FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Rabbit Food

by Altivo Overo (copyright 2009)

Phil leaned back in his chair and stretched, then rubbed his tired eyes. He squinted at the digital clock on the shelf above the monitor and blinked. Two in the morning? Enough of this leveling stuff, he thought. I have better things to do than spend hours on networked gaming. He signed off from the multiplayer system and closed off his network connection to keep hackers out of his computer.

As he stood up and stretched again, yawning like a hippopotamus, he realized that he'd forgotten dinner. "Damn," he said to himself, "anyone who claims that stuff isn't addictive is either a fool or lying." His stomach muttered, and he staggered into the kitchen in search of food. The fridge was nearly empty, he knew, but he opened it and peered in hopefully. A few forlorn cans of soda and beer glittered in the sudden light, along with a plastic bag half-full of slightly shriveled apples and a bottle of ketchup. Not much help there. Thank goodness for college campuses with amenities tuned for student populations,.he thought, as he grabbed his car keys and pulled on his jacket.

While the engine in his old VW was warming up, he considered his options. Pizza? Nah, had that twice this week. Chicken? Too greasy. He was trying to reform his diet enough to lose at least a little weight. He pulled out of his driveway and turned up University Avenue toward an all-night sandwich shop he visited occasionally.

The place was nearly deserted when he got there. One couple sat in a corner booth with plastic coffee cups in front of them. They were wedged so close together on the same side of the table that they might have been Siamese twins, and didn't even look up when the bell on the door jingled as Phil entered. The night time counter girl came up from behind the refrigerator case with a damp rag in her hand and offered him a slightly buck-toothed grin as she washed and wiped her hands with a paper towel.

"How may I help you?" the girl asked. Except for the teeth, she was rather attractive, Phil thought. She just needed to lose those big round glasses and have a course of orthodontia. Her almost straight hair hung in heavy braids that looked like lop ears.

"I'd like the sliced turkey sub, hold the mayo and lettuce," Phil told the girl, offering what he hoped was a winsome smile. It never hurt to show a little interest, he figured.

She nodded. "Sure thing, for here or to go?"

"To go, please." Phil hesitated for a moment, then added "Whole wheat roll if you have one."

"Fresh batch just delivered," the girl said, and turned to the back counter, pulling on a disposable plastic glove to assemble the sandwich. Phil noticed that her apron was tied in a double bow right above her rounded derrière. It made him think of those photos of Playboy bunnies in their silly costumes, with a poofy little tail behind. He was lost in rather distracted thought by the time the girl slipped his sub into a white paper sack and set it down on the counter.

"Anything to drink with that?" she asked, and he shook his head. "Bag of chips? They're free with any full sized sub this week."

Phil was tempted, but said "No, thanks," and tried to feel virtuous as he handed over the $3.37 for the sandwich.

"Have a good night then," the girl said, with a wink, and picked up her cloth to resume cleaning.

"Thanks," he told her, noticing that the couple in the corner booth had moved even closer together, something he would have thought physically impossible, but there it was. He let the door tinkle behind him, climbed into his VW and headed straight back home.

The side door of the house refused to yield to his key, as it sometimes did in damp weather. Phil walked around to the front door, which was better sheltered from the elements, and unlocked it to let himself in. He didn't turn the hall light on, and swore softly to himself as his foot caught in the wire cage resting on the floor in the shadows. "Damn Suzy and her rabbit too," he grumbled, but immediately thought better of it, and picked up the empty cage to carry it into the kitchen. It was his own fault for leaving it there instead of putting it out of the way.

Phil's sister had kept a pet rabbit for years, an amazing number of years in fact. He was sure bunnies didn't normally live to be sixteen years old, but that's how long her Bunowitz had lasted. The chubby black and white rabbit had run loose in Suzy's room when she was there, and lived in the cage when she was at school or work. His long floppy ears had nearly dragged on the floor, and he had a propensity for nibbling things but was quite fastidious about using his litter box, so their mother had tolerated him fairly well.

Only the week before, his Mom had told him that Bunowitz had finally passed over to the big meadow in the sky. Suzy was taking it well, she told him, but would he mind taking the cage away to keep her from brooding on the loss? He'd agreed, and picked it up while Suzy was in class two days earlier, then left it inside the front door when he got home.

