Tuesday, June 28, 2005

A White Rabbit

Neo looked for it at the first episode of The Matrix series. Alice followed it into Wonderland. Everyone's favorite chewy candy is named after it. And I've always wanted to own a real, live, white rabbit.

I have a friend who had a stout white rabbit roaming their sprawling gardens. It had shades of pink and I wanted to take it home! I'm fascinated with their extreme cuddliness. Last week, at the (where else?) Cenacle Garden, I was surprised when I found one bouncing about, munching on the grass. How I wished I could bring it home as well. Then I read an article at the Inquirer about a family that owned several pets, including two rabbits, and about the latter's cutesy antics.

Yesterday I took a walk around our neighborhood after mass. I was on my way to the bank, actually, when I noticed a place I had never entered before, but which my favorite cartoon character Ben (of PDI's Comics Page) loves because of the free entertainment it provided his grandson ==> a pet shop! I've been living here for seven years, and yet I've never had the time nor the inclination to go inside it. And so I finally did.

I looked around and felt like a disappointed kid when I couldn't find the object of my search. The store clerk asked me what I was looking for, and I said, "Do you have rabbits?" I was tempted to pronounce them "wabbits" but decided against it. He said, "Ma'am, hindi po ba yan yon?" I looked down at a cage that contained three white rabbits and smiled widely. I interviewed him about how to feed and take care of the pets. He showed me rabbit pellets and rabbit cages. I started to calculate if I would have the time to clean that cage, and to keep the rabbit immaculately white. The clerk quoted a very affordable price for the littlest of the three, for me, but I couldn't make up my mind if I was ready for it.

I've never single-handedly raised a pet before. We used to have a dog but when my eldest brother developed asthma, we stopped having dogs and cats in the house. We were allowed to keep an aquarium and we bought different kinds of fish. We also had parrots. But those pets I was used to never needed much maintenance. Now that all my siblings have flown away from the nest, and I'm left alone with my parents, I would have to take care of my rabbit all by myself. That got me thinking!

What if I just gave a wabbit to my nephews? They have a bigger garden, surely they could play with it and take good care of it for me. The problem is, my brother - their dad - might think wabbits are for girls and might not want his little boys to grow up with a pet rabbit.

So right now I haven't come up with an answer to my dilemma yet. Maybe, in the meantime, I could get myself one of them stuffed animals. It can't run around our tiny garden but it sure would look as cute as the real one.

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