RIP Chloe

Chloe was put to sleep late on Sunday night, after a short illness.

We adopted Chloe from the Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary in 2022, with the intention of her being a companion rabbit to our rabbit Cassius (formerly Aragorn). Cassius had also come to us from the OAS in 2020 as part of a bonded trio with two female rabbits, Taylor and Arya, both of whom he has now substantially outlived.

“Bonding” of Chloe and Cassius initially appeared to have been successful, but rather rapidly came unstuck, as related here.

I had wanted us to return Chloe to the OAS and possibly look out for another companion for Cassius, but Ruth developed a fondness for her and went off this idea. As we (I, certainly) never wanted to risk putting them back together, this obliged us to a) set up two separate sets of rabbit living quarters, and b) ensure that the two were kept apart. The first has taken up space in the house that we could ill afford; the second has caused constant low-level worry that I might leave a door open that would result in Cassius hopping into Chloe’s proximity. For the subsequent c. two and a half years since we adopted her, therefore, Chloe had occupied the cupboard in the dining room that had been the quarters of all our previous rabbits, and Cassius has occupied the second bedroom upstairs, which is the room that I generally work in. The latter is not quite as bad as it sounds, as Cassius had developed a fondness for this room before we adopted Chloe, in much the same way that Harley had a fondness for being under the bed in the master bedroom. However, it would really have been preferable to allow Cassius to keep his ground floor quarters and its access to the garden – but I did not want to look at Chloe all day and we couldn’t come up with what else to do with her.

Chloe never ventured far from her home quarters until, perversely, the last month or so of her life, when she suddenly developed a fondness for hopping out into the garden and sitting behind the hostas (and eating the sage).

Over the last two months, Chloe had only eaten patchily and had lost a large amount of weight. We took her a few times to see Sarah Moffat at Cherry Orchard Vets, who did a blood test and suggested that it could be liver failure. Despite losing even more weight, Chloe continued to seem reasonably perky, but things went downhill a lot over the last week or so, with the result that Ruth called the out of hours number on Sunday night and we ferried her over to the Vets Now Emergency Care service that operates out of Castle Vets on Tilehurst Road, where the on-duty vet recommended euthanasia. Ruth managed to find a space in the garden to bury Chloe, so she’s now interred next to the dogwood plant by the garage.

Ruth admired Chloe for her strong, wild rabbit-adjacent looks; I sort of saw what she meant, and agree re the overbreeding of domestic rabbits that can result in snub faces, but my attitude to Chloe was always tainted by her aggression towards Cassius and the general inconvenience that resulted. It might have been different if we'd had the space to create a home setup where the two could have been kept in neighbouring enclosures and let out separately, but we just didn't have the space for that.

 

Chloe, large brown rabbit, born 2015, died 2025.

Car update; hay; AI poetry

Car: update

Reading Service Centre diagnosed the noise as being due to a problem with a nearside wheel bearing. Points to Mum, who on our way back from Derbyshire in early July had mooted the idea that it might be a wheel bearing issue. I did text her to congratulate her on her mechanical knowledge, though she modestly claimed it had been a lucky punt. The car failed its MOT on that plus a couple of more minor issues, all of which RSC fixed the same day and retested it. It is now MOT-ed for another year.

When I went to pay up and collect the car, I commented to the very nice chap there that every time the car develops something wrong with it these days, I think it’s going to be sayonara, and referred to its mileage. His response was something like “Nah! Good little cars, those. Go on for ever.” He isn’t the first mechanic I’ve had refer to Ford Fiestas in this vein, so perhaps there’s something in it. He went on to say something along the lines of how he’s had several cars that have done over 200,000 miles and they’ve been fine and as long as I get it an oil change yearly, it’ll be OK. I was cheered by this, though eventually I will no doubt be tempted by the gadgetry that comes with more modern cars, such as navigation screens, sensors to deter you from reversing into walls, and the like (though I think I have, amazingly, managed to avoid doing the latter in the whole of my >35-year driving career despite being sans sensors).

