SIR - I heartily endorse the comments on rabbit keeping by Jennifer White (Craven Herald letters, May 2). People associate rabbits with hutches, but this is an alien concept to them, whether pets or not. In wild situations they are highly active creatures, covering great distances day and night, playing, courting and racing each other (while watching out for the stoat, fox and humans). I've spent many hours watching trusting wild ones, and kept a few pet ones as house/garden rabbits.
Cats are fairly sedentary compared to rabbits, but who would keep a cat in a small hutch for 23 hours a day or more?
Rabbits are a very sociable group-living creature; isolation is as cruel as isolating humans. Pet rabbits often do not like being picked up, and can bite and powerfully kick, resulting in them being left in the hutch, ignored or abandoned. Many rabbits die horribly of maggots, having been left in filthy hutches, or from starvation from overgrown teeth. They are very clean animals, and by choice use toilet 'latrines' many yards away from burrows and preferred eating areas.
If you can't ensure your pet rabbit will have daily freedom to run in the garden or the house (mind the electrics), please get a soft toy instead.
G Evans
Ramshaw Drive
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