Side Story: Puppy, Cat, and Rabbit.
Side Story: Puppy, Cat, and Rabbit.
The career experience turned out to be more fun than I expected.
The kids voted me, the Qtuber, as the most fun, but they said they still listened diligently to everyone else's classes too.
The people who gave their career talks after us had pretty impressive careers as well.
Amazingly, one lawyer was a former Presiding Judge of the High Court, and an incumbent Chief Prosecutor of the High Court had apparently even made time to give a class at the kindergarten.
I can understand a lawyer, but is being a Chief Prosecutor at the High Court a job that pays enough to afford our apartment?
Or maybe their family or in-laws have a lot of money.
Still, a Presiding Judge and a Chief Prosecutor at the High Court, huh.
They might not be the final bosses of the Republic of Korea's legal world, but aren't they at least like the Four Heavenly Kings or something?
"Arin-ah. You must never, ever fight with your friends at kindergarten, okay?"
"I won't fight! Arini is close friends with everyone!"
She did seem that way.
On top of that, Arini was pretty popular...
"Right? You absolutely must not fight, okay?"
I had no choice but to trust Arini.
I could only hope our Arini would never fight with her friends...
"Kids grow up fighting each other, what's the big deal."
"Noona... if Arini hits their kid or something..."
"It's fine, it's fine. Usually, when kids fight, it's mutual."
"Hmm..."
Was that how it worked?
If it's mutual, maybe it really would be okay.
No, what was I even thinking?
*
My cat's daily routine was monotonous.
He'd wake up early in the morning and come into the master bedroom to act spoiled with me.
There was one thing I shouldn't get wrong, though: the reason Tiny acted spoiled with me wasn't because he liked me.
It was just a silent way of saying, hurry up and give me food.
If A-ra Noona woke up before I did, he'd follow her instead.
The problem was that cats were just too clever.
Look at Lil' One and Pipsqueak.
Weren't they just crazy in love with their dad?
Lil' One was a dog who would sulk for over a week if you left her behind and went traveling, and Pipsqueak was a dog who knew how to comfort her older sister (wife).
Just like with people, the female dogs were probably much younger and softer, I guessed.
"Squirt."
"Myaaong."
Still, when Dad (his master) called him, he did respond.
The slight problem was that after meowing roughly once and stretching, he would go off somewhere else.
"Maybe I should find him a mate..."
Hadn't I brought Pipsqueak in as a husband prospect for Lil' One too?
Those two had already been pregnant once and were now walking around with their babies.
And those babies were now two years old.
Two were male and one was female, and I was wondering if I should find them mates too...
"Should I just neuter them..."
Maybe popping their beans would be better.
I felt sorry for the three pups, but that would probably be the best choice.
If I didn't do it now, it would be harder later on.
So, it would be better to just pop them now.
"Are you talking about Slowpoke, Rusty, and Heumuli?"
"Yes. Because if I adopt to find them mates, I feel like it would be endless."
No matter how spacious our penthouse was, without a big yard, things like infinite multiplication were nothing but a pipe dream.
Right now, we were raising five dogs and one cat, which was already more than enough.
Increasing the number of animals any further was...
While I was thinking that, Arini started flipping through TV channels wildly.
And I don't know if it was a twist of fate, but a channel came on that was rebroadcasting Animal Farm.
"Dad! Dogs are nice, but I want to try raising a rabbit!"
"Huh? A rabbit?"
"Rabbits are cute!"
On the screen was a Lionhead breed rabbit with its ears perked straight up.
And next to it sat a Lop Ear rabbit with its ears drooping down.
Rabbits were certainly cute.
Plus, in the case of rabbits, they didn't make any sound at all unless their life was threatened.
And yet, they were surprisingly affectionate creatures.
That was why quite a few people raised them, and I knew the community was somewhat active to a certain degree.
Hiss... but could you raise a rabbit together with a cat and dogs?
That was what worried me the most.
"I heard that rabbits are raised in a cage when they're young."
"Hmm... so you can't take them out at all?"
"That can't be true, right? But a rabbit, huh..."
She shrugged her shoulders, saying she didn't know the details.
That aside, our A-ra Noona surprisingly didn't lack for knowledge about anything.
"A rabbit..."
"Arin-ah. Do you want to try raising a rabbit?"
"Yeah..."
"Hmm..."
There was no particular reason we couldn't.
For an empty room, we could just clear out one of the storage rooms and repurpose it.
And it would probably be good for Arini to experience raising an animal she wanted to.
The dogs were raised by me, and the cat was raised by A-ra Noona, wasn't it?
I was fine letting her raise one, but what would A-ra Noona think?
