Coney Dewclaw

Coney Dewclaw is a character in Bill Holbrook's online comic strip Kevin and Kell, and is the daughter of Kevin and Kell Dewclaw, the two main characters.

Biography
Coney was born in late October 1995 (listed as Age 3 ); while she appeared as a rabbit, she had a carnivorous diet, biting into the zebra nurse’s arm. Kevin initially cared for her at home, as Herd Thinners did not provide maternity leave for Kell. When Elanor Dewclaw, Coney's grandmother, moved into their house in 1998, she began looking after Coney during the day. She will likely continue to do so until Coney no longer requires it; she and Kell realize that carnivore day care centers cannot guarantee Coney’s safety, and herbivore day care centers will not accept a rabbit that could eat one of the other children. However, some predators realize that her external appearance belies a deadly predator; Lindesfarne notes on her blog that Coney takes part in "Carnivore Swim" at a local pool.

Coney first word was officially "salt", and is now saying rudimentary and sometimes ungrammatical sentences; she expresses a desire to see her paternal grandmother Dorothy with "Me visit udder gamma (other grandma) too!".

Role in the Plot
Coney is often featured independently, perhaps more often than her parents and half-siblings. "A Christmas For Coney" included several of Coney's misadventures while she was lost a few days before Christmas, including eating out of, and later making a deposit in, a Salivation Army pot, helping a needy cow, giving hardened milk (officially cheese) to some mice, stopping a bank robbery and saving her grandfather’s life.

Many of the rabbit characters take interest in Coney. After Lindesfarne posts the news that Coney spoke her first word on her blog, rabbit families begin contacting Kevin with requests for arranged marriages; he is attempting to repel such requests, as he considers arranged marriage "an archaic, backward tradition." The rabbit community's reason for doing so is because they know that she, being half-wolf, will not attack relatives, or "pack members". This is also the reason Kevin used to convince his mother to visit Coney; he possibly believed that she might grow up and unknowingly eat her own grandmother. Rabbit’s Revenge also planned on breeding carnivorous rabbits from Coney, in order to drive other species to extinction, but Kevin, George and Danielle thwarted their plans by destroying their computers.

Coney played with Harcourt Ursal (Majorie Ursal’s grandson and Minora Ursal’s son), Nigel Aura and “Mary” (otherwise known as Dolly, Corrie’s clone). However, as the Ursals have moved to Florida (but has since returned); Mary’s foster parents have moved to New Zealand and Nigel and Catherine Aura have traveled through the time portal to the human world, it is unlikely that the playgroup will reunite. She is currently starting to socialize with Francis Fennec, who, as her aunt Danielle and George's son, is her paternal cousin.

She's best friends with a young tigress/tabby cub, Lin Lee, who also has a crush on her obnoxious and ambitious cousin, Wendell Luckyfoot.

Diet
Coney’s diet is also a major issue. She is technically an omnivore, able to eat all types of food, but being a born hunter, generally only eats meat. However, she can be fooled into thinking that vegetables and fruit are prey; for example, Dorothy carves a face into a head of lettuce and hands it to Coney, then attempts and fails to convince Kell that Coney eats vegetables. Dorothy thus attempts to turn Coney into a complete herbivore, but has consistently failed to do so. Her efforts, however, have annoyed both Elanor and Kell. Despite this, Dorothy shows no signs of discouragement, nor any indication that she will give up; according to Lindesfarne's blog, she had tried to make her New Year's Resolution to turn Coney into a vegetarian.

Recently, her closeness to her cousin Francis has made her more protective of her prey (for example, she wouldn't eat a mouse because he spoke to her nicely, instead of insulting her), but, since she lives in a world of predators and prey, she is in no danger of starving. She has been allowed to stay in her preschool as long as she continues to eat meat, and her protectiveness saved her grandmother Dorothy's life, thus causing her to promise to stop trying to change Coney's diet.