Dance like no one's watching

Just went to check on the babies. They’re sleeping in a small box in the guest room on the 2nd floor. We decided not to keep them outside ‘cos the change in temperature may be too drastic for them and since it was obvious that Horlicks wouldn’t be able to feed them successfully, we chose to keep them inside & increase their chances of survival, even though Horlicks may miss her babies.

The 2 darlings are definitely hungry now… they’re like sucking as they sleep… oh well, some websites say that mommy rabbits feed twice a day – during dawn & just before dusk… while some other websites say that mommy rabbits feed once during the day, usually during the night. I guess it could be both? I’m not sure. Was wondering if i should wake Horlicks up to feed the babies… but that would be cruel too? Poor gal fed 002 till she ran out of milk just now!

I’m going to sleep now… gotta wake up early in the morning to feed them before i go to work. Need to set aside 1.5 hrs every morning to coax Horlicks into feeding them. My main worry is that once their teeth grow sharper, it may get too painful when they nibble on Horlicks’ teats and she may not allow them to feed anymore… but will have to cross that bridge when we get to it i guess!

Goodnight everyone! I love my babies.

There’s this Cantonese saying, “吃死猫” and it basically means to take the blame for someone else. Well, I wronged Coffee. No wonder he refused to play with me the past week.Just now, before Vivi left, I asked her to help me clarify Muah Chee’s gender and guess what we discovered? MC’s a guy!! I can’t look at MC straight in the eye now ‘cos all along i thought ‘he’ was a ‘she’! *Sob*

Then it occurred to me… the reason why 001 & 002 have really long ears is not ‘cos they “take after their mom” but ‘cos both their parents are lop-ear rabbits! (MC’s a Mini Lop & Horlicks is a Holland Lop).

This is how i reasoned it out:
MC has always humped Horlicks since she first came. Coffee started humping Peanut 1 month ago and only stopped in the past 2 weeks. He then switched his focus to Horlicks and tried to mate with her… but Horlicks always ran away. At first, i thought he somehow succeeded in mating with Horlicks… but given that Horlicks gave birth about the same time as Peanut, she must have gotten pregnant about 1 week later only!

Hence the most probable father is MC! And u know what? MC tried to silence me after i discovered “she’s” a male!

When i scooped “her” up just now for Vivi to check her gender, MC didn’t resist at all. But after Vivi announced that MC’s a male, fwah lau… MC struggled & kicked. In fact, MC kicked so hard that his hind leg went straight for my stomach. It felt like someone gave me a punch! And when i took a bath just now? I saw 2 scratch marks on my tummy! It’s a miracle that my blouse didn’t tear! Tsk tsk!

That sneaky fella…

My dad went to the pet shop at Simei today to look for pine shavings. He wanted to line the nesting box with pine shavings to prevent the babies from rolling about so much ‘cos he suspects the thin baby was suffocated to death when it rolled under the nesting wool last night.

At the pet shop, he met this young gal called “Vivi” who breeds rabbits. She was really sweet and offered to come to my place to show us how we could get the babies to suckle from Horlicks. So i picked her up after work and came home.

We tried a few ways. First i carried Horlicks on her back and Vivi placed the baby on her chest… but Horlicks protested violent so we had to abort this method. Next, we tried to get Horlicks to sniff her babies & then place them in a tray in front of her…. Horlicks sniffed them then ran off. Plan B – failure. The 3rd attempt finally work. Horlicks ran around the garden till she got tired & laid down to rest against a wall. Vivi located Horlicks’ nipples & place the baby against it while i coaxed Horlicks to continue lying down with biscuit treats.

Wow… u should’ve seen the baby’s reaction when it was placed near the mother’s body. It sprung awake & rushed to try to suck the nipple. Some natural instinct kind of thing i suppose. Using this method, we managed to feed the smaller pinker rabbit (henceforth known as Baby002 – temporarily named according to birth order) till poor Horlicks ran out of milk.

Then we had to rest her a bit before feeding Baby001 (aka the miracle baby from this morning) a little. Horlicks was v.cooperative too. Vivi let her sniff 001 & Horlicks flipped onto her side, as though she really knew what we were trying to do. So we quickly placed 001 at her nipple & thankfully 001 managed to drink some milk too. But i think 001 was too hungry & it sucked too hard (i could hear the sound) and might have bit Horlicks too so Horlicks couldn’t tahan that long. Prob. about 2 mins and Horlicks stood up again.

