Bunny Love

[ArvadaLanee]

A few days ago, Happy started doing something new. She started nipping, and biting me as she groomed me. At first, I was really worried that she was becoming aggressive. She was digging at my arms, and holding my hand in her teeth, trying to move my arm into a different possition. Her bites hurt, but they weren’t hard enough to leave a mark. I just couldn’t figure out what she was doing…until it became obvious. She got my arm into the possition she wanted, and mounted me, and began humping my arm! I read previous posts on this forum, as well as a couple others, and it seems that females and males will both hump, but Happy also does the rabbit mating dance, circling me excitedly, and even grunting a bit, so maybe she really is a he. I also found out that although Happy came from a farm, she is actually a rescue bunny. The men who own the farm don’t breed the rabbits, or raise them for meat. They take in unwanted pets, and accidental litters, and let them live out their lives on the farm. They do rehome a bunny once in a while, but most of them stay on the farm because the people there enjoy them. That’s probably why Happy’s history is a bit unclear. The farmers may not have known if Happy was fixed or not when they rescued her.

I am still not sure if Happy is humping to try to show dominance, or just because she loves me that much. To deal with the love bites, I started making a high pitched sound, “Eeep, eeep, eeep!” when she does it, and she will either be more gentle, or just go back to licking me. If she tries to mount me, I talk to her softly, and gently put my hand over her her head, and push her down. She is a quick learner, and she hasn’t been humping for the last couple days, and she hasn’t nipped me hard either. She does continue to circle me, and she licks/gently nips me all the time. She hops into my lap, groom’s me all over, and will even flop down and go to sleep in my lap. Last night she sat in my lap and put one little front arm over my arm, and laid her face on my arm, and went to sleep like that. It was like she was hugging me.

Do I need to worry about any of these behaviors? Will her love turn to aggression at some point if I don’t get her fixed quick enough? If I do get her fixed, will she still be so affectionate to me? I will get her fixed either way, but I really hope she will still come up into my lap, and give me little bunny kisses. How do rabbits typically change after being fixed?

[Niamian]

Well I can tell you only from my experience. But Redford became more relaxed, happier and more affectionate and couddlier.

[Bam]

Getting a bun fixed will not make it less affectionate. It will make the bun less hormonally “crazy”- the nipping and the humping you describe do sound like hormone-driven behaviors. It often takes a month or so for the hormones to die down completely after a spay, and during that time the bun can be extra-hormonal and territorial and aggressive, but that’s totally normal.
It is good for girl buns to get spayed because they have a high risk of uterine cancer at age 3-4 if left intact.

[ArvadaLanee]

I knew about the uterine cancer. That’s why I said I would get her fixed no matter what. I was just curious about any common changes in Behavior. Last year, I let my boys adopt a kitten, Stormy Moon, and she wasn’t fixed yet. Shortly after that, my boyfriend adopted a male kitten, SoCo. I wanted to be extra safe, so I took Stormy in to be fixed when she was still quite small. The vet told me that as long as she was 2 lbs, it was fine. I have had cats before, and always got them fixed, but I had never had one fixed so young before. The surgery was hard on her. She was in pain for a long time, (even though I did buy her pain meds) and we couldn’t hold her, and all she did was lay in her box. It took weeks for her to recover, and after that she never again liked being held, or cuddled. Before having her fixed, she was very much a lap cat. She would climb up, and perch on my shoulders, and sleep on my chest, or in my lap. She slept with us every night. After her surgery, she didn’t do those things any more, and I felt so guilty, wondering if she didn’t trust us any more. She is much better now, and she shows affection in different ways, but now I get all crazy when taking an animal in for surgery. I get scared, and ask a billion questions, and want to her everyone’s experience, so I can be as prepared as possible. My boyfriend calls me, “Super Coddles,” because I worry about my animals as much as I worry about my children. I can be a real nut sometimes. Lol

[Bam]

I’m sorry about your cat. It sounds very sad. It is a big surgery and as such has risks.

Whether you spay a bunny or not, she will be less cuddly as an adult than she was as a baby. That’s part of normal development. It’s rather a lot like that with all mammals. Most adult humans are less cuddly than toddlers f ex =)

My boys have not become less cuddly by being neutered. Some say desexing makes the animal less skittish and thus more prone to like being cuddled.

[Author]

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