Rabbit Royale - now that is some poison. And that kidnap merchant, Miss Liberty 'Loony' Bell, knew what she was about when she filled her furless paw with the stuff and slipped it under my nose for the first time. Oh yes, I remember that scrumptious aroma enveloping my whole being and sending me into a kaleidoscopic frenzy of taste and smell. A swoosh of sweet berry swirl, a kick of carrot coulee, a slap across the senses with a medley of chicory, parsnip and and a whisp of liquorice. Despite my terror, I could not help but gnaw veraciously at the delectable little morsels.

"Already, you're trying to control the thing with food, its you're way of commanding love, no wonder I'm so bloody fat, since I've been with you I've put on two stone. Anyway, I still don't know what you want to be bothering yourself with a damned rodent for".

That comment came from a rather ugly squat toad-like creature, which emerged from the shadows and made its way across the room.

Smells are like little signposts, some say, "food, here, come and get it", others say, "sexy little bun here looking for action". However, the olfactory signals emanating from this human, despite being a whole new smorgasbord of odours instinctively screamed out to me: "danger!", "beware!" and "watch out" - his egregious pong was most certainly malevolent.

There was something compellingly cruel in his smirk and I shuddered but at least he seemed to be talking sense. I hoped that the crazy pallid woman would heed his words, not bother herself with me any longer and take me back to where I belonged, in the barnyard run, with my Sawdust kin. But then it hit me, the blatant gaff and insult in his words. What in the pernicious black grass did he get off calling me a rodent? I was incensed, I wanted to go over and bite his ankle. I tried to move towards him but the sodding polished floor went from under me. 'You ignorant fat bloated puffball' I spat and sniffed in bunny patois instead.

"Oh, Leo, she's just sneezed, bless. Anyway, Rabbits aren't rodents; they are of the leporidae family actually. She's such a loveable little girl, I'm sure she'll help me get better"

Yea, stick that up your devil's bit, I thought, you ferret of an excuse for a human being. I would one day learn first hand that my instincts had been right from the start and that he had a real streak in him, as nasty as cat coming down off catnip.

As the pretrifying fear began to turn to indignation, I became more aware of my surroundings and realised that I was in a structure like a barn but without any of the familiar perfumes of my home. I could not sniff the sweet waft of meadow hay, the familiar, cosy whiff of my bunny kin, the powerful musk of horse sweat or stink of tom cat spray.

There was no straw piled high and the floors were so shiny I seemed to flay and lollop every time I tried to move. The walls were stark and white and tall, with square tablets painted with faces and vistas, hanging from them. Nothing related to the world I had known, there were no stirrups, or saddles resting on pinions and there was an absence of mud and earth. I picked up on a weak note of lavender and a synthetic bouquet of rose. But what hit me hardest was a nose-full of human - an intense pungent stench that overpowered every other.

"What are you going to do Libbie, when you're having one of your episodes and that rabbit needs feeding or cleaning, what are you going to do then?"

She was holding me on her lap now and I felt her whole body go limp; and if I had not been jelly-boned myself as this stage, I would have given her a good kicking. But I almost felt pity for her as her excited high-pitched rollicking voice dropped an octave and became nebbish and flat.

"Leo, look at her impeccably ebony coat, and those cute as button, thumper feet and oh, the ears, what delectable, mother-in-law's tongue ears. Is she not best looking bunny you've ever seen?"

Well, yes, I am indeed rather cute, I guess she had good taste.

"But I do hope she is all right. You know she seems upset, oh dear, look at the way she is flashing the whites of her eyes, Leo. You know, I'm sure I can see something guarded and anxious in those big black spheres….I can't put my finger on it, but I sense it, she is a terribly troubled bunny."

It's not often, that humans can recognise the subtle expressions on a bunny visage, but this one, certainly had an eye for it. The utter bewilderment and damned annoyance at this heinous and preposterous act of rabbit robbery, was there for all to see on my wild countenance. For her long, pale face was up against mine now. She was the weirdest creature I'd ever seen, with her bushy twig coloured mane and her laburnum yellow eyes, as big as one of my front paws, with pupils like big black stamens that shrank and swelled in the dappled sunlight. I was shit scared, particularly when I saw her teeth, they were even bigger than my goofy brother Burdock's and her nose had such big nostrils, I swear she could've smelled a kettle hole buttercup all the way from the Meadow Rye common, in Saxby.

"They say people transpose their own emotions onto their pets" snapped the troll-man as he jabbed in his knife of emotion a little deeper.

"O Leo, don't make me unsure, don't do what you always do and give me doubts. The thing is, this time I am sure it will help me, I think, I mean, she's a little bunny, she'll help me get better, she will, pets are therapeutic you know, she'll help me stay calm."