For all they'd fought with each other growing up, Phil was fond of his sister and respected her deep affection for her pet. He'd intended to check the pet stores in town and see about getting her a new rabbit, but his mother wanted him to wait a couple of weeks first. He put the cage into the utility room next to the washer and dryer, and returned to the kitchen where he'd dropped his bagged sandwich on the table.

Phil pulled a couple of paper napkins out of the package on top of the fridge, and got himself a beer (lite, of course) from the interior, and sat down to eat. His stomach was still complaining. Good thing tomorrow was Sunday and he didn't have to get up for work. He unwrapped the sub, and found that in spite of his instructions, the girl had loaded it with shredded lettuce.

"Damn it," he said aloud. "I told her to hold the rabbit food," as he carefully picked the greenery out of the turkey and sliced tomatoes. He didn't mind the tomatoes, but he'd never understood what people saw in lettuce. Phil figured it tasted just like shreds of green paper, only soggier.

Leaving the lettuce in a little haystack on the waxed paper wrapping, Phil bit into the sub. Not bad, actually. Interspersed with swallows of the beer, he began to polish it off, still thinking about the girl in the shop. She wasn't bad looking at all. Maybe if he saw her there another time or two, he could ask her for a date. The teeth weren't all that horrible, when he considered her big brown eyes and long hair.

He finished the sub and bit into the pickle the girl had wrapped with it. He didn't usually eat those, but the salty garlic taste of the brined cucumber seemed to blend so well with the remaining beer that he just went with the flow and finished them both. Leaving the wrappings and the beer can on the table, Phil switched off the kitchen light and headed for the bathroom to prepare for bed. He was yawning repeatedly now.

Sometime before dawn, a fire truck went by out on University Avenue and the siren awakened Phil from an odd dream. It had seemed, he thought, like something from the network role playing game. He was trapped inside a cage and couldn't figure out how to escape. After a while he began to be thirsty, but there was no water. Huge birds began to gather outside the cage, eyeing him hungrily and whistling to one another. The whistles merged into the passing siren as he woke up, sweating and thirsty.

I should know better than to drink beer right before going to bed, he thought, heading for the bathroom to piss and get a drink of water. He flushed and reached for the glass he normally kept on the sink but it wasn't there. Oh yeah, he'd put it in the dishwasher yesterday because it was looking pretty grubby. So he padded down the hall to the kitchen on his bare feet, wearing only his boxer shorts. After all, it was his own house, and there was no one else to be offended or embarrassed, he thought.

Phil didn't bother to switch on the kitchen light. There was enough illumination from the street outside so he could avoid bumping into anything. He picked his coffee mug up from the counter and rinsed it under the tap, filling it with cold water which he drank noisily. Then something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. There was a faint glow from among the sandwich leavings on the table.

"I'm still dreaming," Phil told himself, and just then dribbled cold water from the mug down his front. "Nope," he said, setting the mug down. "That's real enough." He leaned over the table, peering at the waxed papers and sandwich bag. It was the lettuce he'd left lying there in a heap. He could swear it was flickering with a greenish light. He cupped his hands around the little pile of greens to block the glow of the streetlights throught the window over the sink. There was definitely a very faint but discernible light from the shredded greens. Weird, he thought. Must be some luminescent bacteria or something. Glad I didn't eat it. Rather than turn the light on so he could see to toss all the debris into the trash, and reveal himself standing there in his boxer shorts to Mrs. Johnsen, whose bedroom window faced his kitchen across the driveway, he turned his back on the whole thing and went back to bed.

The dream returned. The birds outside the cage were holding up bottles of Evian water in their beaks to taunt him. His mouth was parched. He couldn't even close his lips, it seemed, they were so dry. His upper lip clove to his incisors, forcing him to practice Anglo-Saxon attitudes in order to free it. He wondered if the Lion and the Unicorn were about to start fighting for the crown.

The next thing that happened was stranger than his expectation, though. A brown and white rabbit doe hopped up to the cage. He wasn't sure how he knew it was a doe, but he had no doubts about it. She was carrying a leaf of lettuce in her mouth, which she laid on the ground just out of his reach. He tried to reach it by turning his face from the bars and reaching through to grab it by feel, and almost succeeded, but he felt the lettuce tear in his fingers so that only shreds were retrieved. He chewed eagerly on the shreds to get what little juice he could out of them.

Phil's feet felt cold. I'm dreaming, he thought. They must be sticking out from under the blanket. But he could feel the hard smooth floor of the cage under them. It was at this point that he woke up enough to hear another fire engine passing on the road outside. He found himself not in bed, but in the kitchen where he could see the reflections of the passing emergency lights on the neighboring windows.

