Love from Five Feet Away

I live with a rabbit. I say I live with a rabbit, rather than I own a rabbit, because the former feels more accurate to her understanding. Her name is Jemima and we have lived together for over eight years. I bought her from a backyard breeder in Seaford Vic when she was just six weeks old. She wasn’t meant to leave her family so soon, but the breeder’s dogs got out one morning and killed not only Jemima’s mother and father, but all siblings barring her and one other.

The breeders called me that morning and asked if they could drop her off early as they wanted her to be somewhere safe. So Jemima’s life with me began with the massacre of her family and an hour long car trip to a strange place. I put her in a cage alone. I had another rabbit at the time, Hannibal (Nibble for short), but rabbits are notoriously territorial and he would likely have killed her if he’d so much as seen her.

I have always wondered how Jemima’s early life trauma affected her outlook on life; her resilience, her fearlessness, her suspicion of me, and her dislike of human contact. She isn’t afraid of loud noises, or the vacuum cleaner, or even dogs. She isn’t afraid to bite anyone or anything she considers to be ‘in her way.’ But she doesn’t like to be touched. She is a rex rabbit, and honestly her fur is probably one of the softest materials on earth. It’s a cruel joke to play on a human who desperately wants to touch everything.

After Nibble died in March 2019, I thought Jemima would become friendlier with people. But she stayed largely the same, now visiting the same spots in the house alone that she and Nibble used to visit together; the sunny spot by the window in the morning, the fresh air by the screen door in the afternoon and the heater in the loungeroom in the evenings. I considered getting her another companion but at the age of seven I wondered how long she would even live with her grief. It took six months before she and Nibble could be trusted alone together and I didn’t want to put her (or myself) through the stress of another bonding. I tried to fill the gap Nibble had left in her life. I tried to spend more time with her. But despite her change in circumstance, her expectations and opinions of me stayed the same. Though she began accepting affection from my dog; eyeball-licking that is apparently heavenly if you are a rabbit.

I once wrote that she taught me to love from five feet away, and that feels more relevant now than ever before. In the midst of a pandemic where contact is discouraged I feel she’s prepared me to love completely from arm’s length. She’s taught me lots of lessons in fact. She’s been a muse-like character in my life. I have drawn her countless times, and written her into songs and poetry. Perhaps her dislike of touch has inspired in me an effort to express my affection for her in any other way I can. Perhaps if she’d just let me pat her, I wouldn’t be so desperate to express how much she means to me.

We humans seem hardwired to wipe our hands over anything we appreciate. We love to touch things, to explore them. And we largely show love with touch. I don’t think we often pause to wonder how others may differ in this. I wonder how tuned we are to accept love without contact. I think I doubted for a long time that Jemima had any affection for me, simply because she didn’t want me to pat her. “Rabbits are terrible pets,” I’d say. “Don’t get one if you have low self-esteem, because no matter what you do, they will judge you.” But she does love me. She loves me in a language I had to learn to understand. She loves me from five feet away.

This lesson Jemima taught me has allowed me to love others despite great distance; both physical and emotional. It has allowed me to love people who are no longer alive and people in other states and countries. In some cases, people I will likely never speak to again. She’s taught me to feel love toward others without expecting feedback. It’s a kind of love that doesn’t seek to be acknowledged or reflected.

Jemima lives inside the house. It’s the best way to keep rabbits. They can live from 7-12 years indoors. They are sensitive to heat, diseases carried by mosquitoes and they have to have space to run around for their bone health. Jemima has her litter tray and food near the back door but she spends most of her time in the loungeroom, sleeping by the heater or dancing on the rug. She likes sitting near the cat. Close enough to see him, but not close enough to touch.

She is a curious animal. She has a strange sense of humour, and a perspective that is very perplexing for a mere human to understand. Recently, my housemates and I were ranting about something we’d seen on TV. As the discussion got louder and more heated, we noticed Jemima start dancing in the corner, leaping this way and that, kicking her legs out, flipping her ears and twisting in full 360 degree circles mid-air. We thought it must have been a fluke. Surely our angry, exasperated conversations weren’t the best dancing music. Not so. She did the same thing the next day. We started deliberately complaining about any little thing just for her amusement. She’s a psychic vampire, seemly getting great pleasure from our drama. “Remember that,” I told my friend over the phone, “Anytime you are upset and ranting, somewhere out there in the world, a rabbit is dancing.”

Jemima doesn’t think of herself as a pet. She considers the care I give her, at best, her entitlements, and at worst; deeply offensive. Rabbits flick their feet as they run away to show their displeasure. It’s a kind of signed swear word, like they are shaking the thought of you off themselves. Jemima does this after I have to hold her to cut her nails, (an act she considers an undignified assault on her self-determination). She also does it if I tell her to stop chewing something she shouldn’t (my shoes, the kitchen floor, the corners of benches and tables). Sometimes she does it if I tell her I love her. But mostly she smiles. Rabbits smile with a long, slow blink. It’s a massive gesture of trust from someone who is prey for most other animals on Earth. It says “I trust you enough not to look at you, even if just for a moment.” She does it when I tell her she’s beautiful, or sing a song to her. She does it when the cat walks past, and when she sees us get home. She does it when she’s sitting by the heater and I go sit with her. Five feet away.