📅 Sunday, 26 July 2026 · No. 121

Queen Fiona Moves the Castle (You Cannot Stop Her)

🏠 Home Setup · ✎ 5 min · by Azmi in Meknes

Azmi's note My personal log from Meknes, not vet advice. Just what I did and saw tonight.

I am Azmi, writing from my flat in Meknes, and I have officially lost the interior design battle in my own living room. The queen in question is Fiona, my rabbit, and her favorite hobby is moving the castle. Not sitting in the castle. Not sleeping in the castle. Moving the entire castle, plus every hidey, tunnel exit, and mat I place near it, to wherever she decides it belongs that day. I push things back each morning. She moves them back each afternoon. This post is my room-by-room decorating dispute log, and my public acceptance speech.

Where the castle started

When I first set up her corner, I had a vision. The little wooden castle would sit against the wall, the hay rack beside it, the mat squared neatly underneath, and the tunnel leading out at a tidy angle. It looked lovely for about forty minutes. Then I heard the scraping sound. Fiona had braced her back feet against the rug and was shoving the castle sideways with her head, the way a person might push a heavy sofa. She stopped, checked the angle, then pushed again. By dinner time the castle had traveled a full meter from the wall and sat diagonally across the mat like a monument she had claimed. I laughed, moved it back, and told myself she was just settling in.

The living corner: grip pads versus the queen

My first fix was grip pads, the rubbery squares people put under rugs. I slid four of them under the castle base and felt clever. The next morning the castle had still moved, pads and all, dragged in one clump toward the sunny patch by the window. Fiona had simply recruited the pads into her moving crew. I tried heavier wooden hideys next, thinking weight would win. It did not. She relocated those weekly, usually on cleaning day, as if she wanted to supervise from a new vantage point. I wrote about my wider room setup in my room corner rabbit notes, and even there you can see the castle creeping out of frame photo after photo. The pattern is always the same: I align, she redesigns.

The bedroom corner: the midnight migration

The bedroom corner was supposed to be the calm zone. One low hidey, one folded blanket, water within reach, nothing to rearrange. For a week it worked. Then I started waking up to find the hidey rotated ninety degrees, entrance facing the bed instead of the wall. At first I thought I had bumped it while cleaning. Then one night I woke to the soft thudding sound of cardboard being head-butted across the floor at two in the morning. Fiona works nights. She had decided the bedroom hidey offered a better view of me if it faced the bed, and she was right. I sleep better knowing she watches over me, even if my neat corner now looks like a rest stop after a small storm. I stopped rotating it back. She noticed within a day and flopped beside it, which I took as approval.

The hallway and tunnel zone: full relocation service

The hallway is where her moving habit turns truly ambitious. The tunnel toy, which I once arranged in a gentle curve, now lives wherever Fiona drops it. Some days it points toward the kitchen, some days it blocks the bathroom door like a fuzzy traffic barrier. Carpet runners bunch up behind it. The wooden bridge I bought as a stable centerpiece has been nudged inch by inch until it sits under the small table, forming a new base camp I never planned. I documented an earlier version of this corner in my favorite spot makeover post, and comparing those photos to today is funny. The makeover lasted a weekend. The queen’s edit has lasted months. Every photo since shows her version, and honestly her version gets more use.

What I tried, honestly ranked

Grip pads under the castle: dragged anyway, pads included, zero stars for stopping power.
Heavier wooden hideys: relocated weekly, usually right after I cleaned, as if on schedule.
Symmetrical layout with everything squared to the wall: lasted one afternoon, abandoned by dinner.
Asking her nicely while she stared at me: she blinked slowly and pushed the tunnel with her nose mid-sentence.
Acceptance and photo documentation: in progress, nearly complete, highly recommended.

The funniest part is the symmetry of the complaint. I tell friends that Fiona keeps moving the furniture and driving me crazy. Meanwhile, I am certain that if Fiona kept a diary, her entry would read: the human keeps moving my castle back to the wall and ruining my layout. She decorates, I undecorate, she redecorates. We are locked in a loop and only one of us enjoys it. Spoiler: it is her. She does a little satisfied dig in the rug after each successful push, then settles inside the moved castle like a monarch surveying a renovated palace.

Why I stopped fighting it

I stopped fighting for three practical reasons. First, the moved positions are always where she actually rests, which tells me she is arranging for comfort, airflow, and sightlines, not chaos. The sunny patch, the spot facing my desk, the corner near the evening breeze: she picks better locations than I do. Second, pushing heavy objects around is honest exercise and enrichment for a house rabbit, and I would rather she shove a castle than chew a cable. Third, and most important, every time I left her layout alone for a full week, she grew calmer and floppier in it. My tidiness was for my eyes. Her mess is for her body. Once I framed it that way, the choice was obvious. I still tidy around her design instead of through it, sweeping beside the castle rather than dragging it back to my grid.

So here is my closing statement, entered into the record from Meknes. Queen Fiona rules the castle, and I just pay rent. Furniture follows the queen. My interior design era ended the day she arrived, and my documentation era began. I now photograph the new layouts instead of fixing them, and the diary is richer for it. If your rabbit also runs a nightly moving company, my advice is simple: buy lighter furniture for your back, keep cables far from the migration routes, and let the queen place the castle. You will lose the dispute and win a funnier, better-used home.

🐰

Written by Azmi

I track my rabbits' diet, weight and naps to see what works. Photos are mine, mess included. Say hi on the contact page.

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