📅 Friday, 28 August 2026 · No. 150

She Knows When I Need Comfort

💤 Behavior Diaries · ✎ 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, sitting on the floor in Meknes with an old lady rabbit nearby, and tonight I am raising a glass of tea in a series of thank-you toasts. Midna is ten with a teenage attitude: leave me alone unless I want attention, and she enforces the rule with great dignity. But somehow she always knows when I need comfort, and that contradiction is the whole story of her.

On normal days, attention runs strictly on her terms. I may offer my hand; she may inspect it, or she may turn around and present the back of her head like a small queen ending an audience. I have learned not to take it personally. Her affection was never absent, only scheduled, and the schedule was hers alone. Then come the hard days, and the schedule rewrites itself without warning.

First toast: to the surprise foot kisses

Bad days bring surprise foot kisses, and I want to toast those first because they arrive exactly when words fail. I come home heavy, I sit down without my usual chatter, and before I have even explained myself to the empty room, there she is: ten years old, moving with purpose, pressing her nose to my foot and leaving a kiss there like a small seal on the day. Magic little creatures, these, I wrote once, and I have never found a better description.

What stuns me is the accuracy. She asks nothing, she performs nothing, she simply appears, delivers comfort, hops off a short distance, and returns exactly when needed. Rabbits read emotions better than people do, my old note says, and living with her has convinced me. She notices the heaviness in how I sit, the quiet in how I move, and she answers it the only way she knows: by coming closer when she would normally stay away.

Second toast: to attention on her terms

My comfort log from over the years makes me smile when I reread it. Normal days: attention on her terms only, with petting granted in short, precious windows. Hard days: she comes over unasked and stays longer than usual, sometimes settling within reach so I can rest my hand on her back. Foot kisses counted: priceless each, logged with the date and whatever had gone wrong that day.

Ordinary evenings: she chooses the distance and I respect it gladly
Heavy evenings: she closes the distance herself and stays close
Every visit: brief, deliberate, and perfectly timed to lift the mood

That pattern reminds me of the night I wrote about in my memory of the night she chose my lap and held my hand. Different rabbit, same shock of being chosen: the moment when an animal that owes you nothing decides you are worth its time. Midna gives me that same gift in smaller doses, one foot kiss at a time, and each one lands with the same weight.

Third toast: to the sweet old lady timing

Sweet old lady with perfect timing, I called her, and the title fits better every year. At ten she moves more slowly, she rests more deeply, and her teenage attitude has settled into something like dry humor. She still judges, still declines, still walks away mid-sentence. But her comfort visits have grown more certain, as if age stripped away everything except the essential skill: knowing when I need her.

I think about the evenings when petting stops and the thump comes, the small negotiations I described in my thump log about what happens when petting stops. Midna negotiates differently. She never thumps for more; she simply leaves when she has given enough, and on hard days enough turns out to be exactly what I needed. Her measure of me is better than my measure of myself.

She stood watch in her own way tonight, as my original note put it: protected, kissed, logged. I love that phrasing because it captures the modesty of it. No fuss, no hovering, just a small presence stationed near my feet while the evening settled. I finished my tea feeling steadier, and she, having completed her duties, returned to her favorite corner with the air of one who had done her job well.

Final toast: to being known

So here is my last toast, the one I mean most. To being known by a creature who took years to trust and seconds to forgive. To the surprise visits that rewrite hard days. To the teenage attitude that makes the tenderness startling. To ten years of shared rooms, shared quiet, and a language built from nose touches and foot kisses that needs no translation.

Midna will likely never become a lap rabbit in the ordinary sense, and I have stopped wishing for it. What she offers instead is rarer: attention that cannot be demanded, only received, arriving precisely when it matters. On the evenings she chooses me, I sit very still, I accept every kiss, and I log the night with gratitude. Protected, kissed, logged, then and now, and I would not trade one foot kiss of it for anything.

🐰

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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