Rabbit (Winnie the Pooh)

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In the fictional world of the book series and cartoons Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit is a responsible rabbit who happens to be a good friend of Winnie the Pooh. He is always practical and keeps his friends on their toes, although they sometimes cause his unintended aggravation. He also likes his garden and does whatever he can to protect it from other animals such as bugs and crows. He also has a kind of adopted daughter named Kessie who is a bluebird that he rescued from a snowstorm.

Unlike the other animal characters except Owl and Gopher, Rabbit is a living animal, not a stuffed one. This can be determined by the illustrations and by his comment to Owl, "You and I have brains. The others have fluff." An exception to this, is an episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in which Rabbits runs away - thinking the others have forgotten his birthday. He is picked up by a peddler, put in a store, and sold back to Christopher Robin. As Rabbit was not put in a cage, we can assume, at least in this episode, that he was stuffed.

In regard to his appearance in The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, he is used to represent the busy and unnecessary action that we exert in our lives. It is through Rabbit that Benjamin Hoff shows how clever planning, and other ways of exerting one's will against the Way, is detrimental to a happy life.

Traditionally, the Disney adaptation of the Rabbit's fur is usually yellow, but on The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh his fur color is green (perhaps unintentionally).

Rabbit plays a small role in the videogame Kingdom Hearts. Like his traditional character he seems to have the most sense of the Winnie the Pooh characters, excepting Owl. In the minigame "Block Tigger" you must protect his carrot patch from an overexcited Tigger. He is also one of the characters that needs to be found in "Hide and Seek"

The original voice of Rabbit in the Disney films was Junius Matthews. After his death, Will Ryan, and later Ken Sansom replaced him as the voice of Rabbit. In the Japanese version he was voiced by Kei Tomiyama and then Naoki Tatsuta (following Tomiyama's death).