Written by Nikki Pathapati
Illustrated by Katrina Aliashkevich
It doesn’t feel right to sit amidst my own poop and trample across it every time I decide to head over to the other side of my cage. It doesn’t feel right to be confined within a container that has bars of metal arranged in neat columns and rows. I don’t understand why the bars can’t be a little imperfect and give me a little opening to stick my head through. Sometimes I put my nose into the holes between the metal bars. I strain and strain with all my might to fit my head through, but all it gives me is a headache. I hate my cage, but I hate my owner even more.
She’s a human, you see. She thinks she’s God’s gift to the universe. She thinks she’s the most important being on the planet. She doesn’t know how all of us animals laugh at humans. Silly little humans.
Unfortunately, humans are all I ever see. The happiest time of my life was when I was a few weeks old. I used to live in this strange building that the humans called Petco. Thankfully, I had my brothers and sisters with me in the cage. We would all snuggle up together and listen to stories from our mother, who lived most of her life in the wilderness. She got to play with her friends. She got to smell the fresh air. She got to dance around in the thick, wild grass. Yet at every turn, it seemed like there was another snake waiting to ambush her. Somehow, she survived. Was it worth it? She tells us that every snake that chased her wasn’t nearly as scary as the humans that arrived at her home. The humans crept up on her and waited until she was asleep to throw a net around her. She thrashed around and kicked and squealed, but they wouldn’t let her go. They took a shiny metal object and pushed it into her skin. She felt something entering her blood, and a wave of drowsiness spread over her. After that, she never saw her home again.
We listened to her stories in awe, wondering if we would ever get to experience the wilderness. It sounded so beautiful. Whenever we asked our mother this question, a sad look came over her face. She never answered our question, and we eventually realized we would have to live our whole lives in captivity. I didn’t mind, though. I was living with my brothers and sisters, and once the humans left the store, we would even talk to the other animals around us, like the frogs and turtles. We stayed away from the snakes, though. You could tell they were just dying to eat us. Thankfully, the humans kept them well fed with mice and rats.
The real tragedy happened when one day, they took my brother Andrew. We tried to hold on to his paws but they yanked him away from us. He was squealing and thrashing around in their hands, but he couldn’t escape. We tried thinking of strategies to avoid getting taken by the humans, but nothing we tried worked. One by one, they started taking us.
I still remember the day a girl grabbed me out of my cage and put me in her car. I was shaking the whole ride home. She dumped me into the most meager looking cage I had ever seen, but thankfully, it had a small cave that I could hide in. I ran into there and cried the whole night. I didn’t ever want to come out of that cave, but she soon started banging on the metal bars of my cage and screaming for me to come out. The second I poked my head out, she grabbed me and lifted me up. “Get your hands away from me,” I wanted to scream. But I didn’t. She rubbed my ears and back and petted me. I was surprised. She was so gentle. I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep in her arms. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all!
After a while, she put me back in my cage, looked at me, and said, “Your name is Brownie.” I felt a wave of sadness come over me once again. Brownie?! What kind of name is Brownie? Do I look like food? My name is Haris. How can she just erase my identity like that? I ran back into my cave and cried for another full night.
After that, every day felt the same. She would bang on my metal bars, signaling for me to come out. When I did, she would run her fingers along my ears and back and coo at me. It felt nice to have her attention and her gentle warmth. Maybe I was wrong about her. She shaved pieces of carrot into my food bowl and even cut up some strawberries for me. I had never tasted strawberries before. But once I did, I couldn’t stop eating them. Wow! They were the tastiest food I had ever had. Carrots had nothing on strawberries! She gave me more and more strawberries, and I fell more and more in love with her. My mom was wrong; humans were amazing!
At least that’s what I thought until the day she picked me up and threw me to her friend. I was so scared she might drop me, but she just kept passing me around. Every time I left her fingertips, I felt my life flash before my eyes. She kept throwing me and catching me, throwing me and catching me, throwing me and catching me...until she didn’t catch me. The drop down to the floor felt like an eternity. But I felt the agonizing pain the second I hit the tile. I started squealing with all my might and when I looked at my arm, I widened my eyes. Blood was dripping down it as fast as a leaky faucet. She stopped what she was doing and knelt down to me, saying sorry over and over again.