He got up from the table and turned on the tap to get another drink of water because his mouth really was dry just as in the dream. He heard a sucking sound as air rushed into the spout. No water pressure. Must be quite some emergency up the way, he thought. Phil sat down again at the table, trying not to think of the remaining beer and diet soda in the fridge. He knew those would fail to quench a real thirst, and might actually aggravate it.

He was thinking about the dream and fiddling with the sandwich wrappings on the table. Suddenly Phil realized that he was chewing on something juicy and slightly sweet. Looking down at the table and his hands, he realized that he was tasting the last of the shredded lettuce which he had carefully picked out of the debris.

"Jeez, I guess rabbit food is good for something after all," he said aloud. This time he gathered the sandwich wrappings and the empty can and tossed them into the trash. Then he made his way back to the bedroom, and fell asleep as soon as he got under the blanket.

The next dream was full of the sound of running water, like a stream running over smoothed stones. Phil was trying to find the stream, but kept getting tangled in vines and brambles that slowed him down. Gradually he awakened enough to realize that he was snarled in the sheets, with his ankles nearly tied together. Once disentangled, he also realized that the rushing water sound hadn't gone away.

Phil got out of bed again, turning his head back and forth to try to locate the sound. It was coming from the kitchen, and when he got there he found the water running hard in the sink. Fortunately the drain was clear and it hadn't overflowed. He must have left it turned on, he thought. Cold morning gray was creeping into the sky outside, and he had thoughts of coffee. Well, OK, might as well get up. Maybe he'd be tired enough to really sleep for a while later in the day.

He reached for the light switch, and then remembered Mrs. Johnsen and the fact that he was still wearing only his shorts. He went back to the bedroom and pulled on a sweatshirt. His toenails caught in the sweatpants as he put them on, and he made a mental note to trim them. Realizing that his feet still felt cold on the floor, Phil felt for a pair of moccasins under the bed, found them after a minute, and started to put them on. He couldn't get his heel into the slipper, though. It was as if the deerskin had shrunken, but that was ridiculous. He had worn them just the week before, he was sure.

Finally he turned on the bedside light to figure out what was wrong. Phil stared unbelievingly at one foot and then the other, picking them up from the floor to examine the soles as well. "I'm still dreaming," he said aloud. "Damn it. No more late night snacks and going to sleep on a full stomach. This is going too far." He put a hand over his eyes and rubbed his forehead, but stopped as he realized that he was endangering his eyes with those sharp fingernails. Then he felt something soft and velvety draped against his wrist. Dreading what he would see, he staggered to the mirror over the bureau.

Red eyes stared back at him. Not blood-shot, but red, with pink irises. Instead of screaming or fainting, Phil peered curiously at his reflection. His ears were gone. No, wait, they had moved to the top of his head and were hanging down at the sides. That's what he had felt against his wrist. Convinced he was just dreaming it all, he reached with his right hand to feel the texture of his ear leather again, but what he saw in the mirror was not a hand. It was distinctly a paw, with long transparent claws and white fur on the back. He shifted his gaze from mirror to look directly at his hand, turning it over to show the palm side. It had pink pads, with white fur tufting up between them. At least he still had a thumb, he thought.

Phil looked into the mirror again, watching his own nose twitch as he breathed. This time the whole picture sank into his consciousness. There was no doubt about it, he looked like an Easter bunny wearing a ratty sweatshirt. His moustache was gone, replaced by long transparent whiskers. His new harelip was fetchingly parted to show a charming pair of white incisors. He tried to make his ears stand up and failed. But then, he'd never been able to wiggle his ears as a human either, so maybe he was a natural lop. If this were a dream, at least it was being consistent. He looked down at his feet, which were still rabbit feet just as he'd thought when he failed to cram them into the moccasins a few moments ago. Well, this would be a heart-stopper if Mrs. Johnsen looked in the window and saw him, he thought with a chuckle, and went back bare-pawed to the kitchen to make coffee.

While the coffee dripped, Phil extracted a couple of the slightly withered apples from the refrigerator. Somehow they seemed much more appealing than they had the previous night, and he decided they might do for an impromptu breakfast. Still convinced he was dreaming, he wondered when he would finally wake up. Well, it was amusing enough, so no hurry, he thought.

