This is Félicie!

My mother’s recent and relentless de-cluttering activities keep producing the strangest and most surprising memorabilia. Last Sunday, she plunged her hand in her handbag and, not unlike a magician pulling out a white rabbit dangling by its ears from an upturned top-hat, proudly presented me with a photo of … a rabbit. Here it is!

This rabbit, with its elegant Siamese-cat-coloured coat, lived with us for about 18 months, sometime around 1985. We decided to name it Félicie, a posh name that suited the rabbit’s noble appearance. Unfortunately, by the time we found out that Félicie was actually a male rabbit, the animal had suffered severe mental trauma from being given a girl’s name and had developed a very kinky, yet amusing behaviour, to which it stuck for the rest of its short life.

Félicie was a present from my long-time friend Mati, to whom I had in an unguarded moment mentioned that it would be lovely to have a dwarf rabbit as a pet. I would never have bought one myself though, because a 4th floor apartment with white, wall-to-wall fitted carpet wasn’t exactly a suitable habitat for a rodent, however cute and house-trained it may be.

To make a long story short; one day at work I received a phone call from Mati who urged me to drop in at my parents’ house that evening, because there was a present waiting for me there. She refused to say what it was, but sounded really exited. When I arrived at the house, my mother showed me a large cardboard box that was producing a thumping sound. Inside was this cute rabbit looking up at me with its beady eyes, winning me over in a split second.

Félicie lived with me at the apartment for several months. During the day, I kept the rabbit in a cage under the kitchen table. In the evening or on weekends I sometimes let it run free in the kitchen and on the balcony which both had a tiled floor. Being house-trained, it spontaneously returned to its cage when it felt a natural urge coming up.

During my annual vacation in France, I ‘parked’ Félicie for a week with my parents, where ‘he’ quickly settled in and claimed the veranda as his territory. My mother was so taken with the little critter’s presence that she convinced me that it was better for the rabbit to take up permanent residence there. By November, Félicie was a full member of the household, sleeping on my mother’s kitchen chair and hopping to the door where he stood on his hind legs to attract attention until my father or mother would open the door into the veranda where his litter box stood.

When he heard my father coming home and opening the garage door, Félicie would take up position by the kitchen door, ears pointed and his little nose quivering in anticipation. As soon as my father stepped into the kitchen, the rabbit started running circles around his feet at an incredible speed, with his fluffy back paws often slipping sideways on the shiny tiled floor. This ‘exercise’ usually lasted for about a minute or two. In the end Félicie would literally collapse in front of my father, who could then safely step over him without the risk of hurting the animal.

One day, Félicie went missing. When he didn’t reappear after twenty-four hours, my parents assumed that he had escaped into the garden, where he had been chased and killed by a stray cat. The truth, however, turned out to be even more distressing ... 

(more to come)