Two messages from Papageno the rabbit

Subject: Message from Papageno

They've often said that I'm a very clever rabbit. Three nights ago the woman who lives here went to bed early, (she's the one who comes home with bags of shopping, including treats for me. She also drives the car when we go to that place where they try to look at my teeth and give me medicine when I'm poorly). So when he came home the young man fed me and put me to bed (he's the one who cleans out my cage and let's me run round the kitchen).
He's not as generous as the woman, so I didn't get very much pelleted food for the night. He thinks that if he's stingy with pelleted food I'll eat hay which is good for my teeth, but I'm an old rabbit and there's only so much energy I've got for eating hay. I was hungry.
Next morning the woman opened the big white door to the cupboard that makes cold air and where good things like carrots and cabbage are stored. I rattled the bars of my cage to remind her that I needed food. She gave me two tiny baby sweetcorns and a few spinach leaves, I ate them quickly but was still hungry.
Then she was busy over by that little cupboard where things go round and round until it goes ping. She does that every morning, she puts in some nice oat flakes with some horrid wet white stuff and stirs it around to spoil the oats. She puts it in the little cupboard and when it comes out the oats have disappeared and there's a sort of gloop in the bowl which they eat with more of the wet white stuff. They really should just try the oats like they come out of the packet. She sometimes gives me a few and they are lovely.
Anyway she was taking no notice of me and I was hungry, so I wondered what to do. I used my nose to push my shiny metal food bowl out of the ring that holds it in place. It dropped to the floor with a clatter but she took no notice. What could I do now? I found a way of using my nose and front paws to play with the silver bowl, picking it up and dropping it, banging it against the side of the cage, it made quite a lot of noise. She heard me and laughed. It wasn't funny, I was hungry. Anyway she got the message and tickled my neck, put the bowl back and filled it with scrummy pelleted food and dried herbs.
So we both had our breakfast together, she had her bowl of spoiled oats and I had a full bowl of much better things.
Then the sun came out and I got to go outside and eat grass. It was a very good day for a rabbit.

Very Best Wishes Papageno



More from the pen of Papageno.

My life has been very strange in the last few weeks.



Those pesky foxes continue to patrol my garden and knock over all the stone animals that my lady likes. Sometimes I'm afraid of them and get very frightened and bang my legs hard to make a noise so my people will make the foxes GP away and let me go inside where it's safe. I can't imagine why she or the foxes like stone animals, they aren't very friendly and you can't cuddle them. She's got two ducks, a meerkat, an elephant and several hedgehogs. The elephant is too heavy for the fox to move. My young man brought two new hedgehogs that were made of stone with stuff stuck on which looked like prickles but felt like fur. I really think he'd have done better to cuddle me more, I'm much more fun. The foxes took the fake hedgehogs away every night and my people brought them back every morning, until they were getting too broken to bother about any more. That's when my young man decided to examine my outside house and my fenced in area where the fox can't get. He found some soft wood and got worried about the foxes trying to break in, so they made me stay in my little indoor house even though the weather was good and I wanted to play outside and dig my hole. They think I'm trying to get to Australia but I only really want a place to hide from foxes. They said it was for my own good when they only let me outside for short times when she was in the garden working with soil and plants or hanging out the washing. I was getting very fed up. They kept saying a man was coming to fix my house and do some other jobs but then he never came and my young man got crosser and crosser. Eventually he decided to mend my run himself. That's when I really would have liked to stay indoors because he banged and he hammered and he drilled and he sawed and he used horrid smelling paint, but he thought that I was safe because he was near me. I didn't enjoy it at all but I do have to say that he made a very good job of it. I inspected it all very carefully and I thought that apart from the smell it was all much better. I think he thought I wanted to live in a rabbit castle, because he's made everything super strong. Those pesky foxes surely won't even bother trying now, they must be able to see at a glance that my fortifications are impenetrable.