Thanks everyone! I've had Muffin for about a month now, and she is really settling in well. She's still very timid and afraid of me and my bf, but she's starting to come out of her shell. I really love her helicopter ears--they're so expressive!!! They flop all over the place when she runs and she sticks them straight ahead (but on the side) when she's "exploring." She even angles one up and toward you when she's listening closely! Do other lops have the ability to move their ears around too? Or is it because she has helicopter ears? Another thing that she does that's so cute (other than her precious flops!) is when she gets ready to clean herself, she does extra paw twitch-thingies to get them in position!
She and Tony are also BONDED!! They don't act like they're the love of each other's life (like SOOSKA's Jackie and Wilbur, who are so cute it kills me), but more like brother and sister. They get along well, but will chase each other and spend time apart during the day. They also fight over food a bit--Muffin likes to eat out of Tony's pellet bowl and they steal veggies and treats from each others' mouths! But they still cuddle sometimes, and groom. Muffin does most of the grooming of Tony, but she'll stop and hump him (often on the face) to remind him that he's not her boss. He grooms her sometimes too.
The bonding was actually pretty easy: for about a week, we put them together in the bathtub and watched them interact. There was a lot of humping, a little nipping (mostly while humping, which I've heard is pretty normal. The humper nips on the back of the neck of the humpee to hold on or something), and a lot of marking the tub with poop and pee. After a while, we started letting them interact in Tony's room (the living room with the huge cage) while we were around, and then we let them run all over the apartment together.
Eventually they got to spend a few hours together alone (probably by the 2nd week), then all day and all night (with the bedroom door open so we could listen for scuffles). Now, they are together all the time, and we even sleep with the bedroom door closed (Tony is VERY loud and annoying when you're trying to sleep! He jumps on my bf's face all the time!) and them together in the other room.
I am a little concerned because Tony doesn't binky as much as he did as a single bun--he used to binky from about 9-11pm straight, with occasional flops to rest, and Muffin only binkied once or twice--right when we first let her out into the large, carpeted living room. Plus, Tony LOVES pellets and Muffin prefers hay, so he's eating almost all of hers too. He's overweight, and she isn't, so I can't hold back on her pellets to keep Tony skinny, and I can't feed her separately because she never eats all of her pellets at once. She also doesn't go up to the higher floors of the cage, even though she can jump that high. I think she's still scared. We did get her a ramp, though, and we'll see if that works.
She also doesn't have Tony's sweet tooth--he would kill for a banana, but she prefers the peel or some nice oat hay.
I'm so glad we got Muffin, I just hope they're happy together...
oh and could an admin change the subtitle of this blog to: "The adventures of Tony and Muffin, two happy house bunnies!"
