A Few Words about Irma

If you’re reading this blog post, you probably don’t need me to tell you that Irma was a little black Netherland Dwarf rabbit.  She lived for nearly eleven years and it was a privilege and a pleasure to have her with us for so long.

She liked sweet things like apples and carrots and little bits of rich tea biscuit.  She also loved hay and there was usually a long piece of it hanging out of her mouth and twirling around in circles, getting shorter and shorter.  A few times in her life she was so ill I thought we were about to lose her, and then, when she was recovering, she’d only eat wild dandelions and G and I would go out foraging for them with a plastic bag.  For days afterwards, our fridge would be choc-a-block with lunch boxes filled with washed dandelion leaves.

Despite being a rabbit, Irma wasn’t fussed on greens.  I tried broccoli (she ignored it), then cabbage (she ignored that too) and then spring greens (she was furious) and then Kale (OK, she said, I’ll eat this but only if you alternate it with cavolo nero.)

Irma lived indoors in the room where I write.  Sometimes, while I sat at the computer, she’d lay down and sleep just by the side of my chair.  Other times, she’d lay right on top of my feet.  There was one occasion where she quietly chewed her way through the laces of my Converse without me realising.  Together we wrote a bunch of novels – everything, in fact, since 'Lottie Biggs is Not Mad'.  We also watched a lot of telly and listened to a lot of music together.  Irma was very familiar with Elastica, Kurt Vile, The Breeders, Belly and PJ Harvey.  She didn’t like PJ Harvey but I think she liked everything else.  She definitely loved Nick Drake because she'd always go calm and still if he was playing.

Outside in the garden, she was boss.  She liked chasing pigeons and trashing my flowers.  I wasted my time once planting a load of tulips and she trampled the whole lot to the ground.  Irma also liked killing pansies by eating them.

When she died, in her sleep of old age, we put her back in the garden with a new little tree we now call The Irma Tree.  I know she’d approve of the tree we chose because on the planting instructions it said, ‘Protect this tree from rabbits.’

I never knew a rabbit could be so interesting and so nice.  I never even knew that a rabbit had facial expressions until we had furious/cheeky/happy/nosy Irma.  But then again, that’s the thing with pets – the more you put in, the more you get back.

To be clear, that is not an Irma statue in the background.  It's a French bulldog my niece gave me.