#1 Leo

It all started on Tori's 15th birthday. I racked my brains to find a "birthday party" that would be fun and easy, and clean and include the parents.


But no, actually it all started with a prayer. A prayer a year earlier.

But I never would have had to say the prayer, if I hadn't felt the way I did.

I'd been a Mom for 22 years then. No career. No furthering of my education. No nothing. And now my husband felt I should work. And I felt like I'd always worked. Not only worked full-time ....but a 24 hour a day job. Besides which there wasn't anything I could do better than the kids out there, since the computer age happened while I was raising my kids. The last time I'd worked, I built a shoe-box client file for a 400 lawyer New York law firm to have information at my finger-tips...and my bosses thought that was pretty cool. I left the year the computer took over the accounting department I think.

At 47, overweight and with memory loss setting in, I had no desire to go out into the big world of work. I had no idea if I could even learn anything successfully again.
So I prayed.
"God, I really would like to be an expert in something.......something I could love. Something I could learn, something easy enough for a 47 year old with no memory."
I realized 2 things much later.
I hadn't ask for it to be a money maker.
And God has an amazing sense of humor and a large amount of love for us!

Life went on for a year or so, and I forgot about the prayer or getting a job.

For Tori's 15th birthday, I let her invite 6 girls over for the day. I gave each of them $25 in cash. Then we drove down to the garment district in Los Angeles.......Santee Alley to be exact, and they were instructed that, with the $25, they must buy an entire outfit to wear to dinner that night at a nice restaurant. It had to include a dress, shoes, and jewelry at least.
We separated into 2's or 3's, and the girls shopped. Intermittently we stopped to see what each other had purchased. At one meeting, Lilly showed up with a tiny bunny in a tiny cage. He was about 3-4 inches big. He fit entirely into the palm of my hand. It was the cutest little thing I'd ever seen. Everyone ooohed and ahhhhhed and wanted a turn holding the bunny baby.
Much later I found out that Santee Alley is famous for selling bunnies at 3 weeks old (way too soon)because they are irresistible when they are so little.
Everyone found their outfits and we drove home, put the bunny in my shower stall with cat litter and carrots and water............ and the girls got dressed in their new outfits and got ready to go to dinner. After a lovely Italian dinner and photography session in the new dresses......we came home and the girls were picked up by their parents.
Lilly's Dad came and when he saw the bunny, he said there was no way Lilly could have a bunny.....because she already had 2 dogs. Since I had let her buy it...it was my bunny and my problem. Thanx Roland!

My husband Scott, already frustrated at our having 4 cats, was adamant that I find the bunnny a home. I put a note out at church and ask around. There were two families interested. But I had fallen madly in love with little Lilly, as I called her. So I decided to keep her. As I started to read about bunnies, I found out that I was doing everything wrong. Cat litter was dangerous if they ate it (especially the clumping kind) because it could expand in their digestive system and kill them with GI stasis (blockage or non functioning of the colon). Carrots had too much sugar for their delicately balanced cecum (second stomach) and could make them sick. It seemed like I had a lot to learn if I wanted a healthy happy bunny.
Lilly was a complete sweetheart. She went everywhere with me, in my pocket or my purse, or a little see through bag I got for her so that everyone could see her. I got a lot of positive attention over her which was fun! I also met a lot of people everywhere I went. Everyone wanted to know about Lilly.
I was going up north to Saratoga one weekend for a horse vaulting educational symposium, and
took her with me. She didn't mind the car, and she mostly slept on my lap while I drove. And she used the litterbox really well. Up in Saratoga, she was at my feet in her box all weekend. At breaks I would take her out in the grass and let her run and play in a little harness I had for her.
One time I let her climb onto a fountain and she wanted to stay there. I thought she had fallen in love with the mermaid on the fountain. That was the beginning of something new.
I took her to the vet to arrange for her spay date when we got home and found out to my great surprise.....that Lilly would need a neuter, not a spay. Lilly was a boy! No wonder she fell in love with the mermaid. It took me a long time to get used to the fact that Lilly was a boy, and during that time her name evolved from Lilly to Leelee, to Lee and finally to Leo.
Leo is a fine strapping (English Spot) boy today, at 3 years old, handsome and healthy. He lives upstairs on the platform in a 2 story condominium with his girl Bambi, and has lots of room to run and play and he is quite the happy and very spoiled boy!

