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Jake

Beloved Rabbit

Dear Companion

Greatly Missed


July 4, 1990 - September 18, 2000

On September 19, I learned from my mother that the night before my rabbit, Jake, had died. As expected, I was heartbroken, and I cried very bitterly. He was an old rabbit, and I expected him to die soon, but that still did not make the fact that he had passed any easier. On this website I have compiled a collection of memories about Jake so he will live on although his body is now lifeless.

Jake was a birthday present from my parents for my tenth birthday in 1990. I had wanted a pet like a dog or a cat for years and years and years, and I had not ever gotten permission to have such a creature. However, when I asked for a rabbit, my parents decided this was okay. I had my heart set on an all white, blue-eyed female.

Ruth and Jake, 1992

We visited a person who raised rabbits to pick out my new pet. I told her what it was I was looking for, and she said that she had a female who was about to give birth to kittens in the next day or so, but I could wait until the next week and have one of the blue-eyed babes. However, being impatient, I didn't like the idea of that, and then I saw Jake and decided that I should take him instead.

The rabbit-seller showed me how to clip his toenails and gave me general instructions on rabbit care, which I felt I was an expert on by this time, having read several books on the subject. She also told me about where Jake, a white rabbit with grey ears, eye splotches, and a few spots, had come from. He had been left on her lawn in a box with another rabbit on morning.

Why anyone would not want such a calm, gentle, loving animal is beyond me. We set Jake in a small box to transport him back to our house, and he stretched his paws up to crane over the edge of the high-sided box to look around. I was afraid he would jump out, but Mom wouldn't let me hold him on my lap, so I had to be patient and wait until we got home and keep him in the box.

Bethany, Ruth, and Jake 1994?

I still didn't have a name for the rabbit. After I had settled him in into his new home in my garage, I visited him about every two minutes until I went to bed that night. Right before I went to bed, I stepped into the garage and saw my rabbit sitting in a ray of moonlight passing through the window of our garage door, and I decided I would call this darling "Moonbeam."

That name only lasted a few days, though. For some reason my dad and brother started calling my rabbit "Jake," which is my grandfather's name. To this day, I do not know WHY they called him as such, but the name stuck, and I decided that Moonbeam was just ridiculous. So, he became known as Jake.

Jake's 6th birthday, July 4, 1996 with carrot cake and carrot "candles".

Jake lived a very long and wonderful life. Despite what others claimed would happen, Jake never chewed up power cords, never made a mess in the house, never bit anyone... I took him to the veterinarian only twice in his life when he got an eye infection in the summer of 1997. When I was there, the doctors and vet techs all commented on how incredibly nice Jake was. Apparently they were used to having nipping rabbits who liked to run around. Jake calmly sat and let the doctors look him over.

The doctors also suggested that I feed Jake alfalfa hay since it has a lot of fiber in it, which rabbits need. However, when they then noticed how old Jake was (seven at the time) they decided it wasn't really crucial for his diet... I found this rather humorous.



Jake was always a picky eater. I fed him Purina Rabbit Chow, and I bought large bags of it (20 pounds?). It lasted for a while. Once I sent my parents out to buy a new bag of food, and they came back with a different brand. None of us thought much of it until we realized that Jake was not eating it! Nothing we could do would get him to eat it!! So...we went and bought a bag of Purina and were left with the 20 pounds of other rabbit food...

Jake liked carrots and grass a lot. At one point, I had him trained to stand up on his hind legs when I snapped my fingers and I would feed him a blade of the long grass that grows beside our house and doesn't get chemicals like fertilizer sprayed on it. I also trained him to run up the stairs in our house and into my bedroom. He liked to hide under the bed there, and it was often quite a trick to get him back from under the bed when it was time for him to go back into his cage!

Ruth's senior picture with Jake, fall 1997

Jake also got a little bit of papaya and pineapple juice when he got what I think was a hairball. These two fruits, according to the vets, have enzymes that help break up hairballs. He seemed better after I gave him this remedy, so I guess it worked. He wasn't particularly fond of either of the treats, though.