On my way out, another mechanic called over to me as I was approaching the car with “should be a lot better without that noise” and commented that the noise had been “horrific”. Certainly it had been becoming unsettling. I was glad that my worries about them calling me back to claim that they couldn’t hear anything had been unfounded. According to the internet, which I consulted immediately after they phoned me with the diagnosis, it’s extremely dangerous to drive with a severely worn wheel bearing and you should never do it. Oops. The relaxed chap in the office seemed to be of the view that advice off the internet does often overdo the scare tactics.

Cassius' hay consumption

For a few months now Ruth has been concerned at what appears to be a decline in Cassius’ hay consumption. He used to be a good muncher of hay, but I’ve been aware of no longer hearing the regular munch-munch-munch sound from behind me in my office – or at least, not as much as previously. Ruth’s first tactic was to stick a Post-It note low down on the door near his feeding area suggesting that he increased his hay consumption; the note fell off the door and he chewed the corners off it, but we didn’t notice any other change in behaviour.

Wondering whether he simply doesn’t like the hay she’s been buying lately, Ruth splashed out on a pricey hay selection box for him, but he has proceeded to spurn most of the boxes, only showing any interest in a green grassy number which looks as though it’s about the least roughagey of the lot.

My bookshelf stacked with hay selection packs

Cassius enjoying vegetables and ignoring hay

Cassius has now also started on some anti-inflammatory medication of the same sort that Harley went onto for the last few years of his life. Elderly rabbits can get arthritis in their joints, apparently, which can not only interfere with hopping about but also with their management of their caecotrophs (we don’t talk about that; it’s a rabbit thing). Cassius hasn’t shown any overt signs of being arthritic, but then rabbits tend not to show overt signs of anything. The medication is fed to him via a syringe and thankfully, as Harley did, he seems to like it. As mentioned before, rabbits have such a bizarre metabolism that they need the more concentrated dog suspension of this medicine, rather than the cat one.

GenAI forays

At work, we have been instructed to use Microsoft Copilot if we wish to make use of GenAI tools in a work context (which I generally don’t, but am aware that some colleagues do). I am amused by the disclaimer it comes with to the effect that any advice it gives might be complete b*ll*cks.

I have messed about with ChatGPT a few times, mainly to ask it to write poems on specified topics, all of which have been ludicrously saccharine but highly amusing. Here is what it wrote for Ruth’s 50th birthday last year, after being fed selected keywords. Because of my inclusion of the rabbits' names in the prompt, it clearly had trouble telling which name referred to Ruth's partner, so seems to have gone with the assumption that she, Cassius and I are a throuple.

And more recently, I consulted it for some career advice for Ruth:

I also asked it to write a poem about Chloe’s aggression towards Cassius. This one went on at inordinate length, proceeding to glamourize Chloe into some sort of Xena: Warrior Princess figure, and then give the whole thing a happy ending. Also: the understairs cupboard was not her bloody dominion - he was there first.

ChatGPT also had the cheek to title the poem 'Chloe Finds Love':

Recent stuff

Car

My darling little Ford Fiesta has been making a new noise for the last few months, but on taking it to J P Motors, one of the two Caversham garages I use, back in March, they claimed they couldn’t hear anything amiss, so I assumed everything was OK. However, during the second week in July when I had to do quite a bit of driving, it seemed to have got louder, so I’ve now booked it in with Reading Service Centre, my other garage of choice, for an inspection, though annoyingly they didn’t have an opening until 2 August so I’ve been limiting my driving for the past week or so. Keeping fingers crossed that RSC can actually diagnose the problem.

