Bunny bonding

Bennett's cut is all healed, thank goodness, no abscess, so we started the bonding process with Mahala and Bennett. So far, it's going really well. Since we've been switching their sides of the pen to get the territorial issues lessened a little bit, I think the head start has been a good thing. On Tuesday, I put the two bunnies into a large cardboard box with the sides taped up, so that Bennett can't escape and they seem to be doing really well as long as they are on neutral territory. In the box, they cuddle, Bennett takes naps and they both try to escape. This evening, I tried to put Mahala in with Bennett in his pen, by the bed (which is one of the places we're keeping the bunnies while their room is full of closet items, hopefully the closet items will be going back to their places and we can resume having the bunnies in their room), and he wasn't very happy with that. He would ignore her and then he'd go over to her like he was going to lick her head and then instead of licking, he'd snap at her. No one got hurt, Mahala was really scared but ok. Right after that, I put them back into the neutral territory cardboard box, and all was well again, cuddling and grooming just like nothing happened. Weird. I guess I learned my neutral territory lesson, because until they are totally ok with each other on neutral territory, we're not going near the already staked out territory. Though, I'm not sure what I'm going to use for a bigger neutral territory. The exercise pen is in use blocking off the couch, but friends are giving us a new gate for that, so hopefully I'll be able to use the pen in a neutral spot pretty soon here. We're going on retreat this weekend with our Oblate group, so that won't be set up until next week tops. So here are some pictures of bonding, as you can see, Bennett misses no opportunity to take a nap, even on top of Mahala.

These other pictures are of Mahala being cute. I love the one where she's passed out in her salad plate. One of these days, hopefully, we're going to go to As You Wish, a pottery painting store, and make them salad plates that aren't our usual eating plates.