Hello. It’s Belinda.
This is a little longer than usual but I need to document something that happened this week. I hope you will keep it “off the record.”
But first I want to thank everyone who used the comment box last week. It’s always a “pick-me-up” when I hear from my friends. Especially when you are behind my idea for a life-sized hay house.
Some of you left ideas for other products, from hay cubes to cardboard houses to swag. You really stepped up to the plate. Makes my job easier, if you know what I mean.
The product team is reviewing the list and I hope to have answers in time for next week’s blog. “Stay tuned.”
So about the incident. It involves my boyfriend’s companion.
Some of you ask why I don’t give a lot of detail about the other rabbits in the house. Or show photos.
The main reason is this: They don’t have agents. So I have to worry about copyright and royalties. I have enough on my plate.
But in a few weeks, we will mark one year since my boyfriend died. I miss him a lot. I miss our routines and his good moods.
I used to push my nose through the pen and he’d “fix my face” for me. So relaxing. I can use my paws to wash up but it’s not the same.
Losing him was awful. But it’s been even harder for my boyfriend’s companion.
They did everything together, except for the times he escaped the pen to run laps with me around the bottom level. Which was almost every evening.
Best of all, his companion never seemed to care. She would just stare at us as we ran past the pen. Not angry, but like she was trying to remember how she knew us.
I’m not sure how to say this, but she is a bit of an “odd duck.” For one thing, she refuses to help me with grooming. I will smash my face through the bars and hold it there until I get a cramp. While she sits about a foot away, watching me. Which is rude.
And she wakes me up on work nights with her “chatter.” No matter how many times I ask her to hush I can hear her muttering nonsense like “let’s fold these towels” or “the pearl is in the river.”
But when I have a bad day, she will sit and listen to me vent. Like when my product ideas get the “thumbs down.” Or when I hack into the system and a few hours later have "hacker's remorse."
Now I wonder if telling her my secrets is going to backfire.
Because the other morning, my roommate was late to feed us our breakfast. I remembered that my boyfriend’s companion had some alfalfa stashed in the back corner of her pen.
So I’m not proud of this but I opened her pen. All do you have to do is push it with your nose over and over again and eventually it moves away from the wall.
Like a flash my boyfriend’s companion ran off. Just ignore her, Belinda, I told myself. Focus on the hay.
But I kept seeing her out of the corner of my eye. A black blur racing around. Doing loops by the furnace, then a beeline under the steps into my office. Which no rabbit will tolerate.
Next thing you know I’m chasing my boyfriend’s companion all over the bottom level. Unfortunately, I accidentally caught her with my teeth and pulled out a small patch of fur from her lower back. But not very much.
As I stood spitting out the fur, I heard my roommate’s footsteps moving across the kitchen. I froze.
“Do you hear that?” said my boyfriend’s companion from behind the dryer. “Bats in the belfry.”
I panicked. Then I ran up the steps to the kitchen.
“Good morning, Belinda! I’m sorry breakfast is late.”
My roommate walked toward me. On her way to the bottom level. And I did what I had to do.
I positioned myself sideways across the top of the steps.
“Belinda. Move out of the way.”
I didn’t budge. I tried to act casual, like it was normal to goof around at the top of 13 steps.
It didn’t work. She squeezed past me.
I know I shouldn’t admit this. And I’m not sure if I was technically at work yet when this happened.
But as she stepped onto the second and third steps, I tried to push her feet. So she would stop walking.
“Belinda! Are you trying to trip me?”
I ran ahead of her, trying to think of a way to distract her. But by the time she got to the bottom step, I knew it was “game over.”
She saw my boyfriend’s companion standing in the middle of the room. She saw the pen pushed in and the big opening.
My roommate didn’t say a word. She walked around the room searching the floor until she found the little clump of black fur.
She herded my boyfriend’s companion back into the pen and pushed the end against the wall. Then she poured pellets onto our plates in silence. She put a treat on our plates too. I ate it but it's hard to enjoy a snacker when your roommate isn’t talking.
Since then she has not said much. I’m hoping this will all blow over.
But if I “get a call from HR,” at least I have backup. I can pull this out of the drawer.
Sincerely,
Belinda,
Spokesrabbit, Small Pet Select