A quick Google suggests it’s most likely something to do with the exhaust. Our friend Helen recently traded her 10-year-old car in for salvage after being faced with a bill for an exhaust issue, so I’m hoping it’s not too big a job. The Fiesta is 17 years old, but I’ve been told previously by JP that Fiestas can go on for ever (which I don’t take as literal truth, but do take to mean that it may have a few years in it yet). A more significant issue than its age may be the fact that it’s now done in excess of 170,000 miles, most of that accrued under my watch (it was four years old when I got it). I have been relatively lucky with repairs to it – a replacement clutch in 2014 is so far the most expensive bill I’ve had. Aside from being a bit sentimental – though if the Fiesta develops serious mechanical problems the sentiment will probably evaporate quite quickly – I just don’t relish the thought of car shopping, though I realise people do do it. Maybe one day soon.

Derbyshire visit

The driving stint earlier in July was to go with Mum to Derbyshire to visit Mum’s older sister Anne, who is now in a nursing home up there (Anne is also, obviously, my aunt). My cousin Helen has lived in the Derbyshire Dales for many years now after moving there back in the nineties for a teaching job. A few years ago Anne and her late husband moved up there to be near Helen, their health having deteriorated to the point where they needed more organized care. Mum and I booked ourselves a night in the Premier Inn just outside Matlock, where we have now stayed I think three times. We drove up on a Wednesday morning and met Helen and Anne for lunch at the Grouse & Claret at Rowsley, just a short drive west along the A6 from Matlock, and then went back to Anne’s care home to see the place and her room (which Mum had seen before but I hadn’t).

After this we went to check in to the hotel and had a short pre-dinner stroll along a straight path running alongside the railway line just the other side of the A6 from the hotel. This turned out to involve quite a lot of bird and plant ID-ing, the latter using the PlantNet app, which I already had installed on my phone, and the former using the Merlin bird app, which I didn’t. Mum was particularly keen to identify the bird engaged in a concerted bout of tweeting in a tree by the path, so I was obliged to install Merlin while hoping that the bird would obligingly keep singing, which thankfully it did, and the app suggested that it was a song thrush, which was what Mum had already suspected.

The railway line

Plant ID

Since installing Merlin, it keeps telling me to take breaks and listen to birdsong.

We went back to see Anne again the following morning. During this visit I was offered a fig roll by one of the staff – don’t think I’d eaten one of those since the 1980s but I did always like them. Anne seemed to be in a mood to offload her books, and Mum and I were involved in a lot of pushing back and persuading her that she really ought to keep them. I did concede to taking two, one a book about William Morris, about whom I know almost nothing but the book contains some photographs of Arts and Crafts houses and other figures in the movement. It also includes this photograph, which I have seen in another book of Mum’s and love simply for bringing home to a modern audience how bloody tedious sitting for photographs in the 1870s must have been. The expression of the girl on the left says it all. The sitters are Morris and the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and their families.

The other book Anne gave me was Pigsties and Paradise by Liz Pitman, a collection of extracts from lady travellers to Wales in the first half of the nineteenth century. I'm only a couple of chapters in but it's quite interesting. I very much enjoyed this:

[Wales] was, until the eighteenth century, regarded as a wild, foreign place, with a mainly peasant population, who were said to eat toasted cheese because they couldn't afford meat.

Colliery band

Prior to the trip Anne had sent me some emails relating to the Lewis Merthyr Band, apparently the oldest brass band in the Rhondda Valleys. Because of Anne’s interest in genealogy, I had assumed that there was some family connection but she had been a bit vague about what it actually was, unless she’d told me before and I didn’t pay proper attention (not impossible). Thankfully Mum managed to clarify it for me:

Basically my Mum's mother's father was called Richard Martyn and came from Cornwall in the late nineteenth century with his young family to work in the mines in South Wales. He was your great great grandfather. He was very musical and became bandmaster of the then called Cymmer brass band. His brother George succeeded him as bandmaster as well.

