Mayhem is a very unusual bunny that comes to visit my friend Jim once in a while. His dog, Hannah, doesn’t like Mayhem and wishes he would never visit. He is three pounds of attitude! Mayhem likes to play with boxes and pieces of kindling for the wood stove—he throws them all over the place, scares himself, runs behind the couch and thumps. Jim shared his story with me, and I thought you might enjoy it too.
“The rabbit was living under the woodpile in my backyard last fall. He used to come and sit next to me while I was eating my lunch out there. He had a great set up, but he would not have survived the winter.
“I finally borrowed a ‘have-a-heart’ trap, an animal trap that is very humane and easy to use, from an acquaintance, and was able to catch him. I suggested that he be taken to the animal shelter. They don’t get a lot of rabbits there (unlike cats and dogs), so I knew he would be adopted fairly quickly. In the end, a friend decided that he wanted to keep the rabbit. He took him to the vet, who said he was about 2 months old and probably part dwarf rabbit.
“When my friend Dave comes over to visit or cut down trees for firewood, he often brings Mayhem along. When he goes out of town for skating competitions, then I get to ‘rabbit-sit!’
“We have a wire crate for a large dog that Mayhem uses as his house—sort of like a mansion for him. He is very particular about how things are arranged in his house; I often hear him moving (throwing) things around in there. He also will move, even dump, his litter box if he doesn’t think it is clean enough! He loves to come out of his house and wander around. He is very affectionate. He loves to have his head stroked and scratched.”
Mayhem gets into trouble, though; he loves to chew on wires and cables—not good. He also likes to throw wood around. He empties half of it out of the box and then, if not satisfied with where he has put the pieces, keeps moving them around. Hannah the dog is not excited to see him when he visits. If Mayhem is making a lot of noise or happens to be sitting in the path Hannah wants to use to get to her “safe spot” (the bottom of an old dog crate) in the living room, she often goes upstairs to hide or stays far away in another room. Mayhem may be wary of her, yet he is not particularly bothered by her presence.
“I have actually seen him get to within a foot of her box when she is sleeping and stand up on his hind legs to look at her,” Jim said. “Of course, if she moves, then he takes off.”
Hannah was rescued from a puppy mill where she spent the entire first four or five years of her life producing puppies in filthy and hazardous conditions. A friend of Jim’s was working at the emergency shelter set up by the Humane Society to house the seized dogs, which is how Jim met Hannah. Hannah is so happy to have a quiet and safe home now._
There are advantages to adopting a companion animal from a shelter or rescue group, as Jim and his friends have done. You can save a life. Between 3 to 6 million animals are euthanized in shelters across the country each year. When you adopt an animal from a shelter or rescue group, you save a life. Puppy mills are commercial kennels where animals are bred in order to sell them for money. All too often these puppy mills abuse the animals, kill the mothers after they are no longer of breeding age and deprive the puppies of the chance to learn normal behavior.
If you want a particular breed, you do not have to go to a breeder to find one. Estimates are that 10 to 15 percent of the animals at shelters and rescue groups are purebreds. In addition, there are also many rescue groups across the country that specialize in particular breeds of dogs and cats. But the most important benefit of all that you will gain from adopting a shelter animal is unconditional love from your little furry friend. Don’t we all need that?
My tortoise shell calico cat, Finn, came from our local South Valley agency known as “Town Cats,” a no-kill feline adoption center and feral cat advocacy organization serving our area. For more information, call (408) 779-5761 or visit towncats.org/.
Visit our local animal shelter at 12370 Murphy Ave. in San Martin or call (408) 686-3900 for more information.
