Guess How Much I Love You
Dare, Dec 2003
Text by Marie Wee

Media scheduler for on-air promotions, Adeline Choo, 30, is so fanatical about rabbits that her colleagues call her "the rabbit lady"

"Everytime I look at my rabbits, I want to tell them, "Guess how much I love you? I love you so much!" Prior to my white albino Peanut, I had seven rabbits. My first was a birthday present from my mum when I was ten. Subsequently, I had a brown one called Bunny, which lived 12 years - a rabbit's lifespan is usually about ten. He died in my arms when I was having chicken pox!

I was so traumatised I thought I'd stop keeping rabbits. But as I was then working in TCS, I came to know about two baby rabbits used for filming. One had died from heat stroke and the other one was being kept with cats and chickens in a carton in the store! I thought, no way is he going to survive the head and "attention" from the other animals! I went to get him straight away. He was barely a month old and was so small and cute. That was Peanut in 1995.

I've five rabbits now. Two, Peanut and Butter, are my own and I'm temporarily fostering the other three for the House Rabbit Soceity of Singapore (HRSS). Peanut is eight-years-plus now. He loves to sit under the silk scarf on my couch and gnaw at the fringe. My husband would go, "Hey, that's your silk scarf!" but I say, "That's okay, let him do it." My husband wasn't that keen on rabbits as he's allergic to fur but he has "surrendered" to my craze.

Peanut developed cataracts in both eyes three months ago. The vet says surgery is too dangerous, so now he adapts by moving with his ears forward as "antennae" to feel his way around. He can't see and can't jump like he used to, so he's a bit sad and lonely. I rescued Butter from a family who kept 30 rabbits for breediing. Too many came along so they wanted to sell them as meat in Johor Bahru!

I could only take one more then, so I chose Butter. She was two and the mother of the litter, so she'd first to be meat! She's five now and Peanut did a good job litter-trainingher. I was quite persistent in litter-training Peanut when he was young. He sleeps under my bed and at three hour intervals, will scamper to his cage to clear his system! The other rabbits I'm fostering are not so well trained yet, so I have trained my husband to pick up poo!

Every morning at 7.30, my alarm rings. Shortly after, my rabbits will signal for me to feed them by "ringing" the bells on their cages. Next, I massage them for better blood curculation. Rabbits can get alot of health troubles, but they get less hormone-related illnesses after sterilisation. No, I don't massage my husband as much, it's just a few pokes and it's done! He complains, but I tell him he has married a "rabbit slave".

At night, I take two hours to change the newspapers in all five cages, cut their vegetables and hand-feed them. They are so cute when they are chomping away! I never tire of watching them. The longest I'd left my two chaps was when I went to Australia for ten days. I left them at my sister's place, and since there are cockroaches there, I was hoping that Peanut wouldn't learn to kill one with his paws! I was so paranoid about that I wrote my sister a list of "what to do". The rabbits are my "children". I am their only world, so I must get my family to take good care of them too."