Six Years of the Same Cute Eater and Drinker
Six years and I still stop to watch her eat and drink. Same bowl spot, same loud crunching, same sleepy flop after. Some pages in my diary are just: still cute, still here. This is an anniversary post in three parts: what never changed, what changed once and stayed, and what six years of evenings add up to. Personal love letter with a routine inside, not longevity advice, for aging care I follow my vet. Long logs are built from short boring days done right.
What never changed: the crunch-flop liturgy
18:00 hay top-up, 18:20 loud crunching (audible from the hallway, the crunch is the dinner bell of the house), 18:45 water visit with the long rhythmic drinking, 19:00 flop on the tile, always the same corner. Six years, same order, same spots. I have 300 evening photos and they could be one photo, that is not a complaint, it is the achievement. Same routine beats new tricks: every experiment I ever ran (new bowls, new spots, new schedules) ended back here within a fortnight, outvoted by habit. The crunch has its own entry in my notes: volume steady across years, pace unchanged, enthusiasm undimmed. Flops still the best part: drink, crunch, flop, repeat for six years.
What changed once: the second bowl
I would not change a thing except adding a second water bowl. Year four, hot August, she drained the bowl by noon twice, both logged, both followed by extra-evening drinking that looked thirsty. Second bowl went in the next day: tile corner, same heavy ceramic, same line. Results since: both bowls used daily (bowl A mornings, bowl B evenings, she has opinions about rooms), noon-empty incidents zero in two years. Thirsty babies need options. That single addition is the only permanent change in six years of setup. Everything else, same bowl spot for bowl one, water bowl cleaned daily, hay never empty, runs untouched. Evening photo, same angle, once a week: the 300-frame strip shows seasons passing over an unchanging scene, the truest thing I own.
What six years add up to
Arithmetic of devotion: roughly 2,190 evenings, 2,190 top-ups, 600 photos, 2 bowls, 1 flop corner. Cost in effort: 10 minutes a day, gladly. Return: the crunch from the hallway, the flop at seven, the continuing fact of her. New owners ask for the secret and get the whole boring answer: same everything, daily, with attention. The diary’s longest lesson fits one line, still cute, still here, repeated until it becomes true by accumulation. Year seven starts tomorrow with the same crunch. I will stop to watch, as always.
Year by year, one line each
Year one: arrival, hiding box, first binky April. Year two: the couch era begins, cover deployed. Year three: tunnel obsession, cardboard castle district founded. Year four: second bowl installed (the August thirst, never again). Year five: the flop corner claimed permanently, tile polished by naps. Year six: still cute, still here, the line that titles this post and ends each annual review. Six lines for six years, each backed by a notebook, each notebook backed by evenings. The 300-photo strip runs along the hallway now: weekly evening frames in a single row, seasons washing over an unchanging scene, winter blankets, spring ears, summer sprawls, autumn gold. Visitors walk the strip like a museum corridor and always stop at year three’s mid-leap blur. That frame is the outlier: motion in a hallway of rest, youth preserved mid-air.
Letter to year-one self
Dear newcomer with the hiding box: relax. The box empties by Thursday. The binky arrives unannounced, have the camera ready and miss it anyway; the memory keeps better than film. Buy the second bowl before August, not after. Tape the chair position early (you will move it in March and regret the lap counts). Keep every boring evening, the strip needs its quiet frames or the leaps mean nothing. The crunch will still stop you mid-step in year six; let it, every time. You are not raising a rabbit so much as attending one: same hours, same spots, full attention. Six years hence you will write this with her crunching in the next room. Still cute. Still here. Still stopping to watch.
Evening six-years-and-one-day, filed as usual: 18:00 top-up, crunch from the hallway at 18:20, flop at 19:00 same corner. The anniversary changed nothing and meant everything. Bowl two filled, bowl one too, crunch acknowledged from the doorway with the customary pause. Tomorrow: same. The diary’s longest promise kept daily, still cute, still here, still watched. Year seven, we are ready.
Still cute, still here, year seven begins with the same crunch from the hallway.
Six years of evenings, one unchanging liturgy of crunch and flop.
Drink, crunch, flop, repeat, six years running.
Same bowl, same crunch, same beloved flop.
Anniversary logged; routine resumes at eighteen hundred.
Still here, still crunching.
Adored.
Kept.
Always. Ever.Next in this chapter…
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