How my rabbit's daily needs ground me when my mind is spinning
When the thoughts start tangling into knots, I find myself standing in my Melbourne kitchen holding a fistful of fresh hay, slowly remembering that I am a person who exists in a body that lives in a room. The rabbit does not care about my racing heart or the email I have been drafting in my head for six hours. She cares about the hay. And somehow, that is enough to pull me back from the edge of the spiral.
My rabbit is a mini lop called Hazel, a buttery-coloured creature with ears like velvet tea cosies and a habit of thumping when she is displeased about the weather. I did not adopt her with therapeutic goals in mind. I adopted her because I wanted company that was quieter than my own thoughts. I did not expect how the rhythm of her needs would become a rhythm for mine, a kind of metronome for the days when my anxiety is loudest. If you are curious about the human behind the rabbit, I have written about it in my random facts about me post.
Caring for a being that cannot use words shifts the focus away from the abstract terrors of the mind and onto the concrete, verifiable needs of another creature. When I am spiralling, my problems feel enormous and undefined. When Hazel thumps, I know exactly what to do: check the temperature, offer parsley, sit quietly until her breathing slows.
These daily acts are small but not trivial. They are the scaffolding that holds my days upright when everything else feels like it might collapse. This is what I have learned about letting a rabbit's needs hold me steady when my own mind refuses to.
The morning hay ritual
Every morning begins the same way. I drag myself out of bed, often before I want to, because Hazel is rattling the bars of her enclosure with the impatience of a creature who believes breakfast should be served at dawn regardless of how little I slept. I measure out oaten hay from the bale I bought at the local pet supply store, fill her hay rack, top up her pellets, and rinse her water bottle. The routine takes about ten minutes, and those minutes are mine in a way nothing else in my morning is.
Fresh hay has a particular texture I have come to associate with manageable days. It smells green and slightly sweet, and it crumbles between my fingers in a way that is impossible to ignore. When my mind tries to convince me I am failing at everything, my hands are busy with something undeniably real. The hay is wet or dry. The pellets are enough or they are not. None of this is negotiable, and that is the relief.
Grooming as sensory grounding
Hazel is a seasonal shedder, and during her moults she leaves clouds of soft fur on every surface. I brush her with a soft-bristled brush most evenings, working slowly from her ears to her hindquarters, and the repetition has become a meditation I did not sign up for. The brush moves in long strokes. The fur gathers in soft clumps. Hazel flops onto her side and closes her eyes, and my breathing follows hers, slowing, deepening, finding a tempo my anxious thoughts cannot disrupt.
The weight of her body against my legs is a kind of anchor. The sound of the brush through her coat is a kind of white noise. The smell of her, faintly grassy and sweet, is a kind of home. When I am finished, there is a pile of fur to discard and a rabbit who looks sleek and satisfied, and I feel three degrees more present than I did an hour ago.
The discipline of cleaning the enclosure
Litter trays do not clean themselves, and this is one of the great unspoken truths of rabbit ownership. Every few days I pull on rubber gloves, empty the tray, rinse it with warm water and white vinegar, and refill it with fresh litter. The task is repetitive, unglamorous, and completely non-negotiable. If I skip it, the smell reminds me within hours.
There is a strange freedom in being forced to do a task with no room for interpretation. There is no email to draft while I scoop litter. There is only the scoop, the rinse, the refill, and the quiet satisfaction of a job that is visibly, tangibly done. For someone whose work is largely mental and often invisible, this kind of physical completion is a gift.
| Care task |
What it asks of my body |
What it asks of my mind |
What it gives back |
| Morning hay and pellets |
Stand, measure, pour |
A simple sequence to follow |
A clear beginning |
| Brushing during moults |
Slow, repetitive motion |
Sensory attention |
A calmer nervous system |
| Litter and enclosure cleaning |
Bend, scoop, rinse |
Completion of a visible task |
Proof of usefulness |
| Garden time in the run |
Lift, carry, watch |
Awareness of weather and body |
A shared rhythm |
| Heat and seasonal care |
Plan, freeze, reposition |
Long-term thinking |
A future that has shape |
| Vet visits and check-ups |
Drive, wait, observe |
Navigating logistics |
A commitment I cannot abandon |
Garden time in Australian weather
Hazel does not live outdoors full time, but she spends an hour or two most afternoons in a secure run on the grass, weather permitting. Australian summers are no joke, and rabbits are exquisitely sensitive to heat stroke, which means I have learned to read the forecast the way I used to read social media obsessively. Above thirty degrees, she stays inside with a frozen water bottle. At a mild twenty-four with a breeze, she gets the run of the grass under my eye.
The laws around keeping rabbits vary by state. In Queensland, domestic rabbits are classified as restricted matter and it is illegal to keep them without a specific permit, a legacy of the devastating impact of introduced rabbits on the Australian landscape. In Victoria and most other states, rabbits are legal companion animals, though RSPCA Australia recommends secure enclosures. I am grateful to live where I can sit on the back step with a flat white from the local café and watch Hazel nibble clover.
Heat, seasons, and the vet
Australian seasons do not behave like in the books I read as a child. Christmas is summer. Autumn begins in March. Winter is short and rarely as cold as the rest of the world assumes. Hazel and I have built our routines around this reality. In January I freeze ceramic tiles for her to lie on. In July I move her enclosure away from the draught. In spring, when wild rabbits appear at dusk, I am extra careful about securing her run against any visiting fox.
The vet visits fall into this rhythm. I take her to a rabbit-savvy vet in the next suburb every six months, plus extra visits when something seems off. The car ride is a fifteen-minute affair, and I always bring a chamomile-sprayed towel for her carrier. Navigating traffic on Parramatta Road or the West Gate focuses the mind in a way therapy sometimes cannot. I cannot spiral about my inbox when I am watching for the exit I need.
Ways to let a small creature steady you
If you are someone whose mind lives three steps ahead of your body, I cannot promise a rabbit will fix you. But I can offer a few lessons Hazel has taught me about letting another creature's needs become an anchor. The most important one is that the routine does not have to be grand to be useful. A handful of hay, a brush, a scooped litter tray: these are the building blocks of a day that holds its shape.
- Choose a routine you can manage on your worst days, small enough to survive a panic attack.
- Pay attention to texture: hay, fur, water, the warmth of a sleeping body. Let your hands do the thinking.
- Allow yourself to be interrupted by something alive. The feed cannot wait, and that urgency is the gift.
- Keep a shared log of small things: what they ate, how they moved, whether the water bottle leaked. Writing makes the invisible visible.
- Make peace with seasons. Heat, cold, moults, and vet bills come around whether you are ready or not.
- Notice that you are also a creature with daily needs. If you can see when your rabbit is thirsty, you can learn to see it in yourself.
Hazel has been with me through job changes, breakups, a move across suburbs, and more anxious spirals than I can count. She has not solved any of my problems. She has given me a reason to get out of bed most mornings and a structure to hang the rest of the day on. This is the kind of grounding I write about over on Life Starts With Coffee, where the coffee, the feminism, and the rabbit pictures live. When my mind is spinning, her needs do not spin with it. They stay stubbornly, blessedly still. And in a life where everything else feels like it could change at any moment, that kind of stillness is everything.
