My cats are indoor/outdoor cats. While in the great outdoors today one of my cats flushed out a baby bunny. It suddenly showed up on my back patio. This thing is teeeeny tiny, not much bigger than a tube of chap stick.
My cats showed way too much interest in her so I scooped her up and placed her in a small box for safe keeping. I don’t want to keep her but i’m not sure what to do with her. Can I just release her back into the yard once my kitties are in for the night? I’m in southeast Pennsylvania, near Delaware, if that matters any.
If you can find the nest, the best solution might be to put the baby back in/near it. This site and others I’ve seen suggest you don’t have a very good chance of keeping it alive if you try to take it in. Bunnies routinely leave their nests alone for long periods of time; if you can get the baby back to where its mother can find it and if you can keep cats away from it until she has the chance to do so, he may have a better chance of surviving than if you try to care for him yourself.
No signs of a nest. I got my more curious cat inside but the other is out roaming somewhere. I let her go into the grass but she’s just sitting there. Probably scared half to death, poor thing.
It’s a helpless feeling, not knowing what to do for a wild animal in trouble! This site has some advice and links, although I haven’t tried them. I haven’t had to face this situation since my kids were little - they were the ones who always found the injured baby birds. Good luck!
If you don’t think the bunny is finding its way back to the nest, might want to look up wildlife rehabbers in your area. That might be its best chance. Hope the poor thing makes it.
This happened to me, many (many, many) years ago when I was a kid. My sister and I split shifts, doing what we could for it round the clock. We kept it warm and under wraps, and gave it milk in an eye-dropper.
It died anyway…
I don’t know if there is an answer, other than Do you best…and be ready for disappointment.
We also had this happen when I was a kid. There were three or four of us to take shifts and we fed them infant formula from an eyedropper. We kept several bunnies alive to hop away another day, but they might have been a bit older to start with.
My family managed to successfully raise a baby bunny that our dog retrieved, many years ago. We gave it baby cereal. However, I don’t think that this was a brand new bunny, its eyes were open and it was somewhat mobile. It was too young to eat solids when we first got it. We managed to raise it until it was easily eating solids (and BOY did it like apples) and then it started exhibiting very wild behavior, so we let it go in an area near a lake. We probably should have turned it over to a rehabber, but this was before the internet.
So some baby bunnies do survive, but not a lot of them.
When I was a kid, I heard a terrific struggle and found our cat on the porch with a baby bunny it his mouth. We got the bunny out and put it in a shoe box. My mother was determined to save it, and went out for a miniature baby bottle, but by the time she got back, it was dead (probably internal injuries, as there were no external ones, although we kids figured it “died of fright”).
I have no idea what we’d have done with it, had it lived. Probably raised it, at least for a while. I wouldn’t begin to know how to find its mother.
I hate to throw cold water on the fuzz fest but we let our cats kill and eat them. Happens (that we see) a couple times per year. God knows how many of which we are unaware.
Bunnies are notoriously difficult to rehabilitate. A good friend of mine was a wildlife rehabilitator and she frequently said that it didn’t matter much what you did, even if there were no internal injuries they would commonly die if you turned the light on too quickly or something fell off a shelf and startled them too much. I wouldn’t put too much emotionally into it staying alive.
I doubt there is much that can be done for it but I have to at least try. Bunny spent the night in a box in my house. I put lots of grass and such in there for it along with a small soft towel. I also managed to give it a bit of water through an eye dropper.
I called around and found a rehabber willing to take the bunny in for us. My husband is taking it over there soon. At least she will know what to do better than we would.
I got a bunch of cute pics. I just have to figure out one of the free sites.
Thanks for all the advice everyone. If nothing else you have convinced me that my initial thoughts about trying to keep it were wildly unrealistic.