Nevertheless, i’m glad we found a way to feed the babies. Nothing beats a mother’s milk. (Did u know that a baby mother’s milk is super high in calories? And that newborn baby needs no more than 5cc a day!) The dilemma i have now is how do i know when they’re full enough? (Overfeeding also can die… feed too little also can die…). Sigh… haven’t figured that one out yet.

Anyway, here are some photos of Baby001 & 002. 🙂

The one on top, the pinker one is Baby002. The greyish baby is 002, the miracle baby.

Same… 002’s the one on top. 🙂

001’s on the right.

This morning when i went to check on the babies, i couldn’t find them in the nesting box!! They somehow rolled themselves under the nesting wool and totally out of sight. I was gently probing the wool to find them and Horlicks kept hopping in & out of the cage…

After searching for like 5 mins, Horlicks came & started sniffing the corner of the cage…. and that’s when i saw a pink baby inside the litter tray!!! (As in the litter tray beneath the cage.) I quickly pulled out the litter tray from under the cage & there it was! The FATTEST PINKIEST little baby! Thank God it was still alive! And warm too! This baby is a true miracle baby! Somehow i’ve this strange hope that this miracle baby will be able to survive & grow up.

While i was really thrilled to find this 3rd baby, a tragedy occured during the night. Out of the 2 babies we placed in the nesting box last nite? The plumper one was sound asleep underneath the wool but the thinner one died. It was still a little warm so it must have just died only. Poor thing… i’m not sure if it suffocated in the wool (‘cos it rolled itself to the corner of the box, totally covered up by the wool), or if it died ‘cos it was under-nourished at birth.

My dad fed the plump baby a little bit of milk just now but the fat miracle baby is still sleeping soundly. Oh… it did pee a little. Guess it got the most amount of food while in the mother’s womb. Anyway, i don’t approve of my dad handling the babies so much in the first 24 hrs.. i mean… what if Horlicks looks for her babies and can’t find them then she gives up nursing them or something?!?

But what’s been done cannot be changed… so bo pian. I’m going to try to force Horlicks to nurse the babies tonite. My gameplan is to place her standing up on my lap, then put the babies at her nipples (my dad claims he can’t find them). My dad thinks this won’t work but i think it will… well, we’ll see how it goes. I really hope miracle baby & plump baby will survive.

Please pray for them.

Horlicks just gave birth to 2 babies! My parents just came home from dinner and my dad went to check on the rabbits. He heard Horlicks making darn a lot of noise, wanting to come out of her cage. Out of pity, he opened the door for her and ta-da! There were 2 baby rabbits there! Horlicks started pulling her fur outside the cage (talk about last minute work) so my dad scooped up the babies & placed them in the nesting box we prepared.As my dad was preparing the entire nesting facility (it’s now been upgraded to this wooden house with a cardboard box base, filled with nesting wool hollowed out in the middle), Horlicks jumped back into her cage… but i guess ‘cos she didn’t see her babies, she left the cage & stopped pulling her fur.

Anyway, after i came home, we did a search to make sure that there were no babies left stranded around the backyard. We found a whole clump of fur in the drain… guess Horlicks dumped the fur there when she couldn’t find her babies… so we removed the metal grating of the drain and i fished out the fur. We’ve placed the fur on top of the babies so hopefully Horlicks will know they’re there by the smell?

I couldn’t see the babies very clearly ‘cos they were in the nesting facility when i got home… my dad says they’re slightly shorter than Tim Tam but plumper. I saw a partial view of them and they were definitely a lot more pink!!

Please pray that Horlicks will know what to do ‘cos it really seems that the survival of baby rabbits depend 99% on the mother.

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We locked Horlicks back into her cage (she was roaming about the backyard and only returned to her cage to eat & drink but didn’t go see her babies) and she protested strongly. She wanted to come out but we quickly covered up the cage & switched off the lights. Hopefully she’ll settle down and learn to nurse her babies. My main worry is that she doesn’t know where the babies are! 🙁

At a friend’s wedding dinner recently, we started talking about the process of getting married. Generally i’ve observed 2 common ways that Singaporeans get married. My observation is that Christians usually have a church wedding in the morning / early afternoon, and a wedding dinner at night, then go on a honeymoon, and stay together in their marital home after coming back. (Well, at least something very similar to that). Non-Christians on the other hand will ROM first, move into a flat together, then have a wedding dinner 2 years later.