Now I could feel the terror really set in. What the hell I thought, if it's not bad enough being in the middle of some sort of hostage crisis, but crap, my captor is some kind of a nut. Help me god Hazel-rah , she is going to ring my neck and boil me!

"OK have it then but don't come crying to me when you need a pet sitter."

But by now my buntuition was telling me that she was not listening as she gazed out the large paned window into the depths of the overgrown ivy that had crept all over the small outside yard. The light was almost gone and for a moment, everything was silent, for a moment we were still and inanimate, like a carved silhouette joined in the half-light. But then her grip soon tightened again and I looked up and I could see through gap in the thick curtain of hair that she was smiling, she began to stroke me maniacally and I cowered but there was nowhere to escape, as she held me in the vice of her bone stiff hands.

"Now what should I call her Leo, what do you think?"
"Stew"

"No Leo, that is silly."

Yes, I thought, it's not like I hadn't heard that one before.

"The cogs are turning in there Leo, she's thinking, she's clever. I could call her Plato or Aristotle or Virginia or Albert or something. Yet, she's more than smart, there is something brooding and dark in there, she's working me out…."

"How Freudian" I heard rat features half mouth beneath his breath.

"That's it, Freud". Her unmoving voice did not pay lip service to his snideness.

And I thought "Freud? What in the corn-cockle....you can't call a bunny Freud"

And he said "Freud? What in the….You can't call a bunny Freud"; which was incidentally the first and last time we agreed upon anything.

"Or perhaps Sigmund then, yes that's it, I Christen you with a big sloppy kiss, my little cute bunikins , Sigmund, my darling little Sigmund. Not very feminine I know, but that is the luxury of being a pet, we just don't have to give you a gender specific name!"
So there you go, she thought I was mad, (pot calling the kettle?) and she thought I was clever (pot most definitely not calling the kettle) and to add to my fricking identity crisis, came up with Sigmund! I certainly don't harbour a desire to shag my father Dandelion or my brother Burdock. Anyway, in the end she thought it wasn't so cutesy so I ended up as Ziggy. Go figure!

And poor little Ziggy at that. Oh I remember what is was like before Libbie Bell railroaded into my life, I remember my home where I belonged and I remember that ague ridden day when my harrowing ordeal began.

I was then but a kitten of six weeks old. It was a warm spring day, the barn was cool and dark as always, but golden rivers of molten sunlight poured in through the open doors. We could see a little way out of the building into the barnyard. The sky was misty with diaphanous midges and mayflies and the vibrated with the buzz of honeybees. The outer world was brimful of life and activity and the old wagtail, Brutus, barked through his leathery jowls. I wish now I had been one of those little mites aloft and free in the sky that could buzz away from the yard and to freedom, but alas I cannot change the past and I cannot change who I am.

Anyway, it had reached the point in the day when the light was languishing and the bell tolled once, then twice and so it went on at least six times. My mother cuffed my father across the chops, as he tried to get his leg over again. As usual, she was having non of it, she simply bucked him off, shook herself down and set about nibbling some hay. It was no real bother to her, she was quite in the habit of resisting my father's half-hearted amour, for this happened about forty times a day. Holy Hawthorne! No wonder people think bunnies are thick, they aren't really stupid - they've just got a one-track mind.

Though, I guess at this point you are probably thinking that for a bunny I do have rather a good command of the English language and I must be quite intelligent. That is because my dear reader, that like the ruck of human beings, as well as the odd cat, we rabbits have different levels of intellect and mine is of an outstanding and superior nature. One might even call me a 'Beyond-rabbit' though modesty is not one of my highly developed characteristics.

Anyway, the day had already begun to ferment with the heat, and we were all drowsy, lolloping around and flopping on our haunches from the effort. Mother had just nudged me hard on the flank, because she said it was time to groom behind the ears and I was trying to resist her. When suddenly there was a haystack of jaunty commotion and in bounced the ribald farmer and behind him sloped his slinky, auburn haired wife. Our languor quickly turned to frenzied excitement and the two began to pitch handfuls of ambrosial delights about the run; batons of carrot, young rubbery cabbage leaves, bleedingly juicy blackberries, diced and cubed apple, and pear and cucumber. Looking back I should have known that treats always come before a fall. However, rabbits aren't known for their analytical skills and foresight so we all just launched in; devouring the crunchy orange stuff, the chewy green vegetation and sweet, sugar perfumed, syrupy fruit. As fast as I scoffed, little pyraballistic missiles were firing out the other end. I was sure I was on the threshold on some kind of nirvana. I mean what better metaphor for harmony can one find than the image of a bunny, eating and defecating in tandem - pure balance, ying and yang.

