Tony

Maisie, our second rabbit, died on Friday, roughly two months after Charlie, our first rabbit. We both felt terrible beyond my ability to describe how we felt. On Saturday we went to a plant nursery. I bought a small pot of rosemary and an esperanza plant with which to mark Maisie's grave. I'd marked the place where I buried Charlie with a chrysanthemum and one of the small wild petunias which grow hereabouts and which he liked to eat - something for him to munch on in the bunny afterlife, I told myself.

I buried Maisie on the north side of our garden because there wasn't much room near Charlie. Taking her little body from the carrier in which she'd come back from the vet and placing it in the ground nearly killed me. As with Charlie, I covered her grave with small stones, like a tiny cairn, so as to discourage anything which might try to dig her up but also to channel water to the roots of the rosemary and the esperanza to some extent. Maisie had liked rosemary when we gave it to her.

This left us with an empty hutch sat in the front room, lifeless and silently reminding us of death. Could we not have done something more for our rabbit? it seemed to ask. We could move the hutch out onto the back porch, but it would still pose the same horrible question; as I had built the thing myself, we weren't chucking it away; but it wasn't going to be a problem.

Someone on facebook had sent Bess a message. The woman had found a baby rabbit and was unable to look after him. She had two large dogs and desperately need to find a home for Tony. We already liked the name she'd given him, so on Sunday we drove out to Westover Hills. The woman came to the door with the bunny in her hands. He was tiny, about three months old and mostly white with black spots, a hotot like Charlie had been; and the patch on his nose resembles the silhouette of a bunny. She had found him at some fast food joint, presumably dumped as they always seem to be.

We could hear a little boy crying elsewhere in the house along with dogs barking.

'He doesn't want to let Tony go,' the woman said as I took this tiny bundle of fluff from her and held him to me. He looked a little bewildered, but not unhappy.

A small tearful boy came to the door, red-faced.

'You can come and visit whenever you like,' I said.

'Mom, can we go and see Tony?' the child pleaded.

'Sure, we can.'

'We like the name too,' I added. 'So he's still going to be Tony.'

'That was his idea,' the woman said smiling at her child. 'It's short for Antonio.'

'Antonio,' I laughed. 'I like it.'

'As in San Antonio,' she explained with a roll of her eyes.

We'd bought a pet carrier but Tony sat on my chest for the entire journey home, seeming neither skittish nor particularly spooked by this whole experience. He settled in fine, and learned to ascend the stepped ramp in his hutch within about four hours where it took Charlie about a week. He learned how to hop up onto the couch almost straight away and has already made friends with most of the cats. Junior sent photos of Tony to all of his friends, one of whom commented that Tony's bunny-shaped nose patch is sort of like me getting a picture of myself tattooed on my face.

We'll never forget Charlie or Maisie and we still miss them every day, but Tony is helping.