Sorry?! What do you mean sorry?! How irresponsible can you be?! How could you not know this might happen? She put me back in my cage and didn’t do anything to help me. I lay there and waited for the blood to stop dripping. I hate humans.
Apparently she didn’t want me to recover; she didn’t even check if my wound was healed when she banged on my cage the next day. She just grabbed me, ignoring the red welt on my arm, and carried me to her patio. It was the first time I had been outside in my life. It was the most beautiful place I had ever been. The grass was long and ticklish, the plants were blossoming with flowers, and the sun was shining bright on my fur. I danced and hopped around, stopping to munch on the leaves of the plants. What bliss this was! I waited for her to come and get me, dreading the moment she would place me back in my dreary cage. But she never came. Night fell and the air dropped to a frosty temperature. I could see icicles building on the plant’s leaves, and I huddled up in a corner, shivering and crying. I couldn’t even think straight; my brain felt frozen, and my fingers and toes were numb. Worse than the cold was my thirst. I had no source of water other than a little moisture I could salvage from the soil of the plants. I thought I would die that night.
Somehow, I survived. And the next day she came and got me. Again, she apologized over and over again for forgetting me outside.
Forget?! How can you forget?! How can you just leave me out there to die?! The second I got back into my cage, I drank so much water from my water bottle. I went to sleep thanking God that I was alright. And I went to sleep hating my owner with all of my guts.
When I woke up the next morning, I immediately knew something was wrong. My head felt dizzy and I couldn’t walk straight. I kept trying to walk in a straight line but I couldn’t. I had the feared head tilt, the disease that all rabbits never wanted to get. Some survived it, some didn’t. When my owner saw me that day, she started crying. I could see so many tears dripping down her face and I wondered, why are you crying? Why didn’t you care about me when you left me outside in the cold? Why didn’t you care about me when you threw me around in the air and let me fall and fracture my arm? Why are you crying now?
She called her dad, crying. He came over to take a look at me, and I could see a wave of sympathy wash over his face. He crushed up a strange looking pill and mixed it into my water bottle. Why is he doing this? I thought pills were just for humans! But it wasn’t like I had a better option; I was on the verge of desperation. So I drank the whole bottle. Miraculously, I started recovering in the next few days. When I recovered, she gave me so many kisses and hugs. I felt so loved. I felt so appreciated. I felt so safe. I was wrong about everything I had thought about my owner. She was kind and caring and beautiful. She was my savior.
The next few days, she showered me with love. I felt myself falling more and more in love with her. She gave me strawberries. She gave me carrots. She took me out to play. She petted me. She never forgot about me. I was experiencing the bliss I had always wanted.
Everything was going so well until one fateful day. The second my owner took me out of my cage, I knew something was wrong. She wasn’t taking me to the patio to play outside. She wasn’t placing me on the living room floor to jump around. She was taking me to a corridor I had never seen before. It looked so dark and evil. Even when she turned on the light, I could tell this wasn’t a place rabbits were meant to be. Despite my protests, she threw me in a sink and started sloshing cold water all over my skin. I was screaming and choking on the water. I felt like I would drown, and I knew I had to escape this hell hole. I jumped out of the sink and landed behind the washing machine. Unfortunately, she found me and dragged me back to the sink. I just sat there and took it. At that point, I understood there was no escape. But there was redemption. She brought a hair dryer over to me and turned it on near my skin. It was on the verge of burning me, but I needed it after the ice cold water hit my skin. I stood there and looked into her eyes. They were full of love and care. She really loved me. She didn’t understand she was torturing me. She just thought she was loving me.
A few months of this cycle of love and torture passed and I got used to it. Whatever my grievances with her were, I knew she just wanted the best for me. I was prepared for any kind of torture she would throw at me - leaving me to sit in my own poop for days, squeezing my body so hard that it hurt, placing me in an inescapable bathtub and watching me run, you name it. I just sat there and took it. What I could have never prepared for was being abandoned by her. One day, I woke up and she just wasn’t there. Huh? Where did she go? Maybe she’ll be back soon! But 30 days and nights passed and she never came back. Then 60. Then 90. I started crying every night again. I missed her so much. I wanted whatever she did to me, even if it was torturous. I just wanted to feel something. Her parents would pass by my cage and dump food in. But it wasn’t the same. They didn’t smile at me. They didn’t pick me up. They ignored me. I wanted to die.
