Hi everyone, I adopted my rabbit Quozl on Sunday and she is wonderful, loves attention and strokes and eating and drinking etc really well, not showing any signs of nerves after the first 24hrs. She is spraying though, and I’d like some advice on how to handle it. Here are some details of her circumstances, perhaps you experienced bunny lovers will spot the clues to solve the puzzle…
She is now a house rabbit, but as her previous owners kept her half inside and half outside but always in a cage/hutch, she isn’t familiar with having free reign of a room. There is a litter box in her cage and a second litter box in her pen and she uses them perfectly (aside from marking new objects which I am allowing her to do because I feel she needs the security of being able to do that, and her pee doesn’t smell). There are no other pets in the house, and there has never been any in the past so no left over smells. My partner is over sometimes but he was there the day we collected her and visits lots, she seems to like him
I’m slowly acclimatizing her to the lounge, starting with just a 1 meter square space directly outside of her pen. I sneakily harvested a load of her poos over the first few days and before I let her out on to this section of carpet I scatter those poos all over the carpet and put two litter boxes in it (that she has chinned and already contain her poos and pee), one in the corner and one at the ‘far-point of territory’. She is so excited when she is let out and plays wonderfully for a while… Seems reassured by sniffing her own poos around, but she eventually sprays. The first time she sprayed I instinctively went “TSST!” without thinking and she zoomed back in to her cage and I closed the pen door and cleaned up, then I put a flannel I’d previously allowed her to mark over the spot where she’s sprayed so she wouldn’t feel the need to re-spray there after me cleaning. I tried again a couple hours later but again, after some time of nice sniffing strokes and play, she peed in a different place. I then sat still and clapped which she didn’t like and sent her heading back into her cage to get away from my noise – but now when I clap she doesn’t seem to care and doesn’t react. What is a better way to communicate “outside time is over” to her? Yesterday her spraying was worse (flung higher and more determined!) and she even sprayed ME, and that is not on!!
I want to allow her to mark because it’s the same as me needing to put my things around a new flat to make it ‘mine’, but this place is rented and I’m physically disabled so constantly cleaning up pee is exhausting…. My partner had an idea the other day to get a huge cheap rug to cover the carpet – that way the flat carpet won’t get ruined, and if I ever move I can bring her marked rug with us. I found a good big rug yesterday and am planning to put it down tonight…. Shall I allow her to mark it, trusting that after a week or so she’ll stop, or will she just re-mark whenever the smell fades? Or shall I enforce a no-marking rule with her? Am I doing the right thing by putting around litter trays and the flannel that she has marked, or is this encouraging her to be more territorial?
She isn’t spayed. Her previous owners told me she was male, and I could afford male neutering… Trying to scrounge together more cash to pay for her to be spayed as I know about the uterine cancer etc, and I know it will give Quozl a less stressful life – and perhaps reduce the marking too, aiming to do that when she is 6 months but am nervous and sad for putting her through that…
Any advice would be much appreciated! Yasmin x