The Rabbit’s exclamations—“Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers!”—function as animal-world oaths and comic self-caricature, but the heart of the line is his fear that the Duchess will have him executed for misplacing gloves and a fan. The disproportion between offense and imagined penalty immediately sketches Wonderland’s justice as capricious and status-driven. His assurance—“as sure as ferrets are ferrets”—parodies logical certainty with a tautology (A is A): it asserts inevitability without evidence, revealing how Wonderland speakers often replace reasons with formulaic certitudes. Textually, the panic explains why he misidentifies Alice as Mary Ann and barks orders; his fear travels down the social ladder, producing petty bossiness from someone who is himself powerless before higher-ranking figures. The line also primes readers for later spectacles of arbitrary judgment—the Queen’s “Off with his head!” and the nonsensical tart trial—where language of authority outweighs facts, and fear governs behavior more than any coherent rule.