But it turned out it wasn’t her fault. One day, they took my cage and placed it in a car. I was extremely apprehensive. Are they giving me away?! Are they abandoning me?! How could they just leave me like that? But they took me to a strange white room. It smelled of sickness. It smelled of death. And it smelled of her. She was lying in a hospital bed, clothed in a blue gown. She grabbed me and held me in her arms. I lay there and inhaled her fragrance. She squeezed my ears, and I squealed. It hurt. She squeezed my body, and I squealed. It hurt. She almost snapped my neck, but I didn’t care. I was glad to just be in her arms after so long. After a while, her phone buzzed, and she threw me back in my cage nonchalantly.
Her parents picked up my cage and started taking me away from her. No! I just got to see her again! As they were taking me away, I could feel the tears dripping down my face. They didn’t notice. Or maybe they did and they just didn’t care. I ran to the front of my cage, desperately trying to get her attention. But she was on her phone. I banged on the cage with my paws, but she didn’t look up at me. She just kept looking at her phone and laughing. That was when I lost all my love for her. I didn’t want her. I didn’t need her. If this was how she was going to treat me after not seeing me for 90 days, I didn’t need her love. But if I didn’t have her love, whose love did I have?
Every week, almost like clockwork, they took me to the strange white room to see her. Each time I went, she looked worse and worse. And each time I went, she cuddled me in her arms. She looked at me with love, but I had no love to give her. I knew she was dying. I could see it in her face and feel it in her weak embrace. I felt bad for her. That didn’t mean I loved her. I let her play with me and squish my ears and body even though it hurt me. At this point, feeling pain was better than feeling nothing.
I got used to seeing her every week. As much as I hated to admit it, it was my favorite part of the week. When we were at home, her parents never paid me any attention. They would come into the living room and watch TV. They would clean. But they didn’t even give me so much as a glance. I could see the pain in their eyes. I could see them crying about their daughter’s condition. I had little sympathy for them. Yes, they were in pain, but I had been in pain for years. Where were their tears when she almost broke my arm? Where were their tears when I got hypothermia? For beings who could care for their daughter but not me, who they willingly brought into their family, I had no mercy.
The next time they took me to see her, I knew it was the end. Her parents were crying in front of her. This time, they didn’t want to appear strong to her. They had no reason to. “I guess this is goodbye,” she said. Her parents started taking me away, and I felt my eyes fill with tears. I ran to the front of my cage and looked at her through the metal bars. She was looking away from me. I waved my paws in front of the cage, trying to get her attention, but she didn’t look at me. She turned to the side and closed her eyes.
They took me away from her, and I started screaming. I couldn’t fathom what was happening to me. I just screamed and screamed. Her parents tried to no avail to calm me down, but I wouldn’t stop screaming. Even after they took me home, I still kept screaming. The next day, they came to my cage and picked me up. I was shaking.
They walked to their front lawn and put me in the grass. They made a hand motion. Are they...telling me to go off into the wilderness?! After all this time?! They’re freeing me?! I froze in my spot. This was too good to be true. Except it wasn’t. They weren’t freeing me; they were abandoning me. They weren’t releasing me because they wanted the best for me. No, they were releasing me because they didn’t want me. I was a burden. A dirty good-for-nothing rabbit.
They walked back into the house, and I stayed where they left me. I started screaming again. I could see the birds nearby giving me strange looks. They thought I was crazy. Why wouldn’t they? I was crazy. I had gone insane and there was no coming back. I sat there in the same spot, even when the rain came. I didn’t seek shelter. I just let the rain fall on my fur. I could feel the cold droplets hitting my skin and I remembered how she washed me in the sink under the cold water. Why did I run away? I should’ve stayed there and made her happy. I should’ve saved her the trouble of moving her washing machine to find me.
So I stayed. I let the rain drench my fur. I could feel a headache starting near my forehead and spreading throughout my whole skull. I knew this was dangerous. I knew I might get hypothermia. Let me get it, I thought.
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