Now this may be a little sensitive but i really don’t see the logic behind that lor. I mean, what’s the point of living together as a married couple for 2 years then have a wedding dinner? To me, it only goes to show that the wedding dinner is purely for show, whether it is to please the older generation, or for “face”.

I would rather not have a wedding dinner if that’s the case… but believe it or not… i actually want to have a wedding dinner. Somehow i think it’s cool to be able to ask people that matter to you to celebrate your wedding. It’s just so festive. 😛 Hence i’ve long made up my mind that should i ever get married, i’m going to have the works – “fetching the bride” in the morning, church wedding in the afternoon, dinner at night, then off to a honeymoon.

Clown & i have spoken about making long-term plans before… and he was actually for the idea of ROM-ing first, and having a dinner later! I objected vehemently! I was so set on my idea of how a wedding should be that i simply cannot imagine having it any other way. I explained to him the rational behind my thinking and how i didn’t want to do things in what i consider a meaningless & illogical way. But Clown brought up the fact that to fulfil my wish, we would need a lot of savings. A lot.

Strangely, when this same topic was discussed at my friend’s wedding, the gals agreed with me that they want to have the wedding dinner about the same time as their ROM / church wedding (depending on whether they were Christians or not). (I never expected that there would be a gender divide on this.) A guy who recently got married said that he wanted to do the ROM first dinner a few years later thing but his wife also objected. So the conclusion i got was that gals probably place more emphasis on the significance of getting married whereas guys may see a wedding as just a stage that a couple has to go through…. as in “i definitely want to spend my life with this person hence we have to do this thing called a wedding, so that we can get the paperwork done”. (OK, maybe not exactly like that but close…)

Anyhow, to all the people who keep asking whether i’m going to get married soon… the answer is no…. ‘cos i have no money. Haha. An estimate of the cost of getting married the way i want is about 40-50k. I’m a poor person. So now, besides an UTG Red Light Camera Fund, i’m setting up an UTG Getting Married Fund. All are welcome to donate.

I’m still using Tim Tam as my MSN pic. I miss them even though they lived for only a short 3 days. I feel sad yet happy when their image appears in my mind. I think nature is such a paradox sometimes… like how a mother rabbit knows how to pull her fur to make a nest but yet she can not know how to feed her babies properly. And how babies will fight for their lives no matter how difficult the odds are.

I surfed the Internet extensively for more information on nursing baby rabbits & compiled a list of websites that had the most useful information. Sent the links to my dad to read too and he summarised the things we have to do when Horlicks gives birth (i’m really assuming she’s pregnant here).

We’re quite prepared now…. my dad bought nesting wool to line the floor of the box and we’ll use the wooden house that the rabbits used to lie in as shelter for the babies. I’m going to buy alfafa hay tomorrow to place on top of the nesting wool and my dad has also created a smaller litter tray for Horlicks so that the house/nesting box can fit in the cage together with the litter tray.

Coffee is living alone in BZ’s old cage now. He looks quite lonely at times but no choice lah… gotta put him in solitary confinement till he becomes a eunuch. Peanut & MC are in the bigger cage and they’ve been living quite harmoniously together. Horlicks is in a cage by herself so that she & her babies will have their personal space when they come along. We estimate the babies to come around the end of this month.

Now i just gotta think of names for the new babies… 🙂

I took Timmy up & warmed it in my hands. My dad prepared some glucose water for it to drink. It’s breathing was hard & laboured but it managed to lick 3 drops of water. It did seem to get a little better but it still died shortly after.We buried Tim & Tam in the front garden next to Cokie. I took a photo of them together before i buried them. Just to remember the babies by.

My dad & i suspect that Horlicks might be pregnant too ‘cos she’s been digging a lot lately & she has suddenly grown to be fatter than Muah Chee. I use MC as a benchmark now. Rabbits that dig + grow bigger than MC = pregnant. I’m kind of hoping that Horlicks is really pregnant ‘cos it would be really cool to have babies born & brought up in my house. But i’m still going ahead to sterilise Coffee ‘cos the survival rate of newborn babies are very low. (I’ve already booked a date for Coffee to be sterilised – 1/2/2006).

