This #holiday# season was mildly dramatic Chez Monster, owing to some serious pet drama. At the start of December, we had four house rabbits; we still have four house rabbits now, but the roster has seen some substitutions. The long version is best summed up in Jen's entry here, but the short version is: exit Miss Sniff, enter Neo.

There's a whole set of theories regarding the dynamics of keeping rabbits in your home as pets. The most important of these is that yes Virginia, they can learn to use a litterbox. Once you get past that though, you must contemplate the science of group rabbit dynamics. Rabbits are extremely social, and are indeed happiest living in groups, where the smallest unit of the group is the bonded pair. However, progressing from two single rabbits to one bonded pair is a process that has a lot in common with nuclear fusion: it requires a lot of time and attention, it's quite noisy, and everyone's really eager for it to work. For this set of experiments you will need the following: more than one rabbit, more than one cage, a neutral area, a cocktail the size of your head.

With our two younger bunnies, we're still at the cursing and whanging-on-the-machines-with-a-spanner portion of the process. So in the interests of science, I sat down yesterday with a tape recorder, a rabbit-human translator (what? I'm a linguist. These things litter my home. You can't swing a dictionary and not hit a futuristic translation device in this house) and a sour apple martini. The results, appearing below, have been taken verbatim from the tapes.

	Neo: Hey! How are you! I'm Neo! Neo Neo! You're interesting.
	Scratch: What the fuck are you? You're not my sister. Shut up and leave me alone.
	Neo: I'm sorry you're sad. I'm Neo! Do you want to sniff me? I want to sniff you. Neo! Neo! I just got here. Want to be my friend?
	Scratch: Okay let's get one thing straight: I will kill you! If I can just get this whole "thumb" thing together, I am out of this pen and into your face, motherfucker. I am coming for you! I play with no one!
	Neo: Um...are you all right?
	Scratch: No! I am not allright! I am going to kill you! I am going to come over there and fuck you with your own feet! As soon as I am done chewing this block of wood, you're a dead bun!
	Neo: Um...you're very pretty?
	Scratch: That's it, pal. I am on my way to kick your furry little ass! No one said you could come in my kitchen and start rubbing on my toys, chewing on my baseboards. Scratch takes that from no one! Do you hear? NO ONE! AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!
	Neo: I'll let you be on top?
	Scratch: Mm... okay.

This has been going on for two weeks. Only yesterday did we get to the point where we could have one rabbit out of the cage without direct supervision and a disciplinary water bottle. Before that, any time Neo was out of his cage, Scratch would try to pull him, feet-first, in through the bars of his own cage and administer a WWF-style smackdown, if WWF-style smackdowns involved pulling all the fur off your opponent's ass. Which they may do; I don't know what the official rules are there. Anyway, apparently once they can peacefully coexist on opposite sides of a fence, then we proceed to more difficult maneuvers, like Meeting in a Bathtub, Going for a Scary Car Ride, and Being Smeared with Bananas and Then Grooming Each Other (rabbits are notoriously kinky, and really, what better way to break the ice?).

But for now, it's enough if we can remember to rotate everyone in and out of their cages without injury, and keep the neutral meeting spaces (aka Teeny Tiny Deathmatch Arenas) clear of poo, fur and other debris. Also, we're out of vodka.