Cat and rabbit housing: safe retreat for Blanc de Hotot

A Blanc de Hotot sharing a home with a cat — that's a setup where the rabbit's housing has to do some real work. Most hutches sold in pet shops are genuinely too small for any rabbit: they need room for at least three full hops, the ability to stand fully upright on their hind legs, and separate zones for sleeping and toileting. Add a curious or predatory cat into the mix and you also need an enclosure the rabbit can genuinely retreat into — somewhere the cat cannot follow or reach through. Can you tell me: is the rabbit housed indoors full-time, how much floor space do you have available, and is the cat generally calm around the rabbit or actively interested in it?

That space is very workable, and the situation you're describing — a cat that fixates without attacking — is actually one of the more stressful for a rabbit because the threat never fully goes away. Blanc de Hotots are alert, sensitive rabbits and chronic low-level stress from a watching cat causes real health problems over time. What your rabbit needs is an enclosure with a fully enclosed hide section he can go into and genuinely not be seen — not just a cardboard box, but a solid-sided covered section that's part of the structure itself. Open pen setups with just a blanket over a corner don't cut it here.

For your space and this specific situation, I'd go with the Pets Imperial Penthouse Guinea Pig and Rabbit Hutch. Don't let the name put you off — it's a solid two-level indoor unit with a fully enclosed lower sleeping compartment that a cat cannot see into or reach through, and an open upper run area for movement. The footprint fits your corner well, the materials are robust enough that a cat pawing at the outside won't destabilise it, and there's a lockable door so you can fully secure him when you're not supervising. The enclosed lower level is the key thing here — your Blanc de Hotot can retreat there and be genuinely out of the cat's sightline, which breaks that constant surveillance stress loop.

It's on the acceptable end for a single medium rabbit, but I'd be honest with you: for a Blanc de Hotot as a permanent setup you'd want to pair it with a secured exercise pen attached to the front during supervised hours — the enclosure itself handles safe sleeping and retreat, and the pen gives him the run space rabbits genuinely need. A simple puppy playpen panel set around the hutch entrance gives you a contained but spacious daytime area you can close off when the cat is roaming unsupervised. That combination, in your 2m x 1.5m corner, would work well.

Honestly, most cats with a strong prey drive toward rabbits don't fully lose interest — they habituate to some degree over months, but a cat that's actively fixated now is unlikely to become completely indifferent. What does change is that a rabbit who has a reliable safe retreat becomes less visibly stressed because he knows he can escape the gaze. Some owners reach a point where supervised coexistence in the same room is calm enough. But I'd plan for permanent management rather than hoping it resolves — good housing solves most of the problem regardless of what the cat does.