Blueberries and papaya and hay… oh my! This is the story of how a small section of the Okimoto kitchen turned into a bunny feeding factory.
A little less than a year ago, I (halfway-jokingly) came home and announced to my fiance that I thought we should get a bunny. We had just moved in with each other and had been debating the merits of adding a pet to the mix when a co-worker had introduced me to photos of her beautiful little bunny. I laughed at first, thinking back to my childhood when we kept bunnies in the backyard in a giant hutch that always smelled and was a nightmare to clean. Surely, caring for a bunny in an apartment was not a possibility.
Wrong.
I went home to Kris that night armed with the stories of apartment dwelling rabbits who could be liter box trained (just like a cat!) and – in all honesty – expected him to laugh at me. Instead, in true Kris fashion, he suggested I do a little more research on what we would have to do to make bunny-ownership a reality. The next night, I came home from work to find that he had spent a chunk of his work day “falling down the rabbit hole” of rabbit-owner websites and watching alllll the YouTube videos he could find (I dare you to Google it – there’s a whole world of bunny obsessed YouTubers out there, bless their hearts!). And with that, he was hooked.
As fate would have it, a state-of-the-art adoption center had opened up just down the road from us and were trying to adopt – you guessed it – bunnies! Angelenos who are looking to adopt, PLEASE check out Annenberg PetSpace, I promise you won’t regret it (think clean, friendly and no-kill!). We made quite a few trips down to play with these charming little critters before finally deciding on a spunky little sweetheart they had named, Papita. While we didn’t vibe with the name, we connected with her right away. One of the few bunnies in the adoption center that would let us sit, pet and play with her, we knew she was special from the moment we saw this pitch-black beauty.
Fast-forward four months later and (post-name change) Luna is the true queen of our castle. She loves bluberries and dried papaya, and gets a huge kick out of running laps around our living room ottoman. Plus, her vegan bunny diet has encouraged me to wrap more veggies into our daily dinner recipies (seriously, we’ve had a true broccoli revitalization since little Luna became a permanent resident in the Okimoto household.
She’s probably the most spoiled bunny I have ever seen and to be totally honest, I don’t think I’d have it any other way.
Ashley Okimoto 