It’s not easy having seven rabbits in a single house. Rabbits may look cute and cuddly – and they are! – but they are extremely sensitive to their territories and out in the wild, they have hierarchical structures that go along with their status of prey animal.

Here in the TGWS household, the rabbits are organized by how they came to us, and their territory takes into consideration their temperment and gender.

She’s-A-Little Half Pint is now the oldest rabbit in terms of her time here (three years), but when she was taken in the house had already been set up for our now-departed rabbits Marble (who had the run of the whole house) and Pepper and Marble Junior (who had a play area and the bottom floor of a three-story rabbit condo in our office den). Because we had the room, when Half-Pint came she was set up in the upper two stories of the rabbit condo, so she’s never known anything but her penthouse suite.

Cosmo’s play area occupies the northeast corner of our den office between the big oak deak and the wall. His cage area was originally rigged up for The Big Nipper, the gentle soul whom we lost back in 2007. While TBN was never given run on anything outside of his area due to his seemingly-unquenchable desire to leave little bunny urine reminders that he was an alpha male wherever he could, Cosmo has the run of the house (bedrooms excluded) during the day. After his breakfast, he’ll bound out to the dining room where he’ll plant himself under his favorite chair, then stay there until it starts getting dark. Then it’s back to his cage area for supper and the night.

Peanut is a cutie, isn’t she? We’ve had her for over a year now. But don’t let that charming little face fool you – she’s a beast! She tolerates Cosmo and will let him chase her around the house whenever we let her out for limited social engagements, but she absolutely despises the other rabbits – especially her arch-enemy, Little Half-Pint. Which is why her domain is our bedroom, where during the days she has the run of the room but at night is kept in a cage. Whenever we let Half-Pint out for some exercise, she seems to know just how much Peanut hates her and how protected she is beyond Peanut’s fence. So there she’ll lay down and/or linger until Peanut charges at the fence, hissing and spitting. The Peanut fence keeps Peanut and her charming personality away from the other rabbits.

Ginger and Geronimo call the den office their home. Across from Cosmo’s area and under Little Half-Pint’s penthouse suite, they have the play area originally occupied by Marble Jr. until her passing this past June. Both Ginger and Geronimo are still getting used to their digs – they’re both quite sensitive in nature – and they appear to prefer the fence that keeps them apart from the others.

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Last but not least we have Floppy and Cookie. These two rabbits belong to Tracey’s sister Tammy, and are here (at least we hope) for only a limited engagment. How limited, we’ll see… Their home is the guest bedroom, and new fence placed across the doorway to that room serves two purposes: 1) it prevents all-out nuclear war from taking place between them and Cosmo – something that we’ve already had a couple of previews of, and 2) it sequestors them away from the other rabbits who live here permanently. The fact they’re even here is something only Cosmo knows about, and he ain’t telling the others.

They’re all good rabbits, made even more good by the fences that separate them from each other.