Isn't it nice to see a rabbit on the other side of magic for a change?

Rhianna rabbit got her cast off yesterday, though she's still confined to a puppy pen in the bedroom. To celebrate, I've added a page of photos of her in her fetching leg warmers. What kind of person takes 30 pictures of a rabbit in various states of dress and posts them on a website? Probably the same kind that spends more than £500 to fix one of the little bleeder's broken legs. Truly and completely mad...

Letting rabbits have the run of the house is a bit mad, even if I do say so myself. Apparently rabbits are the third most popular pet after dogs and cats, at least in Britain. They seemed so easy - easy to litter train, clean and quiet. Which they are, but they're also destructive, messy and rather fragile. They are definitely litter-trained and as veggies who digest their food twice, they're relatively un-smelly, but they love to drag their food around the kitchen, they shred monitor cables and baseboards and shed a sweater's worth of fur a week.

On the other hand, they're cool because they're kind of mysterious, like you're communing with a bit of the natural world. It's not easy to communicate with rabbits. They don't learn your language like a dog does - you have to learn theirs. You have to understand the subtle positioning of the body that tells you how you rank in their estimation that day, the "flat-bunny" posture that wants stroking or the dreaded flick of the back leg as they turn their back and run away (which means, essentially, "fuck off you vile, vertical oppressor").

I want to learn their language, which, I suppose, is why I put up with them. It seems we're always on the floor with them, perfecting our nose-wiggling to show them we're interested in what they have to say or our bunny head flick that says, "I'm in a good mood!" (except when it says "you're pushing it now"). We're working towards the ultimate bunny statement - the rare and unusual "binky" - that mad dash, leap and twist into the air which means they're as happy as a happy thing in happytown. When you're in on that, you know you've arrived.