The black coffee was still good, the way he usually took it. The apples were much better than he remembered them being, and he ate both of them, seeds and all. Some nagging thought nibbled the edge of his awareness, telling him that apple seeds were poisonous, but he didn't think a dozen or so were enough to worry about.

Phil yawned widely. Maybe he should go back to bed after all. Even with the coffee, he felt sluggish. It was Sunday, so no problem. His Mom would probably stop by sometime in the early afternoon, when she was done with church. That was a normal routine. He wanted to ask her about getting Suzy a new rabbit, though he'd already suggested his intention and she'd approved it.

He walked back to the bedroom, noting that he still walked on the flats of his feet rather than on his toes like a real rabbit. Pulling the blanket over himself, he said "OK, time to wake up from this. It's been fun, but..."

The sun was shining in the bedroom window right onto his pillow when he woke up again. Phil yawned and tried to go back to sleep, but realized he was too hot. He was panting. Panting? He tried to kick the blanket off but his toenails caught in something, leading to a struggle to get free. The next thing he realized, he was on the floor on all fours. He could see the sleeve of the orange sweatshirt he'd been wearing, dangling over the edge of the bed. Somehow he'd wiggled out of it, or removed it without realizing, he thought.

In this position he had an unusually good view of the floor under the bed. It didn't have dust bunnies, it had dust elephants. Even his mom didn't look under there, and he could see why.

Phil tried to get to his feet, but only succeeded in sitting up on his haunches, stretching enough to bring his eyes to the level of the mattress. There were the sweatshirt, and his gray sweatpants, lying in a tangle on the bed. His boxer shorts were there too, and he looked down self-consciously to see that he was now covered with snowy white fur. Uh oh, he thought. No wonder he was only as tall as the bed now.

He wondered if he should go to the ER for treatment, but thought better of it. Evidently he wasn't dreaming, but this seemed impossible. Even if that lettuce in his sub had been radioactive, it wouldn't have done this. Or would it?

Starting back down the hall toward the kitchen, he realized he was springing forward on his elongated feet now, landing on his toes and front paws. Hopping like a bunny, oh joy. He could still read the kitchen clock. It was half past eleven. Mom should come by in about an hour. How would he explain the situation? Could he even talk now?

As an experiment, Phil tried reciting the Gettysburg Address. "Four score and seven years ago..." he began, but stopped when he realized that nothing was coming out but a wheezing snuffle of a sound. All right, he thought, don't panic. There has to be a way to make the best of this.

Then the realization came to him. He hopped into the utility room, where Bunowitz's old cage was sitting, door open. He climbed into the cage. It was roomier than he expected. There were still some alfalfa pellets in the small dish clamped to the bars, and he had to admit they smelled edible if not exactly like a gourmet dinner. There was water in the bottle, too, and he drank gratefully, his elongated incisors rattling against the metal tube in an encouraging way. Now he just had to wait.

After about an hour, he heard the front doorbell. Well, he couldn't very well open it in his present state. He knew that his mother would have her key, and would let herself in the kitchen door if he failed to answer. Then she would sit down at the table and leave him a note. Phil hoped that the door had dried out enough in the morning sun to open easily now. It did.

There were two voices, and he realized that Suzy was there with his mom. He wasn't sure what the reaction would be when they found him, so he tried to stay calm and act as if everything were perfectly normal.

He recognized Suzy's red tennis shoes as she stepped into the utility room and peered around. "Hey, Mom!" she called. "Phil's got a bunny now. A cute white one."

His mother leaned around the corner of the door and stared. "I see," she said. "He asked me if he could get you another rabbit after Bunowitz died. I guess this must be the one."

"Cool!" Suzy knelt down by the cage and held out a hand to him. Phil couldn't resist hopping toward her and rubbing his head on her hand, as he had seen Bunowitz do many times. "Hey," she laughed, "he even acts like Bunowitz. Do you suppose it's OK if we take him home with us now, even though Phil isn't here?"

"I think so, dear," her mother answered. "Just let me leave him a note. He must have been called in to work or something. Those computers are always breaking down somehow."

All right, Phil thought. Maybe they'll figure it out in time, or maybe not. But at least I won't starve or go without anything in the meantime. He fought to keep his balance as his sister snapped the cage door shut and picked the whole thing up, carrying it to the kitchen door. "Do you think he'll mind if I call this new bunny Philip?" she asked.