The First Rabbit

This is Mr. Tops. It must have been December of 1987 that he first appeared in the yard. It was cold, my sister's Russian husband had been visiting, and when we drove home from Galveston it was dark. We saw this rabbit outlined against a bush as we parked. In the days that followed he hung around. I went to buy rabbit food and eventually set up a feeding station in the yard. Alex tried to coax him in with a long cage with food at one end and a door he could spring sitting in the side doorway. Didn't work. Rabbit was too fast.

He was scared of Alex but came up to me if I sat out there with the food. Eventually we got him in and he ate several wires to the stereo the first day. He litter trained himself pretty quickly, put the bad cat in her place pretty easily and made himself at home.

Eventually we discovered that Mr. Tops was a girl but Alex never changed his name.