The band website’s ‘Historical Images’ page has a photograph dated 1898 featuring Richard Martyn as conductor sitting front and centre (at least, I assume that’s him with the baton), and a further photo dated 1910, apparently showing George F Martyn as conductor. A little harder in this one to make out, but I assume he’s the chap in front behind the drum, to the left of the chap with the massive beard. The images on the page also include several of a visit of King George V and Queen Mary to the Lewis Merthyr Colliery in 1912. The Queen was evidently pulled around the colliery on a purpose-built cart drawn by a pit pony. Hope she enjoyed herself.

The internet tells me that the Lewis Merthyr Colliery was situated in the village of Trehafod, about 18 miles from Cardiff, and that the site of the former colliery now hosts the Rhondda Heritage Park.

New vet

We have a family holiday booked later in August, largely in honour of Mum and Dad’s upcoming 60th wedding anniversary. As I seem to have persuaded Ruth to come with me, if only for the first half of the week, we have been obliged to get our rabbits (still two – Chloe lives on) up to date with their vaccinations, as Reggie’s Retreat won’t take them otherwise. Ever since Ruth moved in we have been taking rabbits to the ‘Active Vetcare’ vets on Oakley Road, as it’s reasonably close to the house, but Ruth has become increasingly miffed at quite substantial increases in their prices. A new veterinary practice opened in May this year at Gallowstree Common, a village (or poss hamlet) a few miles north of Reading, run by a vet we’ve seen a few times at Oakley Road and who has impressed Ruth as good with rabbits. We went on a recce a couple of Saturdays back to locate it, incorporating a bus ride and circular walk from Sonning Common (the nearest bus stop).

Cherry Orchard Vets

Walk back to Sonning Common across fields

A week or so later we took Cassius and Chloe there to have their vaccinations. I think Ruth’s impressions of the practice are more or less favourable, though it may take more exposure. We didn’t get to see Sarah Moffat, instead getting a younger colleague, but the consultation seemed to go OK; a minor annoyance was that the vet had some difficulty examining Cassius’ teeth, which is common but I tend to think vets should have mastered a technique for it. Ruth was also a bit perturbed that the scales used for weighing animals was across the room from the examining table, necessitating the vet carrying the animal across the room, and did not appear to have a non-slip surface. (This sort of thing matters much more with rabbits than with, say, cats, who can leap off things from some height and land gracefully on their springy paws; rabbits can break their backs jumping off things in a panic.) Also, the waiting room had separate areas for cats vs. dogs, which is a nice gesture but a bit bloody pointless if they're still in the same room - the ideal would be a whole separate entrance for dogs so that their barking doesn't frighten other animals. I appreciate space is a consideration, but they could wait in their owners' cars and then just come in via the back door. Problem solved.

Cherry Orchard Vets is occupying the former Reformation pub, which closed in 2019 despite some community action to attempt to save it. I don't remember ever going there, though it's possible I did at some point. The new veterinary practice has a piece in our latest issue of Round & About.

Marrow

Ray came for dinner a couple of Fridays ago bringing some selected produce from his employer's vegetable garden (taken with permission of owner, not stolen in manner of Peter Rabbit). Two onions, two cucumbers and two alleged courgettes though one was a sizeable enough specimen to be classed as a marrow in my eyes. I used about a third of it in this recipe a couple of nights later, before having to consign the rest to the food waste bucket.

The recipe is one Mum used to cook us occasionally as kids. I think I typed it out from a Korean cookbook.

Chloe: part deux

I spoke too soon. Barely two days after the previous post, Chloe inflicted a significant wound to one of Cassius’ back legs, and he was duly taken to the vet for an expensive stitch-up. He came through that fine but was sent home with medication to be applied and with various follow up appointments, all of which was made more awkward as we were due to be setting off on holiday to Pembrokeshire the following Saturday. We had already booked both Cassius and Chloe into ‘Reggie's Retreat’, a small animal boarding facility in Bracknell recommended by someone in a local Facebook group. Ruth had to contact them to ask if the two could be housed separately, and whether the proprietor Sophie would very much mind administering Cassius’ medication and taking him for a follow up vet appointment the following week. We weren’t at all sure she’d agree to this, but she turned out to be a star, taking him to his vet appointment and phoning through updates to our holiday rental.

