Rabbits

Rabbits are a recurring part of the animal world taking shape after the Great Disaster: they elude Ish and Princess in the open country, threaten the crops Ish tries to grow, and appear as prey in a future landscape where human control has receded. The book gives them no individual identity or close viewpoint. Instead, their significance emerges through repeated encounters that expose how difficult it is for people to regain the food security and command of nature that civilization once seemed to provide.

Habitat and the expanding animal world

The account places Rabbits at the edge between settlement and wilderness. As Cats move outward from the city in search of food, they enter the haunts of quail and Rabbits; there, the city-dwelling Cats encounter wild cats, whose strength ends the contest quickly. Rabbits are thus part of an environment no longer arranged around human convenience: abandoned urban spaces become hunting grounds, while the surrounding country remains the domain of animals better adapted to it.

The book also offers a projected view of this changing habitat through Ish’s reflection on Central Park. He imagines its planted greenery giving way over decades to dense second-growth forest, then to mature woods in which a wild cat leaps upon a Rabbit. This is a forecast rather than an event Ish witnesses. Its long timescale makes the contrast clear: paths and cultivated plantings gradually disappear, while animals occupy the landscape without needing to know that people once designed it.

Pursuit and uncertainty

During his travels, Ish sees Princess repeatedly take off after Rabbits, but she never brings one back within range of his shotgun. Her pursuit gives the animal a practical importance: a successful chase might have put food within reach, yet excitement and speed do not translate into a meal. From Ish’s perspective, the Rabbits remain present but unavailable, glimpsed chiefly through the dog’s repeated, fruitless attempts.

The failures become so consistent that Ish begins to wonder whether the Rabbits Princess chases might be figments of her imagination. The thought registers his uncertainty, not proof that the animals are unreal. He has neither a confirmed kill nor a close observation to settle the question; he can only infer their presence from Princess’s behavior. Elsewhere, the narrative compares Princess’s quick evasion of larger dogs to the agility of a Rabbit. The comparison draws on the same recognizable quality that makes her quarry so difficult to catch, while leaving the Rabbits themselves outside the action of that encounter.

Gardens, burrows, and scarce food

Rabbits become a direct obstacle when Ish attempts to grow food. In the spring of the second year, he plants his first garden, but old seed, snails, slugs, deer, Rabbits, a cow, insects, and crows successively threaten the small plot. Rabbits burrow beneath the fence, undoing Ish’s efforts to protect the lettuce and forcing him to add to the work of keeping the garden intact. Their damage is one part of a wider pressure: without neighboring farms and gardens to absorb the appetites of surrounding animals, a lone cultivated plot draws attention from many directions.

The pressure changes Ish’s relation to cultivation. A garden seems at first to offer a return to basic, dependable food production; in practice, every stage of growing it demands protection from creatures that also need to eat. Ish becomes so concerned about animals reaching the lettuces that he imagines Rabbits, deer, and cattle gathering around the fence at night. The account distinguishes that fearful anticipation from the damage actually observed: the Rabbits have burrowed underneath, while the larger nighttime threat is part of Ish’s anxious imagining. By the time he harvests a little lettuce, tomatoes, and onions, the crop’s survival has required extra fencing and protective measures.

Hunting and human dependence

Rabbits are also among the animals Ish hopes to obtain as food. Their elusiveness matters in a world where familiar systems of production and distribution have collapsed, and where hunting does not automatically replace them. Princess may chase innumerable Rabbits, but she does not bring one within Ish’s shooting range. His experience therefore separates the apparent abundance of wild life from the practical ability to feed oneself from it.

That difficulty becomes sharper when Ish reflects on the community’s dependence on ammunition. After cartridges are wasted in a bonfire, he thinks about a country with mountain lions and wild bulls, and about people who do not know how to kill cattle, Rabbits, or quail except by shooting them. The mention places Rabbits alongside other potential food animals, but it does not show Ish successfully hunting one. Their presence makes the loss of ammunition consequential: an animal may be visible, edible, or pursued and still remain beyond the community’s means to secure it.

Narrative significance

Across these episodes, Rabbits occupy several positions in the post-disaster food web. They are quarry for Cats and a wild cat, targets of Princess’s unsuccessful chases, and competitors for Ish’s garden. They are neither simply a resource for human survivors nor merely a sign of wilderness returning. The same animal that might furnish food can damage the crop on which Ish depends, while remaining difficult for him or Princess to catch.

This double role sharpens the book’s account of human vulnerability. Ish’s world contains animals in places that people once managed, but their presence does not amount to human mastery of a new ecosystem. Rabbits are plentiful enough in his perception to drive Princess into repeated pursuit and to threaten a garden, yet they do not become dependable food. The gap between seeing, chasing, protecting, and actually obtaining food is one of the small, recurring measures of how far post-disaster life stands from the security of the Old Times.