“Is he my pet, or something more?”
I recently changed my logo from two hands drawing a sun (referring to my ambidextrous spirit portraits) to a white rabbit being hypnotized by a black snake hanging from his ear (uh, not as literal or as obvious).
My choice to identify so closely with the white rabbit archetype came straight out of an Alice-In-Wonderland-like life experience.
I met Socrates unexpectedly when I went to the farm feed store for chicken bedding. It was the first week of May, and at this point, most all of the chicks had been purchased and relocated to their new homes on rural lands. But during my regular little loop around the chicken pens, I was shocked to see a single white rabbit with red eyes standing on his hind legs.
When I say shocked, I mean my jaw literally dropped, and I shed a few tears. He locked eyes with me in a way that altered my perception of reality. Like your ears stop working and your balance is brought into question.
And it’s when I heard (clairaudience, babe) Socrates tell me that I was supposed to take him home.
To be fair, I was in the throes of an isolating and confusing grief around my January miscarriage. And maybe I was a bit more sensitive than usual.
But maybe our sensitivity is what makes us most susceptible to magic.
I located my husband and basically told him we had no choice but to bring this rabbit home with us. “We can keep him in a hutch outside,” I reasoned. “And rabbit droppings are really great for permaculture and our garden.”
I was surprised he didn’t fight me on it. My husband, two bags of chicken litter flung over each shoulder, challenged me to find an appropriate enclosure prior to leaving. And in the palm of my hand, I found a homemade, two-story rabbit hutch nearby for cheap on Facebook Marketplace.
Within 24 hours, Socrates was hopping around our small farm, eating dandelions and running circles around our chickens.
Socrates is not a domesticated pet, per say. He revealed himself to be my familar.
Ways to know if your household animal is a pet or a familiar:
Familiars appear to us when we need them, not when we decide we need them. Their arrival is often abrupt, clumsy, charged with emotion, and shakes up your reality on the spot.
While pets are more attuned to bringing joy and comfort, familiars are more inclined to bring courage and discomfort. They are mirrors, guides, and teachers who challenge you to radical acceptance.
They have a wildness that refuses to be tamed; there are times when they’re defiant (which is certainly an attempt to teach you something).
Pets speak more with body language and sound, but familiars opt for metaphor, symbol, and synchronicity.
Pets’ presence sort of melds into your presence (comfort, companionship), while familiars always keep you a bit on your toes.
You can often tell you have a familiar on your hands by comparison with other animals in your home, or other pets you know. They have a different aura, feeling, and presence. It’s unmistakable to the intuitive human.
Socrates has proven himself to be extremely sensitive, alert, intuitive, and wise. I talk, he listens. He talks, I listen. And while we’ve only spent three months with him as I write this, the quality of time makes it feel so much more like a decade.
Maybe familiars can bend time, too.
Lessons from Socrates: Grief, metaphor, remembrance
I was meeting regularly with an herbalist when I met Socrates. In an attempt to heal and understand my body through the lens of nature, I was seeing her a bit regularly for a while. And when I completed my first bottle of plant medicine, she wanted to know what changes had occurred over the course of dosing with it.
I knew she meant physical changes, but instead I told her about the rabbit that had entered my life. I explained that Socrates seemed to be the most significant change, even though it sounded silly. I suspected the formula had a hand in everything.
She then surprised me by nonchalantly saying it made complete sense.
You see, the flower essence she put in my formula, Lady’s Mantle, grew all around her deck. And under the deck lived a hare who would come out and visit her each night as she wound down. The hare’s essence was intertwined with the Lady’s Mantle, and the Lady’s Mantle is in my bottle, and my bottle is in my reality.
Folks who don’t really live life with the ever-present consideration of spirit energy might find this to sound crazy. And I get that it sounds crazy.
But to me, it is also very real. And it’s the sort of magic held me through a very dark and isolating period in my life.
Which is why when Socrates fell ill last week, I shifted into a maternal role that was previously unfamiliar to me.
Rabbits have very sensitive stomachs and intestines, and when they stop eating, it’s immediate cause for concern. Everything on Google, TikTok, ChatGPT, and the rabbit book I bought at the thrift store advised that Socrates see a vet immediately.
But it was Saturday night and the vet was closed until Monday.
For Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, I had to force-feed him pumpkin puree, manually massage his stomach, and log every bowel movement as proof that his stomach was not entering a period of shutdown, or stasis. I was exhausted.
But the frustrating experience took another magical, or transcendent turn, when I realized one of the over-the-counter remedies suggested was Infant Gas Drops, or a bottle of medicine used for babies who are suffering from a similar affilction. The Infant Gas Drops were deemed safe and sensitive enough of rabbits.
And that’s when it really hit me. Socrates fell ill on the date I was due to give birth. And I hadn’t taken the time to notice.
Here I was feeding infant medicine to a rabbit when, on some time line, somewhere beyond the liminal dimensions of time and space, I am maybe feeding them to a human infant instead.
Socrates has taught me a lot about myself and the world, as all familiars do. Things about my own nature, my own prey consciousness, my own desire to be free and unencumbered by the control of others.
But I didn’t really expect him to show me the way through grieving motherhood.
The moment I met him, he crossed the threshold from “pet” to familiar, carrying a deep and otherwordly meaning .
And while I know one day his life on earth will end, I’m so grateful it isn’t his time yet. We made it through those long nights, and now we’re off to the future.
Socrates was the inspiration behind my first-ever tincture line I dropped on my website and sold at my local farmers market. Check out the available tinctures and essences in my shop.
