I bought for Bonnie and built a new four-level condo out of wire storage cubes and confined the bunnies to the area under Kate's loft bed. I moved the bed so it's partially overlapping the window so the bunnies can maintain the view of the outdoors which they'd come to like in the other, smaller cube condo I'd built for them earlier this year. The are under the bed is now condo/fenced area to hop around. Prior to this they were taking up more than half Kate's room, leaving the space under the bed for a cramped "study area" that was in fact too packed with stuff to function well. Plus the other run was blocking access to half Kate's closet space.

It's probably going to take another 2-3 days to get everything really sorted and set up. I have to remove the old pre-fab cage (I'll probably offer it on Craigslist or Freecycle or something) plus I'm getting rid of this old coffee table that's been in her room for years. That should free up some space for the girl, I hope.

I also made a batch of Spicy Fig Orange Microwave Jamfrom a recipe that Elise over at Simply Recipes posted recently. It smelled SO GOOD while it was cooking. It reminded me of this concoction that my mom used to keep in a Tupperware container when I was a kid: Russian Tea. I don't know why it's called "Russian" as it's instant tea mix, Tang, instant lemonade powder, and cloves. Adored the stuff when I was a kid, though, and the orange-clove smell of the fig jam brought my nostalgia for it roaring to life.

Must find something to eat now, I hear Kate rummaging around in the freezer.

Labels: bunnies, food

Bonnie and Sammy continue to date. Today they met over a shared tub of wheat grass. They're still not quite ready to cohabitate but Sammy spent more time returning licks to Bonnie's ears and less time trying to hump her, so I think we're getting somewhere.

Labels: Bonnie, bunnies, Sammy

Bonnie and Sammy have now had three "dates" without bars between them.

Date #1 took place almost entirely in a bathtub. Sammy, who doesn't negotiate well on slick surfaces, spent almost the entire time just sitting still trying not to slip while Bonnie nudged, nipped, licked and pushed him around. It ended with them on the bathroom floor, where Sammy finally got his footing on a bath mat and got his hump on.

Date #2 took place in a different bathtub. Both rabbits were more comfortable. Bonnie is bigger than Sammy and figured out she could jump in and out of the bathtub, so we put them on the bathroom floor. Sammy spent the entire date mounting Bonnie and pulling out small mouthfuls of her fur, which she mostly put up with (though she's very vocal and was grunting, growing, whining and panting the whole time) but eventually she got sick of it and seemed to enjoy hopping over to Sammy, then hopping over/past him and into the tub where he couldn't get her. She boxed his ears a couple of times when he tried to corner her and mount her and he backed off a little.

Date #3 took place today outside in the large play pen and the overgrown grass. It's mostly sunny and 55 degrees, very pleasant and the bunnies enjoyed themselves. No mounting today, though Sammy looked like he was going to give it a try a few times. Bonnie was having none of it, and he backed off when he heard her doing her weird growl/grunt/whine thing. She chinned him, nuzzled him, nibbled at him at other times and no fur flew at all. He even gave her a couple of tentative licks on the top of her head (he's not a licker, she is). He seemed like he might have liked to have snuggled up against her but she's still suspicious and focused mostly on digging. When she'd move on from an area, he could come in and investigate it. They spent an active hour or more outside together with us.

Put some photos up on Flickr of today's Date #3. Nothing like some bunny love for Easter!

Labels: Bonnie, bunnies, Easter, Sammy