Cassius’ leg wound became infected and we weren’t at all sure he’d pull through, but at the time of writing he does seem to have made a full recovery, though the fur hasn’t grown back yet. We kept him caged for a week or so after we returned from holiday, partly to protect him from Chloe and partly to make it easier for Ruth to catch him in order to medicate him. Since being released from confinement, he has been housed in our second bedroom/my office, where he spends a lot of time anyway snoozing at my feet under the desk. Ruth was concerned about muscle atrophy, but he was back almost immediately to jumping onto the footstool and chair in my office, and generally running about. He is an accomplished jumper, certainly given his age, and I realized that he’s able to use the tub chair in the first picture as a launchpad to get onto my desk, so have been having to place barriers in the way of him doing this.

Cassius exploring after his release

Taking the exploring a bit too far

Ruth did phone the Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary to tell them that the bonding had broken down somewhat, and had what seems to have been a fairly ill-tempered conversation with Laura, who (according to Ruth) suggested that it must have been something Ruth had done wrong. We subsequently called in to Reading Rabbit Rescue to seek Sandra’s take on the matter. Her view was that the OAS’ defensiveness might have stemmed from a worry that we were going to ask them to pay the vets’ bills – something that hadn’t even occurred to us, but we gathered that this has happened to Sandra a few times after bondings gone wrong. We ended up jointly concluding that it probably is not a good idea to attempt to put Cassius and Chloe back together. It’s looking like the only option is to rehome Chloe, which is a shame but we do need to have two rabbits who can co-exist. We've shelved the issue until after the Christmas/New Year break but will either need to ask the OAS if they’ll take her back or wait until RRR can take her in, which Sandra indicated they might be able to do from February.

Sandra wasn’t optimistic that Chloe will be a candidate for re-bonding given her record with us and suggested that Ruth works on socializing her to get her more used to people in order to make her more suitable for re-homing as an ‘only’ bunny. Sandra did ponder whether Chloe has actually been neutered, given her aggressively territorial behaviour – we don’t know, is the answer; rescue facilities are supposed to make sure all their animals are neutered before being re-homed but Sandra suggested that animals occasionally fall through the gap on this one. Obviously Ruth and I don't have the know-how to check this, but from what Sandra said we'd expect to have noticed a smell with an un-neutered animal, which we haven't.

As we’d got Chloe with the aim of providing Cassius with a companion, we also expressed concern about him being on his own and wondered whether we should try again. Sandra’s advice was that given Cassius’ age (8), we shouldn’t worry too much – if he’d been a two-year old bunny she’d have advised trying again with a different bonding. So it looks as if he may remain on his own, which isn’t ideal - presumably preferable to being housed with a violent companion, but who knows how rabbits' minds work. Given that I'm working at home most of the time, he has fairly constant companionship in his favoured room. We’ve generally been letting him out in the late afternoon/evening to have a run about the house (albeit keeping the door to the dining room, where Chloe is, firmly closed). Here he is on Boxing Day in the living room, seemingly having a go at accessing a box of Milk Tray. The chocs were taken off him shortly after this.

Ironically, Ruth received this from the OAS in mid-December. She did consider responding with the story of Cassius and Chloe, but suspected it wouldn’t make it through the “feel-good” screening. For balance, they ought to have a “The Ones That Got Away” section, surely.

Chloe

So two weeks ago we went to fetch the newly-bonded Cassius (pah) and Chloe from the Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary at Stadhampton. On arrival, we were presented with a folder of information with this somewhat flowery header sheet. I had assumed it was only Sandra at RRR who did the “husbun” business, but no, clearly not.