One of the first days we had Jake he ran in between the wall and our dishwasher, just out of arm's reach. We decided to try to coax him out with some food. However, we didn't have any carrots! The only food we thought he might like that we had was lettuce, and lettuce is known to give rabbits diarrhea!! So, I went and asked all of the neighbors if they had a carrot we could use. Nobody did, but lots of people had lettuce they were happy to offer as an alternative. Eventually I found a carrot and we got Jake out from his hiding spot and never let him go in the kitchen area again. That was okay, because it is covered with vinyl and he has some problems hopping around on the slippery surface.



There are many memories I have of Jake through the years. Looking back, there is so much more I wish I could have done with him, but I am very grateful for the time I did have with him. It serves as a reminder that life is so very fragile and one should try to do the best at maintaining a relationship, whether it be between two people or between a person and an animal, even if for a few moments it may seem like a tiresome task.

I had just made some big "plans" for Jake when I was home for a few weeks this summer. I bought him a bag of alfalfa hay finally! He ate a few pieces of it slowly and much prefered his regular food. I planned that when I moved out (in a few years) he would come live with me in my apartment and I would let him run around almost whenever he wanted. I suppose I just was not remembering that he was already over ten years old.

I realized that Jake was getting "very old" in August when I had him in the house and he urinated in the living room, which he NEVER had done. I know he wasn't trying to be a bad boy. I did, however, usher him quickly back into his cage so he could urinate there if he had to. And I don't think I took him back into the house anytime after that. I left for school at the very end of August.

On August 19, a Tuesday, I returned from my organic chemistry lab, which had not gone well, at about 5:45pm. My mom was in my dorm room, which was quite a surprise, as my home is an hour's drive from my school. Mom had brought me the winter clothes I had been wanting as well as some groceries. And...some bad news. Jake was dead.

All I could do was break down and cry. I knew it was coming...and still...it was so terribly sad. He...wasn't going to be at my house when I came back again next. I wouldn't be able to pet him or play with him or cuddle with him if I wanted to. There were so many tasks uncompleted with him, so many pictures untaken, so many dreams unwhispered, so many promises unkept, so many expressions of love never shown...and I felt that beyond losing my dear rabbit, I had let him down in some ways, and I hadn't been there when he died to apologize or somehow make up for all of the mistakes I had made in caring for and raising him.



That week was very hard. I had to concentrate on so many things other than what Jake had meant in my life and the fact that he wasn't there. I had to appear happy although I just wanted to cry. I had to deal with friends who didn't understand what I was feeling and didn't know how to react to what I was feeling and didn't know how to comfort me or maybe even that I needed comforting. And I had to make arrangements for what to do with Jake now that he was dead.

I called up Noah's Gardens, a pet cemetary in Grand Rapids, which is where a lot of deceased pets from the vet clinic go to. They were so kind in their offerings of help in choosing what to do with Jake and in helping me take care of all of the stuff. Today (September 30) I took Jake's frozen remains to Noah's Gardens and handed him over in a box to be buried in their cemetary.

Yes, I cried more. A lot more.

So that was the life of Jake with many parts missing. He has been in my life for half of the years that I have been alive, and when I came back to my house this weekend with the sole purpose of taking him to Noah's Gardens, I had to go into the garage and see that his cage had been removed...he wasn't there... And there were so many times before I stepped out the door to run errands that I just about went to the garage door to peek out to check on Jake, something which I wasn't aware I did normally, and maybe I never did.



I like to think that there is a pet heaven. A blissful, perfect place where pets and other animals live at peace with each other and with all they love, whether that be humans or nature or whatever. I find it impossible to believe that God, who created humans in HIS IMAGE, would be so unloving as to not grant that level of happiness to animals, who mean so very much to people.

With that in mind, I imagine Jake sitting in a sunny, grassy grove with other rabbits who are just as calm and friendly and well-behaved as he, nibbling grass and a few carrots and eating all of the Purina Rabbit Chow he would want. I imagine him interacting with all of the other pleasant woodland creatures, deer and birds, and I see them nuzzling him as he enters this strange, new place, welcoming him, helping him to not be scared as he is put into yet another new home. He is transferred from one home to another in cardboard boxes, but his homes keep getting better - from a box in a yard, to a cage in a garage, to a perfect paradise...

God bless Jake.



to contact me, email iacah@angelfire.com

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