RIP Loftus, my amazing rabbit

A particularly sad loss

As already mentioned, my posts over the last few weeks have been a little sporadic due to a deluge of magazine work. However, through all this I was also preoccupied with caring for Loftus, the remarkable rabbit whose been my constant companion through the thick and sometimes incredibly thin events, upheavals and travels of the last eight years. Finally, after a sudden deterioration., Loftus passed away on Thursday morning. Needless to say, I’m fairly devastated so this week’s newsletter can only be about him as the most recent and last of the steady stream of rabbits I’ve been keeping since I was nine years old in 1963.

For some reason I’ve always loved rabbits and been drawing and painting them all my life, including on Friars Aylesbury flyers in the 70s. The only times I’ve not had a pet rabbit was when I lived in London and New York (although I did save one from the butcher’s that featured in The Sopranos when I stayed in Newark, NJ). Sometimes, due to hot bunny action, I found myself looking after 15! Rabbits did impact on my musical activities in the 90s when I was doing the Secret Knowledge project with US singer Wonder and we were signed to Nina Walsh and Andrew Weatherall’s Sabres of Paradise label. Dave Anderson’s brilliant Bastard Bunny comic book operated out of the Sabres office, where Nina also ran her Sabrettes label. After the Sabres of Paradise band debuted at London’s YMCA , Wonder and I stayed at Nina and Andrews. Next morning we taped their guinea pigs in the rabbit run, formed a band called the Rabbettes and recorded a banging techno track called ‘Bunny New Guinea Pig’ on Sabrettes.

By 2017, I’d been living at my late partner Helen’s medieval cottage in an Essex village for three years with our four rabbits in the garden. After Helen's beloved rabbit Cookie died that year we were driving back from the bunny crematorium in Ongar and popped in to Pets at Home in Braintree, not particularly aiming to get another one. While we were looking at this bunch of babies one popped his head up and gave us a quizzical look that was too hard to resist. We had to have him and drove home with a new rabbit, who she called Loftus after a dog in a John le Carre novel.

Sadly, Helen started fading shortly afterwards and after she passed the following June, Loftus and his mate Jack the dog came with me to my mum's house in Aylesbury. She loved him too and I have to say few rabbits I've had in 63 years keeping them boasted such a cheeky personality. He loved it when Jack kissed his nose or hopping around my mum's hospital bed in the front room. When I had to move out of the family home, my old friends Rick & Judy let him stay in their garden until he had to move. At his point, Nina, who I hadn't seen in nearly 20 years although we kept in touch online, offered him a place in her garden near Dorchester. Rick & Judy drove us down in June '22 and by the end of the year I'd moved there too. Initially Loftus hopped between Nina's, our mate Adam's then my bedroom in the tiny place I got before joining me in the Cosmic Hutch where he liked to hop around the front room and throw cushions around. We called him Lord Hopper.

When Nina and I relocated to the wild southwest last year, Loftus finally found his own personal paradise, helped by the spectacular converted aviary fitted by our friend Mark he now called home. By now he'd built a lovely friendship with Nina's Binky and was remarkably bouncy for a seven year old Pets at Home bun.

The last few weeks have been worrying as the idea of life without Loftus and his funny little rituals was impossible to take on board. That last night he stayed in my writing room in a cardboard box and things looked doubtful. Thankfully, I was with him when, after shooting me that same cheeky look as the first time I saw him, he hopped off to be with his mummy Helen and best mate Jack. Today our little family is down to three, my last link with Helen has gone and I feel like I've been run over by a bus but I'm so happy Loftus K. Lapin was there during those most difficult times then found his own little paradise in which to spend his final days. Loftus will be my last pet rabbit; an impossible act to follow!

This does mean I’ll have a lot more time to devote to writing, most pressingly my autobiography It’s More Than Rock ‘n’ Roll, which is coming along swimmingly (As I’ve said before, my paid subscribers will get their names listed in a Hall of Fame at the end). Normal service will be resumed now I’ve got this off my chest, though sadly without Loftus, one of the greatest rabbits ever to hop the Earth.

Thanks for reading. Hope you understand.