I adopted Corey from the House Rabbit Society of Chicago in October 2014. He was a particularly scruffy seven-year-old gent who had been under their care for two years. I had an affinity for older buns, knowing how hard they were to rehome. I asked to meet the oldest residents, who were Corey (7) and Wiley (11). Lovely Wiley was a bit wobbly, and his long-term caregiver later expressed how glad she was that he would stay with her and avoid the added stress of a new home so late in life. Corey hopped all over me, pooped in my lap, and hungrily inhaled herbs. Fast-forward two states, four houses, and five years; and I scattered Corey’s ashes in a quiet clearing in Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley. February 2020 would have marked his thirteenth birthday.
I’d uprooted my life in England and crossed the Atlantic six months prior because when you’re twenty-four, sometimes an international move seems like a great solution to the trivialities of the day-to-day. I found love within months (again, twenty-four) of my arrival on U.S. soil and moved to Chicago to be with my newfound project as he attended graduate school.
Surprise – it rapidly became apparent that the relationship was not going to work out – but where was I going to go? What was I going to do, now that I’d moved so far and built this life and home around someone who wasn’t right for me, in a city I didn’t have any connection to? Friends came to visit, I had long phone conversations with family, but I was numb. I didn’t feel right in my own skin. I grew into a state of such intense self-loathing I could no longer imagine what a future might look like. I felt myself sink into a particularly terrifying depression and used whatever strength I had desperately seeking the affection and stability I left behind in the UK from someone who wasn’t capable of giving it to me.
I found what I so viscerally needed in Corey. Caring for Corey – an incredibly inquisitive, friendly creature who’d been discarded so long ago and so late in life – gave me renewed purpose. He was prone to GI stasis (shout out to Chicago Exotics), so I needed to be diligent about his environment and diet, and perceptive to his behavior. He was a conversation-starter with new friends, a provider of structure in a place that was largely foreign to me, and a source of warmth and comfort in an increasingly tense home.
Corey was fearless and would run to greet anyone at the door. He was surprisingly mobile for his age and would leap onto the couch and climb up your torso in search of anything he could nibble on. If you had any food (I mean ANY food), he would try to grab it from you and scamper away before you knew what happened. Several times he stole cookies, whole bags of chips, once even a pack of Dramamine. That rabbit was crazy, and I quickly learned you couldn’t leave anything passable as food within his reach or I would have to chase after him to retrieve it.
It was another year before I had the strength to leave my partner and Chicago. It wasn’t all smooth sailing after Corey’s arrival, of course – there was a trip to a crisis center, a lot of nights I slept on the ground beside Corey instead of in my bed, and I experienced some soul-destroying conversations. It took that year to build me back to who I was: a strong, independent, empathetic woman, and I dread to think how long that would have taken without Corey as a source of such unconditional love.
Corey moved with me to California on Christmas Eve 2015, and I was blessed to have four more years with him. Life didn’t immediately brighten, of course. Corey was my rock through more tumultuous times – a fleeting housemate stealing rent, a labor discrimination legal battle, and a particularly pricey trip to the E.R. He was always there at the end of a draining day to greet me at the door, lick my feet, and ask for nose rubs.
One of his most endearing traits was what I referred to as his morning HIIT workout – every day at 5 a.m. I would wake up to the sound of his little paws sprinting around the room in circles. Then he’d stop suddenly, look at me (I’d be hanging off the bed watching him at this point), and start over. He’d do this for a good twenty minutes each morning. If I was lucky, these sprints would be combined with some wobbly old-man binkies. A true athlete!
But most importantly, Corey was there for all the good. He was there when I moved in with three incredible housemates who came to love him like I did, in a house where we’d live together for over three years until his last day. He was there to meet and win over family and friends from across the pond as they came to visit throughout the years. He was there to welcome his first cousin, born to my brother and sister-in-law in Oakland. He was there for all the sunsets over the Bay, which we watched from our balcony most nights during the summer. He was there to see me fall in love with someone so kind and sensitive, I still can’t believe he’s real.
Corey’s story came full circle as he spent some of his final days under the care of the staff and volunteers at House Rabbit Society Headquarters in Richmond. While we were visiting my family in England, they miraculously got him through a bout of stasis so awful, they prepared us for the worst. It was then too that they found a rapidly-growing tumor. Their outstanding level of care, expertise, and attention to detail is undoubtedly what gave him a few extra days of comfort so that we were able to be by his side in his final moments. He munched on organic produce until the end. I only hope that he felt my love for him in the way I felt his for me.
To Corey and to House Rabbit Society: I am forever grateful for you.
Reviewed by HRS staff
Author: Di LamontPhoto Credit: Di Lamont
Journal Issue: House Rabbit Journal, Winter 2020
