What lies behind my rabbit obsession, and more reasons to hate my father.

My mother took me to pick him out
one afternoon at my Grandma's friend's house.
Their back porch had been converted into
a rabbit breeding center, cages everywhere.
Naturally I picked the one that came over
to sniff my hand. Little did we know
that it was not a dwarf rabbit like the rest of them
and would grow to be a-foot-and-a-half long.

Let me back-track, I always start these in the middle.
I was six and my dog had recently ran away
after my brilliant father had brought him to the Fourth of July
fireworks. It only took two explosions to scare
the thing enough to bolt so hard that he broke the leash.
Four hundred bucks and a trip to Ohio for the rare breed
all washed down the tubes by my father's carelessness.

Mom would ride her bike around town calling his name
for weeks, but never found Benji.
I'm sure someone picked him up.
He was a handsome dog and didn't bark
though he did chew my mother's Bible to shreds one time

In retrospect the rabbit was Mom's way of making up for the loss.
She didn't tell my father about her idea and when we brought
the rabbit home he wasn't happy about being left out of the loop.
In retrospect that well-intentioned gift was another nail
in the ever-growing marital coffin. At six I didn't see that.
To make matters worse, or better, depending
my mom coerced my father into building a large pen for Cuddles
(we weren't sure of the sex yet, hence the ambiguous name).
He got some two-by-fours and some chicken wire
and screws and hinges and divided the front porch in half.
Cuddles had a spacious eight-by-ten home
complete with a swinging door and Benji's old plastic doghouse
though he never used that, almost as if he knew it wasn't really his.

Within the year Mom started sleeping alone in the guest bedroom
upstairs, a whole floor away from my fanatically Christian father.
I didn't understand it then, and when I finally thought I did
I blamed her. Again, the six-year-old didn't know any better
and didn't fully grasp it for another fifteen years, give or take.
When the divorce finally came my father brought up
the issue of the rabbit in family court. My mom and I were moving
into an apartment across town and didn't want to disrupt
Cuddles' lifestyle by cramming him into a cage.
Two months ago my mom told me that my father requested
fifty-dollars-a-month in rent for the rabbit.
I'm not sure if it was that ridiculous stipulation
or the fact that my father didn't want to take care of the poor thing
but either way Cuddles was to be given away.
My dad had a friend from the town's fish and game club
who raised rabbits in his barn and would take Cuddles in.
The only condition we had was that he'd be used to stud
and not butchered for food like the rest of the bunnies there.
It sounded like a good arrangement, but the worse ones
usually do.

The apartment wasn't as bad as I had predicted.
Even at six the glass was half empty. I was an early bloomer
and quick fader. My mother had some musclebound locals
help us move the furniture into the new place.
I'm pretty sure most of them worked at the only gas station
in that ragged one-horse town at the time.

It took me some time to adjust, but I did.
My mom was relieved to be free from my father.
Not everyone was so well-off, however; don't mistake
this for some sort of Happy Ending.
Those aren't doled out so easily.

The two of us went to visit Cuddles to see how he was doing
a couple months after our respective moves.
My mother and I even brought him a carrot as a treat
and a small blanket to make him comfortable in his new home.
An old woman answered the door at my father's friend's house
and led us to the barn where the rabbits were kept.
"Oh, the mean black one..." she said
when we said who we were really there to see.

The barn was dimly lit, a far cry from the front porch
at what was now only my father's house.
We approached the rabbits slowly and looked for Cuddles.
His tiny cage was towards the bottom of the stack.
I called his name in the same tone that I used to use
but he didn't respond.
I stuck my little fingers through the holes in the wire
but he bit me.
My mother tried giving him the carrot
but he wouldn't nibble on it.
He no longer lived up to his name.

We looked at each other and held back tears.
I threw the blanket out the window on the ride home
and never went back there again
until now.

I hope they ate him before the meat got too tough.

The rabbit I have now runs free from the time I get home
from work until I go to bed at eleven.

Dad, you lost me sooner than either of us ever realized.