#2 Bambi and Blackberry

Above is a picture of Bambi. I can't find one of Blackberry unfortunately.

A few months before Tori's 15th birthday I had finally gotten the motivation to go take the class at our local animal shelter to be a volunteer. I have always loved animals, probably because I never had any till I was 8, and then the dog my parents got me was a high bred border collie, very nervous, and although he loved me a lot, he bit everyone else, snarled and growled and bared his teeth, and wasn't a very pleasant pet. I was always afraid he would hurt someone, and once when he got in a fight with another dog, and I was trying to get them apart so Patch wouldn't kill the other dog, I got bit by both of them and almost had to have the whole stomach rabies injection series......because we couldn't find the other dog's owner right away.
The cats my 3 older sisters brought home never lasted long, and I was unlucky enough to find one of them dead one morning, hanging on a rope leash above my sandbox, because someone had tied them to a long leash in the yard so they could play, never thinking they might climb a tree and then try to jump down off the wrong side of the branch. Ah, well.
Patch lived till I was 22, and my parents took care of him after I left for college. One day my Mom let him out like always and he never came back. They never found him.

So I took the class. But I didn't start volunteering for a month or two. I can't remember why.
In the meantime, Leo was my all and all. But the more I read online and in books about bunnies, the more I discovered things I was not doing right.
One of the things that got to me were the books that said bunnies needed a playmate. Another bunny. Well, Scott was already upset about 4 cats and 1 rabbit, so it really didn't occur to me to try to bring in another rabbit. But another part of me kept reading the pet section of the Penny Saver magazine whenever it came in the mail-box. There was always a few ads with bunnies that needed homes. I always wondered why people got bunnies, and then gave them away. They were so cute.
Part of the answer to that was that I didn't know anything.
Leo had not yet hit adolescence.
Every time I read the Penny Saver, I circled the ads. But I never called. But then one day there was a plea from someone who had to move from their home to an apartment due to divorce and the apartment wouldn't allow bunnies. I felt so sorry for the owner. I wanted to help her by taking the bunnies and keeping them for her so she could still see them.
I made the mistake of calling. She was such a nice girl.And she only wanted $50 for both of them and the cages. I went to her house thinking maybe Leo needed a girl-friend...that I would be helping the girl AND the bunnies.....but telling myself the whole way there.."no matter what, you MUST say you have to think about it first...you may not bring them home today. Just look at them."
2 hours later there were 2 bunnies in my trunk with 2 huge cages and food and bedding and toys and more. The girl gave me everything for free because she could see I loved bunnies.
They were the cutest sweetest things and one of their stories broke my heart.
Blackberry was a little black-haired boy with a lot of spunk and a sweet heart. Bambi was a little gray and white Dutch girl with the most beautiful cornflower blue eyes!
I got them home, set up the cages, separate from Leo, in my guest room, and played with them each one at a time. Blackberry was playful and curious. Bambi was shy and very very nervous.
I waited for Scott to come home and have a heart attack.

Bambi's Story:
(to be continued after I finally get some sleep)

#3 Story of Bambi

Bambi has amazing blue eyes!


This is what the girl that gave me Bambi told me:

She got Bambi and Blackberry together, but they were kept apart, because they were unfixed boy and girl. But one day her daughter came home from school and let the two bunnies play together. They were both still really young, but Blackberry got Bambi pregnant. 4 weeks later Bambi, still a baby herself, had a litter of babies. She was too young to even know what to do and unprepared physically to feed them. All the babies died.
So, Bambi has had quite a traumatic and depressing start to life, and is really anxious.
Still she just sits very very still when you hold her, and she never bites.
I had Bambi spayed at my local vet, which cost $290 .....a fortune! After some time, I tried to do a bunny bonding with Bambi, Leo, Snow, and Sadie. It didn't work for all of them, but Leo and Bambi got along, so they ended up together, and are still together today.
They are quite happy in their 2 story with yard house upstairs on the landing!