Rescue to Growing Boy: My Oatsy Album
I am Azmi from Meknes, and I have a nineteen-slide album that makes me ridiculously proud. My baby boy arrived tiny and worried after time with neglectful owners, and week one with me he stayed scared of everything. Now he is big, soft, bright-eyed, and thriving. I lined up the photos on my phone last night, slide one to slide nineteen, and watched a small frightened face turn into a confident young rabbit. I could burst.
How I built the album
From the start I used the same blanket and the same angle by the window, once a month, so the growth would show honestly. I jot weight, coat, and courage notes each time, the way I do in my weekly weigh photo tracker. No fancy setup, just daylight, a calm room, and patience. I keep the before photos even when they hurt to look at, because they prove the journey. Slide one shows a narrow little body and wide eyes. Slide nineteen shows a round-cheeked boy sprawled like he owns the blanket.
Slides one to five: arrival and first courage
Slide one is the day he arrived, pressed into the corner of the carrier, ears flat. Slide two shows him on the blanket for the first time, small enough that the folds swallowed him. Slide three catches the first brave sniff of my hand, nose stretched as far as it could go while his feet stayed ready to run. Slide four is all eyes and whiskers, staring at the camera like it might move. Slide five is my favourite from that stretch, because his posture finally loosened and his front paws tucked neatly instead of bracing for flight.
Slides six to ten: filling out
By slides six to ten the change is obvious even to visitors. His cheeks rounded, his back broadened, and his coat turned from dull to dense with a soft shine. He started holding his ears up for whole minutes instead of seconds. Slide seven shows him mid-wash, paw over his face, which told me he finally felt safe enough to groom in the open. Slide nine catches him loafing with his feet tucked, the classic bread shape that means a rabbit feels at home. I remember showing that one to my mother and saying look, he trusts the room now.
Slides eleven to fifteen: personality arrives
The middle of the album is where his character pops. Slide eleven shows him nudging the phone, done with photos. Slide twelve catches a huge yawn that made me laugh out loud. Slide thirteen is the first flop on the blanket, fully on his side, which I had waited months to see. Slide fourteen shows him binkying past the frame, just ears and a blur, because stillness was no longer his default. I added notes about play, appetite, and energy, and I kept checking coat changes the way I track in my mane growth photos month by month habit, since pictures catch slow shifts my memory misses.
Slides sixteen to nineteen: my growing boy
The last four slides are pure joy. Sixteen shows him stretched long in the sun, twice the length of slide two. Seventeen catches him mid-hop toward me, ears up, feet off the blanket. Eighteen is the proud mama photo, him sitting tall while I hold the blanket edge out of shot, both of us pretending this is very professional. Nineteen is my favourite: big, soft, calm, chin resting on the fold, eyes half closed in that sleepy content look. The scared baby from slide one would not believe this future, but the pictures prove it frame by frame.
What the album taught me
Wonderful that he got out of the bad situation, and wonderful that slow care shows. The album taught me to measure progress in months, not days. Some weeks the only change was courage: coming out sooner, exploring further, sleeping deeper. I bring any worry about appetite, droppings, teeth, or breathing to my rabbit vet promptly rather than guessing from photos, because pictures record looks, not health. That habit keeps my pride grounded and my boy properly cared for.
One detail the photos cannot show is how his daily rhythm changed. Early on he ate only when I left the room and froze at every footstep. Now he greets me at the pen door, tosses his toys around at dawn, and naps in the middle of the rug while I work nearby. Those behaviour shifts mattered more than size, because they told me he felt at home long before he looked fully grown. I wrote each shift down beside the slide number so future me would remember what the lens missed.
Rescue albums are the best albums because slide one explains why slide nineteen matters. I keep the blanket washed, the window spot ready, and the camera charged for slide twenty. He is still growing, still learning, still surprising me with new flops and new demands for attention. I will keep taking the same photo from the same angle until the blanket looks tiny beneath him. Growing boy, month after month, and a very proud diary keeper here in Meknes.
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