We were assured by Laura at OAS that the bunnies had got along very well for the two weeks they’d been together and had been one of the easier bondings that she’s overseen. We concluded that perhaps both bunnies had realized that neither of them is getting any younger and that they might as well get along. Since coming home, they have continued to appear to be getting along OK. There seemed a brief wobble the other morning when they appeared to be having a bit of a scrap over their breakfast, but hopefully this was a one-off.

Since Chloe’s arrival, we have been discouraging Cassius from going upstairs, which he does like doing but we were warned by Laura that the bunnies need to be spending time together in order to stay bonded. Harley at one point used to spent most of his daytime hours under the bed in the master bedroom, but two of his pairings were with females who were not too tolerant of him (Lexie and Willow) so we sort of turned a blind eye. Chloe doesn’t so far (fingers crossed) appear to be exhibiting aggressive or territorial behaviour towards Cassius so we hope it’s going to work out OK.

We don’t know much about Chloe’s background other than she came into rescue at OAS when her companion died. She seems as keen on the garden as Cassius is; unlike him, she’s a burrower, so we have to keep an eye on her while she’s out there (she appears to have taken over the hole that Taylor started). Here she is having a bit of an explore.

Another bunny update

Arya developed a dental abscess back in May and had to be put to sleep – which was very sad as she was a lovely, if somewhat highly-strung, bunny and she and Aragorn (whom I must remember to call Cassius) were a close bonded pair, reliably being found next to each other. Here’s the last photo I took of them, less than a week before Arya died. And a video of Arya eating banana. All bunnies love banana.

Aragorn (front) and Arya

Poor Aragorn (sometimes, Cassius) has been on his own since then, though he seems to have had a reasonable summer, spending loads of time outdoors eating things he shouldn’t.

Eating home-grown mint

Eating a cute little succulent

Eating out of the green waste bag

A few months back we made approaches to the Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary (where he, Arya and Taylor came from) to enquire whether they had an older female needing a companion. Somewhat luckily, they did have a bunny, Chloe, who had recently lost her companion. The whole thing has been delayed as Aragorn (sorry, Cassius) developed an ear infection and they wouldn’t take him until it had cleared up. Thankfully, it did, and we delivered him to the OAS last Saturday morning, where he was put into a pen with Chloe, separated down the middle initially. Earlier today Ruth received an update from Laura at the OAS saying that all seemed to be going well so far, and sent us a cute picture of the two bunnies lying side by side. I won't risk jinxing things by posting it here but we're keeping fingers crossed. The OAS appear to take rather longer over the whole bonding process than Reading Rabbit Rescue, so it could potentially be another couple of weeks before Arag Cassius, and hopefully Chloe, come home.

To finish, an amusing Catherine Howard-related snippet. Ruth and I had a bit of a panic before visiting my parents for the August Bank Holiday weekend in that our pet sitter was unable to make it and we had to briefly contemplate taking Aragorn (or Cassius) with us. Ruth contacted Steve and Sandra at RRR to see if we could borrow a large cage for the weekend, such as the one we gave them once we stopped using it to house Harley and Lola. To our surprise (as they only offer boarding to rabbits who came from them) they offered to take A/C for the long weekend as they had a free cage. When we delivered him, and had the usual sneaky look at the other bunnies in runs in their enormous garden, I couldn’t resist asking if they had been successful in bonding Pippa. No, was the answer. Sandra tried twice, but apparently on both occasions CH/P behaved in such an aggressive and territorial manner with the male bunny that she had to be removed from his presence. After two attempts they decided not to try to bond her again, and rehomed her as an ‘only’ rabbit to an owner who’s at home most of the time. Sandra theorised that Harley must have been her one true love. Sounds a tad over-romantic to me. We were surprised as CH was a mild and well-behaved little thing the whole time she was with Harley - she has clearly become more assertive with maturity.

Bunny update

It’s time for an update on the trio of bunnies Ruth adopted in December 2020.

