📅 Monday, 13 July 2026 · No. 109

Lick the Slippers When the Pets Stop

💤 Behavior Diaries · ✎ 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 Meknes, and I need to report a new house rule that I did not make and cannot appeal. It was legislated entirely by my rabbit. The rule is this: lift my hand to stop petting and he licks my slippers nonstop. Not once, not twice, but continuously, with great dedication, until pets resume. Hanging out with his friends, enforcing affection quotas, he has appointed himself the officer of my hands, and my slippers pay the tax.

Rather than fight the legislation, I have decided to correspond about it. This entry contains three short letters: one to the slippers, one to the rabbit, and one to my own hand. Each covers part of the story, because an affection tax deserves proper paperwork. Everything below is true, logged across many evenings on the rug, and witnessed by a pair of slippers that have seen things.

Letter one: to my slippers

Dear slippers. We have been together for two years, through cold tile mornings and late-night kitchen trips, and I owe you an apology, because I never expected you to become part of rabbit diplomacy. Yet here we are. Every time my hand rises from his forehead, he pivots to you, pink tongue out, lick lick lick, as steady as a metronome. You endure it without complaint. You are washed weekly and taxed daily, and you have never once fallen apart on duty.

Let me describe the procedure precisely, since future me will want the details. I am sitting on the floor, he is loafed against my leg, my hand is moving slowly across his head. The moment I pause, even to scratch my own nose, he shifts his weight forward, lowers his head toward my feet, and begins. The licks are thorough and rhythmic, focused on the toe area, sometimes drifting to the side seam. If I keep my hand still in the air, the licking continues. The instant my hand returns to his fur, the licking stops mid-lick and a soft tooth purr starts instead. Cause and effect could not be clearer if he had written it on a sign.

I should add that I keep you clean for exactly this reason. Slippers in a rabbit house must be washable, free of loose threads or dangling bits, with no small parts a tongue could worry loose. I check you every week when you go through the wash, the same way I check everything at rabbit level. If he ever showed sore mouth signs, drooling, going off food, pawing at his face, I would stop the comedy at once and call the vet, because this diary jokes and a vet judges, and mouths are never a joking matter. But his mouth is healthy and his campaign is behavioral, so the washing continues and so, I suspect, do the licks.

Letter two: to the enforcement officer

Dear officer. So cute, such a cutie pie, and such a firm administrator. I respect the quota system you have installed in this house, I truly do, but I would like to understand its founding logic. Is it that pets must never pause while you are in the mood? Is it that my hand belongs to you between the hours of seven and nine? Or is it simply that my slippers taste faintly of the evening hay dust and you have combined business with pleasure? I ask not to challenge the rule but to admire its design.

Your enforcement style deserves review. You never nip, never thump, never escalate. You simply redirect affection to the nearest available representative of me, which happens to be footwear. It is, I must admit, extremely effective. No human can watch a rabbit solemnly licking a slipper and withhold further pets. Within seconds the hand returns, order is restored, and you settle deeper into the rug with the satisfaction of a negotiator whose terms were met. Resume pets, licks pause, purrs start. The treaty holds every single night.

Your behavior fits a pattern I have logged before. When pets stop unexpectedly, rabbits often ask for more in their own language, and I wrote about a close cousin of this in thump log when petting stops, where stopping too suddenly earned me an indignant foot thump instead of slipper service. Yours is the gentler branch of the same law. I prefer your version, officer, though I admit the thump had a certain drama yours lacks. Licks persuade. Thumps command. Both work.

There is tenderness underneath the comedy, and I want that on the record. Licking in rabbits is social grooming, a gesture of bonding, and even when it is deployed strategically against my footwear, it still means I am family. You groom what you love. You lick what you claim. Being claimed by a rabbit via slipper is one of the stranger honors of my life, and I accept it fully, tongue marks and all.

Letter three: to my own hand

Dear hand. You are the root cause of all of this and we need to talk. Your habit of drifting upward mid-pet, checking the phone, reaching for tea, adjusting the cushion, is what triggers every incident. The officer does not ask for much: stay low, keep moving, finish the job. Yet night after night you wander, and night after night the slippers pay for your restlessness. I am instituting new discipline. Both knees down, elbow braced, phone in the other room until the session ends.

The technique that works best, for the record: slow strokes from forehead toward the ears, pause only to switch to cheek rubs, never lift fully away without a warning slow-down first. Abrupt withdrawals cause the fastest lick responses. Gradual transitions buy whole minutes of calm. I learned the gentler approach from evenings like those in head nudges cuddles log, where patience and low hands turned pushy nuzzles into long quiet cuddles. The same patience works here. The hand that stays earns the purr.

And so the correspondence closes with all parties satisfied. The slippers accept their role and their weekly wash. The officer retains full quota authority and promises, in his wordless way, to keep enforcement nonviolent and adorable. The hand accepts retraining and will remain low and steady through evening sessions. Pets resumed, always resumed, that was never in doubt. The quota is real and I respect it. Hands stay low, slippers stay ready, and the little officer of affection keeps his beat on the rug, one lick-powered treaty at a time.

🐰

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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