📅 Tuesday, 22 September 2026 · No. 172

First Binky Since Moving House

🌿 Daily Logs · ✎ 4 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 Meknes, and tonight I watched something I have been waiting two months to see: a binky. A real one, mid-air twist, ears flying, landing with a thud that shook the rug. If you have never waited for a binky, that sentence sounds small. If you have moved house with a rabbit, you know it is everything. She is back. We are home.

The threshold matters here, so let me stand on it with you for a moment. Behind me are eight weeks of temporary living: a smaller setup than she deserved, assembled from old materials in an unfamiliar room, the new enclosure still weeks from finished. She ate, she drank, she tolerated me, but the joy was switched off. No sprints, no twists, no head-shakes of pure surplus happiness. A rabbit who does not binky is a rabbit spending all her energy on coping, and I saw it every day. I kept telling visitors she was fine. She was surviving. There is a difference, and rabbit people know it.

Crossing over, one zoom at a time

Today the finished space finally opened: the picnic-mat palace, as I have started calling it, with room to run a proper lap and flooring that grips instead of slides. I carried her in at dusk and set her down in the middle, and for a long minute she did nothing but sit, nose working, mapping the new smells. Then she walked the perimeter slowly, chin-rubbing two corners to claim them. Then she stopped in the centre, looked at me, and exploded: three full laps of the enclosure, faster each time, and on the second lap the twist, the kick, the unmistakable airborne joy-spasm that means a rabbit feels safe enough to stop watching the exits. I cried. Happy tears, logged alongside the binky in my evening notes, which lately read like the zoomies at sunset diary I kept back when running was routine.

Crossing a threshold is a two-way event, and I want to record my half honestly. Moving is hard on bunnies and hard on humans, and for two months my own joy was switched off too. I told myself the temporary setup was adequate, and technically it was: clean, fed, ventilated, safe. But adequate is not home, and every evening I sat beside a quiet rabbit in a small pen and felt the particular guilt of a caretaker who knows better. Tonight, watching her run, the guilt drained out all at once. New-enclosure binkies fix both residents, the four-legged one and the one paying the rent.

What the old setup taught me

I recycled everything from the temporary pen into the new space, deliberately. The old tunnel went in first, then the familiar mat, then the water bowl she has used for a year. Rabbit settling advice always says to bring the smells of the old home into the new one, and tonight I watched that principle work in real time: she checked each familiar object like checkpoints on a map, and each one seemed to give her permission to run a little further. The upgrade is real, more floor, better layout, proper running lines, but the continuity objects are what made the first night feel safe instead of strange. Old setup recycled, upgrade complete, map redrawn with the same landmarks.

Her corner of the new room connects to the bigger story of this house, which I have been documenting room by room, including the early days when my room corner belonged to the rabbit before it belonged to me. That old post reminds me how long settling can take and how worth it the patience is. This move repeated the lesson at higher stakes: two months of waiting, weeks of construction noise, one very patient rabbit, and then a single evening that paid all of it back with interest.

A note on care, because moves unsettle bodies as well as moods: through the whole transition I watched her appetite and droppings the way my vet taught me to, and anything worrying would have gone straight to the clinic. Nothing here is medical guidance, only my own routine of observing closely after a change and calling the professionals with questions. She ate steadily throughout, which reassured me, and tonight she ate dinner with the enthusiasm of a rabbit celebrating. I will keep watching over the next week as she settles, because my vet reminds every mover that the days after the excitement matter too.

She is asleep now as I write this, flopped in the middle of the new floor like a flag planted on claimed land. Adorable happy baby, precious and relieved, breathing slow in the centre of her palace. Two months without a binky, and then, on the first night in the finished space, the twist, the thud, the tears. Home is where the binky is, and tonight the binky is here. Welcome home, little one. We made it.

🐰

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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