But then, in the moment of complete Karma and almost at my spiritual pinnacle, a sod-off, big white hand, adorned with a curusculating pebbles, clamped onto me like a crab and plucked me off the ground like a goddamn periwinkle.
I was elevated almost 20 bunny lengths in the air and found myself clutched between a forearm and rather measly padded breast bone, dizzy and dazed from the low sun that flooded into my unaccustomed eyeballs. I struggled, as much as I could but I knew I was buggered, I was got and even a bunny growl or bite, could not get me out of this tight spot. My boxing skills were rendered useless and my kicks ineffectual.

"She's absolutely adorable, I could eat her."

Oh my sweet silflay , this is going to be my last, I thought, she's going to eat me, shit " and of course I did all over her, peed myself as well, almost got her, on target, in one of her big yellow eyes but missed - shame. It is after all quite hard to pop out your lethal weapons strategically when you're under such intense pressure. However, in hindsight, if I'd known what a Krackatoa nut she was I would have held fire. I had no idea that my last hurrah would endear me to her all the more. She just shook her hand dry, flicked off my little poisoned pellets and said:
"Look Leo, she's just like any little baby, perhaps we should get her a nappy?"

Now I was fighting for my life. At first I had shuddered at the thought of going into the pot. I really didn't want to die like Uncle Ragwort. But not to put too fine a point on it, I was crawling up my own arse before she was getting me a bloody nappy. That's just plain warped. I mean that is the difference between dying for a good cause and dying for a really daft pointless and frankly perverse one. This nappy suggestion went beyond the pale, what was with humans and all this personification crap?

Anyway, I could see Burdock, the insubordinate little bastard, ridiculing me, his eyes wide, his whiskers twittering, bearing his goofy teeth like a god-damn half-wit. Oh yes, he was finding the whole thing absolutely hilarious, but that's my buck brother for you. He was always kicking me when I was down. No I'd rather have been like poor old uncle Raggi, my ma's brother, fattened up and dying young but leaving as they say a great tasting body.

And in my final last ditched attempts to escape my dreadful fate, I found myself entangled in a cold metal chain that hung around her scrawny turkey neck. The silver noose was so thin and delicate but so damned strong, it was throttling me and the more I tried to wriggle out of it the more I got caught up. I thought I was going to suffocate in her tussocky dust coloured hair. My tongue hung out of my cheeks like a dock leaf, take me then Hazel, it is meant to be, I cried from my inner depths.

And though I'd resolved to die, it did not work out that way. She released me from my chains and I was too exhausted to struggle any longer. She began to move away from the barn and then I got onto thinking that maybe a quick death by strangulation might be a good option. After all this close contact with this dirty, petridish of a creature (we all know how dirty humans are) it was certain I would most likely die in protracted agony from some dreadful Homo Sapiens borne disease. God knows what, she might even give me the 'Tosis' and that we all knew was the very worst of all deaths. The head swells, the eyes weep, your bottom parts become infested with warts, your eye sight eventually goes and after 12 days (in human time) more like months in bunny time, you clap out as a festering pile of puss.

But soon I forgot a little of my terror, as I became morbidly fascinated by the curious outer world opening up before me. I was high on hyper smell, sight and sound, everything seemed magnified, and intense. The farmyard, the manure, the mud, the earth, the nettles, the dust, the wood and oiled machinery were all quite familiar. But these familiar images and odours were being diluted by a parasitical attack on my senses from strange potent scent of mint and lilies and iris and burnt alder. I was drugged and could not help sniff closer to this human's skin, her hair and clothes. I was now in a stupor, my body was limp and torpid, and I did not even have the strength to fear any longer. I could hear Brutus, yowling and the farmer shouting and this mad bint giggling and laughing. It was Sodom and Gomorrah out here and I was in some kind of limbo. Why can't all beings on this earth be quiet like us buns I thought, why does everyone have to be so noisy, so interfering, they're all damned crazed, the whole bloody lot of them.
This my dear reader was it, the juncture, when my life changed irreversibly. I had been plucked from obscurity (on account of my bitching velvet black coat) from my ignorant but innocent isolated existence, my family and my kitten hood - and therein my life had metamorphosised forever. So I guess if you want to know what I've lost, you will have to listen to me harp on about the good old days.

Wait a minute, she's back, if she hears the keyboard clicking Miss Bell may realise what I'm up to and I'll lose the element of surprise. I must go now but I'll no doubt sneak back to reveal the dark secrets of the Sawdust family heritage very soon.