animals | The Literary Bunny

‘In days gone by, if anyone had asked me if I owned any pets, I could readily rattle off their names. To answer the same question now, I would have to excuse myself, find a pen and sheet of paper, sit by myself for several minutes, and try to sort the problem out.’ (p. 249)

So I think I have a lot of animals. Or, rather, my boyfriend thinks I have a lot of animals. I don’t think so. Does one dog, one hamster, three bunnies (with one more moving in soon) count as a lot? Even if I had considered it a lot, I wouldn’t any more after reading this book. Bob Tarte and his wife have a lot of animals and a lot of animals moving in and out of their home. At one count they have three rabbits, two cats, three parakeets, a dove, two parrots, three turkeys, two geese, a canary and nine ducks. Now that is a lot of animals!
So what this is, is an account of the chaos that ensures when you keep on adding animals to your household. Animals who almost all have their own needs and wants and are very vocal about getting them met. So vocal in fact that for some periods, Tarte’s wife eat her lunch outside in the car to get away from the birds demanding to taste.
Tarte is a very funny writer. I don’t know much about birds but I can easily visualize the troubles they got from Binky the bunny. As I always say, bunnies are terrorists and escape artists and Binky is just another proof of this. I loved reading about Binky!
It’s also about a man from the city finding a purpose in his life through these animals. Bob is struggling with depression and slowly realizing, that the structure needed to care for these animals as well as the love he starts to feel for them, is actually helping him overcome his disease.
I had a lot of fun reading this book. Only issue I had with it was, that they kept adding animals to the household without any knowledge about them. It was a bit discouraging to read about them acquiring animals and having these die in their care. However, as I read one, they became more knowledgeable and it clearly shines through that they love all their animals and care for them to the best of their ability. Still, I was sometimes a bit put off by smaller things – like them not going to the vet immediately when something happens to one of their animals or going to bed, leaving one of their birds to die on its own in the basement.
Still, it is clear that they care about the animals and it is very entertaining to hear about their inabilities to construct pens or their attempts to eat a quiet dinner while simultaneously catering to a host of birds or trying to get a bunny to leave it’s chosen hiding place.
It is a light cozy read for the animal lover and as such, it’s very enjoyable – even if it has as many characters as your average Russian novel.

First lines: I should have known I was doomed to write a book about our animals. Since they had taken over just about everything else in my life, it was only a matter of time before they commandeered my word processor, too.