As Gaudere alludes to here, the “hopping” gait is a compensation for relative taillessness. We had a pet once, ironically named “Bunny” for the rabbit-shaped marking on her back as a kitten, who for the first eight months of her life had a beautiful luxuriant tail. Then she came off second-best in an encounter with a motorcycle, and her tail was hanging by a flap of skin when she was brought back to our door. The vet had to amputate, of course, and she had a 4-cm stub thereafter – and a gait that reminded one irresistably of a rabbit hopping.