A rabbit handoff has one job above all others: to make sure the sitter treats appetite as vital signs. Rabbits hide illness well and their digestion cannot coast — a sitter who thinks a skipped meal is a small thing is the risk the whole document exists to remove. So the handoff is built in a deliberate order: the summary of who this rabbit is, the food in exact amounts, the cleaning by day, the handling rules, and then the short list of signs that mean a vet today.
The one-page summary at the front
Open with the rabbit himself: name, age, temperament, how he likes to be approached, and the habits that are normal for him. This page does quiet work: it gives the sitter a baseline. A sitter who knows he demolishes his greens in minutes notices the morning he leaves them. Add where everything lives — hay, pellets, greens, litter, carrier — and your vet's number on this page, not buried later, alongside your own number and written permission to authorise treatment if you cannot be reached.
Food: hay first, everything else measured
Hay carries the handoff. Write it as an instruction with no ceiling: grass hay available at all times, rack and litter-tray pile refreshed morning and evening, because hay is most of his diet and the engine of his gut and teeth. Pellets are the measured item — the exact small scoop or handful you use, given once a day, with his actual scoop left beside the bag. Greens get named, not categorised: list the specific leafy greens he already eats, the rough amount of each day's serving, and the rule that nothing new gets introduced while you are away. Then the exclusions in plain sight — no iceberg-type pale lettuce, no potato, no human snacks, however hopefully he begs. Water bowl rinsed and refilled daily, bottle checked as backup if he uses one.
Cleaning and living-space jobs
Daily: tray emptied and refilled with his usual litter and a fresh pile of hay at its end, stray droppings swept, water bowl washed. Across a week: his pen or room checked for the hazards rabbits manufacture — cables newly reachable, skirting within chewing range, gaps behind furniture he could wedge into — since a bored rabbit remodels. Write the exercise arrangement too: the hours he is usually out of his pen, the room he uses, and how he is encouraged back (his dinner works better than a chase). If he lives with a bonded partner, every instruction applies to the pair, and they are never to be separated for cleaning or any other reason.
Handling ground rules for a prey animal
He is picked up only when necessary, one hand under the chest and one supporting the hindquarters, held close and low — never by the ears, never by the scruff alone, and never turned onto his back. Most interaction happens at floor level, on his initiative. A rabbit who thumps, lunges or grunts at the sitter is not being naughty; the handoff should say to back off, bribe with a green from a flat hand, and note it for you rather than pushing the friendship.
Signs that need a vet the same day
This list is the heart of the document, and it should be short enough to act on: he has stopped eating or is picking at food he normally loves; droppings have stopped or shrunk to a fraction of normal; he sits hunched in a corner, grinding his teeth, uninterested in moving; his tummy feels hard or sounds sloshy, or he is drooling; or his breathing is laboured. The instruction attached is unconditional — call the vet that day, and call you after, not before. A rabbit's gut slowing down is the one emergency where hours change outcomes, and the sitter must never feel they are overreacting by acting on this list. Delivering all of it through KinsLe's Care Pass gives the sitter temporary, clear access to the routine and the warnings in one place, exactly as written, for exactly as long as you are away.