I was lamenting that it’s a pity Much Chee wasn’t the one who was pregnant ‘cos she’s the most caring of all the rabbits. My dad says that MC is also more matured so the babies may have a higher chance of survival. Oh well, if Horlicks does give birth, at least we’ll be better prepared now. Also, Horlicks likes to be touched by humans… like a little puppy…. so we prob. can give her more help in feeding her babies. I’m going to pet & carry Horlicks more often now…. at least make sure she’s really really used to people carrying her. So should she have babies, can help carry her in a standing position & put the babies to her body to suckle.

Please still pray that Peanut will get over her loss ok? I don’t know how she’ll react to the babies being gone.

Peanut gave birth to 4 babies on 11 Jan 2006, at about 8pm. The first 2 babies were rolling all over the cage when they were born… but the 3rd & 4th babies died soon after / at birth.The first sign that Peanut was going to give birth was when she suddenly started pulling out a lot of her fur to line the cage… and before long… out popped the babies. We put Baby One & Two in a shallow carton box to prevent them from rolling out of the cage. The babies look a little like tiny piglets – dark pink, furless & blind. In fact, i couldn’t even see their ears!

First time any of my rabbits gave birth so i quickly went on the Internet & got some info on what to do. Interesting thing abt mother rabbits – they don’t lie together with their children, instead preferring to watch from a safe distance. The reason is because being prey animals, they’re afraid that their scent may attract predators & so in order to keep their babies safe, they usually watch them from a distance. Mother rabbits feed their babies twice a day, usually during dawn & just before dusk.

This is the tricky part… how does one tell if the mother rabbit has fed the babies? What if being a 1st time mother, she doesn’t know what to do? Or what if the blind babies are unable to find her teats to suckle?!?

According to the American House Rabbit Society site, it says that a baby that has been fed will have a distended stomach. Babies who are left hungry will wrinkle (a sign of dehydration). The important thing is to leave the mother alone to feed the baby ‘cos if she senses “predators” around, she’ll not want to go near her babies. Also, a mother may not feed her baby till 24 hrs after they’re born.

So we decided to observe Peanut & her babies. Up till last night, i really couldn’t tell whether she fed them or not… though they seemed the same size as when they were born. But just now, when i got home from work about 3pm+, the babies looked quite wrinkled!! Which made me very very worried. I tried to use a syringe to give them some milk formula (bought from the pet shop) but they were so sleepy that they refused to drink.

I know the babies will wake up abt 6pm+ but i told my dad not to disturb them… i mean what if Peanut does feed them but ‘cos we’re around then she holds back right?? But my dad JUST WENT TO CHECK ON THEM!! (It’s 5:59pm now).

He says that the babies are awake & rolling about… and i told him to quickly move away ‘cos i’m sure no matter how quiet u are, the mother rabbit will still be able to sense a human being near her cage.

Anyway, i really hope Peanut knows how to feed them. I took half day off today to come home to spend a bit of time with them… they’re really cute even when sleeping. Sigh… it’s kinda sad but their survival is out of my hands… and i can only cherish whatever time i have with them.

Just found out that 1 of my ex-colleagues’ husband is suffering from end-stage lung cancer. He’s only 38 and yes, he is a smoker. The cancer has spread to his lymph nodes & stomach. We’re all very sad for my ex-colleague ‘cos they’ve only been married for 2 years and their daughter just turned 1 last year. This ex-colleague of mine is also in high risk of losing her job ‘cos the management has already blacklisted her for underperforming. If that happens, i really don’t know how she’s going to cope with the costs of raising a kid & all the medical bills – she’s not in very good health herself.The thing about smoking is that i’ve realised that the smoker must want to quit badly enough to actually succeed. Lots of smokers have short spells of success in quitting but the no. who pick it up again is just too high. There’s so many things out there to help people to quit – treated bubblegum, nicotine patches, etc… but some people just plain refuse to quit. Then there are those who say they’re trying… and it seems like they’ve been trying for an eternity.

There’s this website done by a friend of mine to help people to quit smoking. The URL is www.smokeraid.com. If you know anyone who smokes, perhaps this site can help.