I realized today that this means I have less than 200 days left with Baby, my rabbit. Now, I realize that her breed can live to seven years, and I am not at all discrediting my family's ability to keep the little darling alive.
Since I began seriously considering going to France for the next year, and since I read an article that said she would scream on the plane because her ears would hurt so badly, I've known that this day was inevitable. That does not make it easier.
Baby has traveled and traveled across the Midwest. She sits in her huffy, fluffball position in the backseat as we drive to Evansville, then St. Louis, then Ohio and back in circles. She does not sing along to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. She does throw hay at me when I take a turn too quickly.
She sits on my bed with me each day. In fact, she will no longer jump onto the bed until she sees that I am already up there. I choose to believe that she knows she'll be loved if I'm sitting there with her. Really, she just know the odds are good I'll be holding a book that she'll chew on.
When I make kissing noises, she runs to me feet. She follows my feet around the room, getting kicked and kicking me when our steps aren't quite coordinated.
She wakes me at six each day, chewing on the bars of her cage like any convict. She leaps from the confines and runs laps around the room in complete freedom, weaving between chair and desk legs, skidding along yoga mats.
It takes her days to settle into places we visit, and usually just as she's adjusted and ready to really hop around again, I move her back to Muncie. She's grown up in this home, and it worries me to think how she'll react when she realizes that we're not driving back to Muncie or that she'll never again climb over my fireproof box and jump into the back of my closet.
It worries me to think that she'll feel abandoned. That she'll have no one's hand to curl into they way she curls into mine and no one's bed to curl up on. I worry that, though she hates being picked up, I'm the only one in the world–truly–that can snag her and catch her when she leaps from my hands in midair. Mine is the only chest she's panted against after having her nails trimmed on the cold kitchen tiles.
It worries me more to think that she won't miss me. It hurts so much to think of her stretching out and going to sleep while anyone but me pets her. It hurts to think that she'll run on another stretch of floor without standing on her hind legs to find me waiting for her on a bed or couch our chair or beanbag.
In all the things that Joe and I refer to in our "Soon" mantra, this is one that I've only begun to realize.
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