With that thought, I looked to the side, and A-ra Noona was also watching the rabbits on the screen, unable to take her eyes off them.
Did women like rabbits?
I thought they usually preferred strong animals like tigers.
"Then shall we bring a male and female and try raising them together in cohabitation?"
"Cohabitation! Male and female!"
"Arini already knows what cohabitation means?"
"I don't know!"
Arini declared proudly that she didn't know, puffing out her belly.
She was still only 6 years old, so it was only natural she wouldn't know such a difficult word.
But where could we adopt a rabbit from?
Since the one we wanted to raise was a domestic rabbit, did we need to go somewhere like a farm...
***
"Rabbit? Are you going to upload rabbit meat? You'd better not...?"
".......You wanna die?"
We were having a conversation about where it would be good to adopt a rabbit, when that guy Lee Min-ho suddenly started spouting nonsense.
It seemed he thought I was looking for rabbit as in rabbit meat.
I really want to hit him...
Even if I had thought about something like rabbit meat cream stew, I wasn't crazy enough to actually carry it out.
Wouldn't that be a horrifying video for people who raise rabbits as companion animals?
It would be no different from introducing how to make dog meat hangover soup to someone who raises a dog.
That's not to say I'm about to talk like biased vegans or anything.
It absolutely wasn't that rabbits were okay but cows and pigs could just die, right?
Cows were cute, and pigs were cute too.
Because all animals were naturally cute.
"Then what? You're not seriously trying to raise one?"
"Of course I am..."
"Ahem... I thought, since you've been agonizing every day about what video to upload lately, that you had finally resolved to upload something like rabbit meat."
Looking a bit embarrassed, Lee Min-ho turned his head away and sipped his coffee with a jjororok sound.
Generally speaking, if someone says they don't know where to get a rabbit from, wouldn't it be normal to assume they want to raise one?
"But why this sudden rabbit talk? You've already got four dogs and a cat at home."
"Arini said she wanted to raise one."
"Ah-ha... You really are a total girl-dad, a total girl-dad."
Girl-dad... I wish he wouldn't use such unwieldy words that don't roll off the tongue.
The two of them giggled for a bit before pulling out their phones and starting to search around.
"There was nothing much on the internet. It seemed like it's mostly farm or private adoptions."
"What are you talking about. Even if you go to E-mart now, there's bound to be at least one rabbit?"
"They sell rabbits at E-mart?"
This was the first time I'd heard they had rabbits there.
I think I once saw a hedgehog there before.
"You know, at the aquarium corner, they have rabbits. There, they sell hamsters, fish, and all kinds of things."
"Hmm... then shall we go check it out."
"We need to buy the supplies first... I heard rabbits live in a cage."
"Ah, right."
I'd completely forgotten.
First, I needed to prepare all the necessary supplies before going to pick one up.
I also couldn't forget to study diligently before raising an animal.
*
"Young rabbits eat alfalfa... and get the nutrients they're missing from pellets..."
"What's the difference between alfalfa and timothy?"
"....I wonder?"
How could a human know the difference between grasses?
If I had to find a difference in the visible parts, alfalfa was a soft grass, and timothy was a bit tougher.
"Seeing how you feed a mix of alfalfa and timothy to rabbits that are about 6 months old, they must be quite different, right?"
"Maybe a difference in nutrients? So after 6 months, can you stop feeding pellets?"
"No. They say you still have to feed them pellets even after 6 months. And since rabbits are animals that groom themselves, bathing is strictly forbidden as well."
That probably meant taking them outside wasn't very good either.
They said up to 3 months, you shouldn't take them outside and have to help them settle into the cage as their home.
After that, you could let them roam free, but you had to keep them distanced from other animals until they were fully grown.
They said if a domestic rabbit is released into the wild, most of them get bitten and killed by cats.
"No matter what, releasing a herbivore like that..."
"I guess there are a lot of people who mistreat animals just because they can't talk. I wish they'd all get divine punishment."
"I know, right."
We'd heard that domestic rabbits were completely different from wild rabbits.
Even if you released them on a mountain, they'd live for a month or two at most before dying.
There were supposedly cases where rabbits somehow survived by digging burrows, but they said those cases were extremely rare and hard to find.
Most froze to death in the cold, or died from the stress of getting hit by rain.
"They said wild rabbits and domestic rabbits can't even crossbreed. They're both rabbits, but it seems the species is completely different."
"Ah. There's even a difference like that?"
I learned something new.
Animals really were more fascinating the more you learned about them.
***
The reason rabbits frequently appear in my work!
Please take a look at our Bokseuli!
And I've changed the cover to the 1 million achievement cover!
Please go take a look!