Taylor

Unfortunately, the trio are now a duo – we lost Taylor last autumn after she was put to sleep after one of those typically tricksy rabbit episodes a.k.a. a brief, vague yet apparently extremely serious illness involving all her organs shutting down. A shame, as having a trio of rabbits had been cute, especially when all three of them decided to cram together under one chair, as here.

After initially appearing less forthcoming than the other two, we had fairly quickly realized that Taylor was the dominant animal of the trio, despite being the smallest. She often assertively thrust her way between the other two for access to the food bowl, forcing them to move aside. Like the other two bunnies, Taylor loved the outdoors and, unlike the others, proved a keen burrower, up until her death working determinedly on a hole somewhere in the middle of the garden, causing some concern that she might disappear down it and emerge a few gardens down. After Taylor’s death, we did ponder whether it would be fitting to use her lifeless body to stop up the bloody great hole she'd made, but Ruth decided against this in the end. As a memorial, here are some pictures of Taylor, plus a clip demonstrating her enthusiasm for the outdoors.

Squished between the other two

Let me out?

In the garden

Unsuitable renamings

The two adorable black bunnies are, thankfully, still with us as I write this. Ruth made the IMO odd decision at some point last year to rename Aragorn ‘Cassius’, supposedly after Cassius Clay aka Muhammad Ali. I have not considered Cassius a suitable name mainly because, being sophisticated and erudite, the name ‘Cassius’ makes me think not of the boxer but of Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’, and the quote “yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look”, which makes the name seem incompatible with Aragorn’s fairly round, prosperous appearance. My father’s story about his older brother naming one of their cats Cassius because he had a lean and hungry look has further etched this quote, and association, in my mind. Also, it was a nice match with Arya's name, both beginning with A and being named after fantasy characters. However, as I am high-minded and not at all petty, I have decided to respect the change of name.

Aragorn

We have continued to bicker about it though ('Julius Caesar’ was my assigned Shakespeare play for O-level English Literature back in the day, and I remember being very taken with the performances (and general hotness) of James Mason and John Gielgud as Brutus and Cassius respectively in the 1953 film, which we watched more than once at school).

Outdoorsyness/energy levels

All (well, now both) the bunnies love going outside and show none of the reticence Harley showed about crossing the slight gap between the back door and the paving. Here they are out the garden shortly after we adopted them:

And here's Aragorn looking longingly at the garden through the closed back door:

And here, having jumped into a plant pot to try to get around the obstacle we'd placed in the bunnies' way to keep them in:

The board in the picture above is something Ruth has used for a while to fence the bunnies in to the under-stairs cupboard at night. Aragorn has proved to be the first bunny we've had who actually routinely jumps over this board to escape captivity. As he's no longer a young rabbit, we're surprised he can manage this, but clearly he doesn't like to be fenced in.

Aragorn also climbs the stairs, as Harley did, but as none of our female rabbits have done - I've no idea if it's a sex thing, or if that's just coincidence. As rabbits' hindquarters are bigger than their front legs, they've both looked much more awkward going down the stairs than going up them; as Aragorn is bigger and heavier than Harley was he has more than once slid/rolled the last few steps. It hasn't seemed to put him off though. Since I have moved back into the house and am using the second bedroom as an office, he has frequently been joining me during the day. Ruth has provided him with an empty box for his amusement.

In his box

On his box

Aragorn's intense blackness

I mean. He is SO BLACK. Even next to Arya, also a mainly black rabbit.

Update on re-bonding of Catherine Howard, aka Pippa

A footnote. As previously related, we returned CH to Reading Rabbit Rescue after Harley's death so that she might be re-bonded with another companion. Since then, Ruth and I have been amused to gather from RRR's intermittent Facebook posts that several attempts to bond her have been unsuccessful. Here's one post from April 2021 (we returned her to RRR in September 2020):

And another one from September 2021:

We are charmed that she's clearly not having any of it. Perhaps she enjoys the single life, and/or has decided that life at RRR as a "hard to bond" bunny is pleasant.