When we were going to move to a new town, when I was a little girl, my Dad wanted to buy me a pet, a bunny, for me to bring, since I had to leave my friends and classmates behind. He did. I received a black rabbit, of Russian Sobel breed and I named her Skutt, which means skip in Swedish.
A couple of years later, we were going to move again but to another closer town, and soon thereupon my little bunny became ill with a cold. My mother tried to feed it with a large needle of water and sugar, but my bunny's shaking paws and diarrhoea continued, and a couple of days later, we took it to the vet and put her to sleep. I was about 9 years old then. She was buried in our garden.
I received a new bunny some time later, named Snuffan, which means sniffing in Swedish, that I kept for another 5 years (a common age for raised dwarf bunnies). When my mother became more allergic, I moved her into the local riding club stables, where it eventually died from a scare of a thunderstorm, my riding instructor told me. And my favorite horse, Petter, got troubles with his back leg's knee getting stiff and jammed, just like I hurt my knee, just a year or so, later.
In my adult years, I first got a small one called Calypso, but that didn't make it growing up. Later, I had a bunny called Fläcken, meaning spot in Swedish, that was very tame and loved jumping up in my couch and bed. I also let him have a girlfriend named Filur, which means spoof in Swedish. She was quite snobby and kept herself sleeping in one of my lounge chairs most of the time. The day before Christmas Eve, I found my bunny Fläcken, gasping for air underneath the bathtub and when I pulled him out, lots of his fur fell off. I called the vet, of course, who said it sounded like pneumonia. I held him in my lap for an hour, and then put him inside the cage with his girlfriend. The morning after, he had died and was too buried in my garden. A couple of months later, I bought a new friend to Filur, who seemed to have become very anxious. That bunny was called Stampelina, a female form for thumper in Swedish. In year 2000, I moved to a small studio apartment when I was studying full-time and decided to donate my bunnies. A cute family with two children got them and moved to the countryside, with a payment of 5 USD, the boy's allowance.
Here is the thing. I was told by my Swedish high school counsellor, who had a farm that I stayed with for a couple of months during my parents' divorce, that cats can "take up" our illnesses and remove them, noting that one of hers often jumped up and put itself in my lap, and refusing to leave me. What if this also is true for other animals that we keep as pets? After all, dogs guard us. Did my bunnies take up a curse cast on me? I can get shaking legs and become ill to my stomach in a way that feels like something evil cast on me, often coinciding with incidents happening elsewhere within 3 days. I have also been close to becoming hit by lightning in a town square in Stockholm 2014, which I run in zikzak from. And finally, I had to sit in a basement at a hostel in Sweden in winter 2018, inside one of their shower cabins until morning one night, when I had nowhere else to go, and it was fully booked. I got pneumonia after.
Furry protection!
Unfortunately, I haven't any of my old photos left to show you, and my Dad doesn't answer, but it's all true.