I heard this story before but the ending is different. In the one I heard the guy got a new rabbit and put it in the cage the next day the neighbors are frantically packing and moving and when the guy says what is going on they say their rabbit died and they buried it but that morning they went to take the cage down and the rabbit was in it alive so thinking it is a demon rabbit they are packing as fast as they can and leaves the new rabbit behind.
Paul Jennings wrote a story like this called Only Gilt. A guy fancied a girl, who had a pet budgie (?) which lived in a gilt cage. One day, he found his dog running about with the dead budgie in his mouth, so he cleaned it up and put it back in her cage so she'd think it died naturally. However, before he found out what really happened (the family buried it after it had really died), he wore a bird cage on his face to school the next day because he was feeling 'only gilt' (guilt)
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