It’s not fair.
The back room, the pantry and the entire backyard is officially named “Bunny’s Place” and yet even though there are only the four of them dwelling there, Bunny simply cannot find a spot to call his own. Cow, Indy and Cleo have their own spots.
So, every morning, after breakfast, Bunny has to come out to the patio and use the Blue House for his long morning nap. At lunch time, I take him back to Bunny’s Place and after that, he is quite lost. He doesn’t have a space in the room. We’ve tried giving him mats, baskets and boxes in the room, but he is not comfortable in any of them, and will just go out and sleep under the chairs in the backyard. Often, he will ask to come out again, back to his Blue House. The worry here is that the patio belongs to Ginger and Ginger might attack Bunny.
Bunny is blind, so sometimes he bumps into the other cats. Whenever this happens, we’ve noticed that none of the cats will attack him, but the problem is that being blind, Bunny gets defensive so when he bumps into another cat, Bunny is the one who will hiss. The other cat now takes the hissing as a challenge and might retaliate. Indy and Cow are more understanding and they ignore the hissing, but the same cannot be expected of Ginger. Ginger might still retaliate as he is younger and is very alpha.
Nowadays, it has been raining a great deal and the rain is really bad for Bunny. His only spot in Bunny’s Place is under the chairs in the backyard and when it rains, it gets wet there. So I have to bring him back into the room and the only way he would stay put is that he sleeps on my lap.
And lately, it has been raining almost every day.
For the past two nights, Bunny has been asking to go back out to the patio. Somehow, he simply cannot find a spot in Bunny’s Place anymore.
He wants to sleep on these chairs in the patio, but the nights are very cold and the winds can be very strong.
Last night, Bunny decided to search for a new place in the house. So first, he went into the bathroom and found a comfortable spot under the litter box which I had leaned against the wall. But that didn’t work out for too long. Next, he went to Tabs’ litter box (with the tofu litter inside) and slept inside it. Tabs had no where to do her business so I had to prepare another litter box for Tabs at another spot. I know how changes can be very unsettling for cats.
We decided to try and help Bunny find a new spot. So we prepared these two boxes in the kitchen.
Surprisingly, Bunny accepted the box. I had tried putting these boxes in Bunny’s Place (in the room) but he would immediately jump out of them. I think he really no longer feels safe in Bunny’s Place now.
He seemed to like both these boxes in this spot in the kitchen.
Every night, Ginger sleeps in the patio, so Bunny should be safe in the kitchen. The only problem is that Bunny can only urinate in the backyard (in Bunny’s Place) so before we slept, I took him back to his backyard for one more round of urination. Bunny has kidney issues so he has to urinate very often.
This morning, when Ginger was let into the kitchen for breakfast, he went totally berserk when he saw Bunny’s new boxes. He ransacked the boxes before I could take them away. I quickly settled him down and managed to give them breakfast.
Bunny has never eaten in the kitchen before, but I guess he was hungry, so he didn’t mind eating with Ginger and Tabs. This is all new to him and as always, changes are very unsettling for cats, I know. More so, when Bunny is blind and his senses aren’t very sharp too.
Ginger was clearly upset with all the changes and he went on a rampage after breakfast. He sprayed massively in the kitchen. Sigh.
So much drama….and so much work for me!
Bunny is back to his Blue House for his long morning nap now. And I finally have some peace….for now.
I just hope Ginger will be kind enough to let Bunny have his new place in the kitchen.
Please, Ginger.
I wonder how shelter cats survive when there are so many of them. We only have six and there’s already so much drama going on.