As a child, I was never very fond of stuffed animals (a.k.a. plushes). I was always led to believe that they attract loads of dust, germs, & bacteria, which will lead to further chaos in my battle against allergies. My mom severely disliked a cluttered bedroom, & always thought those furry little critters made the room look messy & cluttered.
Therefore, throughout my childhood, I only kept one stuffed animal as my furry little sleeping companion. It was a caramel-orange colored kitten with light brown stripes, soft ears & paw pads, & a fluffy white tummy. That was one of my most treasured possessions as a child, not only because of it’s infinite cuteness & cuddliness, but also because my beloved grandmother gave it to me as a gift. I still have that same stuffed animal to this very day. It is wrapped in tissue paper, boxed, & carefully stored away in our home’s storage closet. I hope to keep this treasured stuffed animal for many years (perhaps even generations) to come.
This brings me to current times. As you can clearly see from the name of my blog, I am a huge lover of both rabbits & foxes. I’m not quite sure how I came to love both animals together, especially since foxes have a penchant for hunting rabbits. My earliest memory is from my youth, when my oldest brother had a pet rabbit. It was a dark chocolate brown color & was quite a mischievous little one. My brother’s rabbit was incredibly adorable & relatively well-behaved with a slight naughty streak. Since then, I fell in love with rabbits.
As for foxes, I fell in love with them after reading my all-time favorite Japanese comic book series (a.k.a. manga) called XXX Holic. This comic book series made various spiritual & mythical references to foxes, & that just ensnared me straight away. I just fell head over heels in love with the spiritual nature of foxes as well as their beauty.
Combining my two loves together, I created the title Rabbits & Foxes. It began a couple of years ago with my feeble & half-assed attempt at creating a free website on Wix. Why? A part of me was reminiscing about the late 1990s when everyone was jumping on the Yahoo! GeoCities bandwagon & making their own fan pages. (I remember those good ol’ days, when you could slap a bunch of JPEGs on a colorful background with rainbow-colored text & call it a fan page.) Another part of me was actually trying to make my own personal stamp on the World Wide Web. I was overly ambitious, & strapped on britches that were way to big for my petite size.
It was well after that failed attempt in which I created this blog. I was following Jian on a business trip to Shanghai, China & had nothing to do except stay in our hotel room on a day full of severe lightning storm warnings. So, I made up my mind to start a photo journal of my two week trip. I promised myself from that point on that I would diligently stick to this blog. Being the weirdo that I am, I came up with the idea of collecting trinkets & other useless things to go along with my rabbit & fox theme.
My first pieces to my small collection were these two felt figurines that I bought online. I haven’t given them a name yet. So far I just call them Rabbit and Fox. I am very picky regarding the things I collect, so my “collection” is pretty sparse at this moment. I recently acquired these two new additions to my themed collection.
The rabbit plush takes a bit of explaining. It starts with my niece. She has a larger version of this exact stuffed animal that she sleeps with every single night. She plays with this stuffed animal daily, & it has become one of her most prized & treasured toys. I frequently like to tease my niece (all in fun, of course) & hide this stuffed animal behind my back, which makes her hyper-excited & chase me around the house to get it back. For fun, I got this smaller version of her favorite stuffed toy, which she named Bun Bun, just to match with her & to show her that I got my own stuffed rabbit. She was over-the-moon when she saw my toy. She told me that now I have to get all the other small sized plushes of all of her other stuffed toys to match her. I named my stuffed rabbit Irving, but my niece calls it Bun Bun (to match her toy’s name).
I got the fox a few days ago as a little Christmas present to myself. My niece immediately took a liking to it, especially because it makes a rattling sound. (Yes, I bought myself an infant’s plush from the baby section at the toy shop.) There was a larger stuffed animal version of this fox, but I decided to stay with the small size trend. I love this fox because it doesn’t look to overly cartoonish or babyish. It’s just the right amount of cute. I also named this fox Gaspard. As you can tell already, I like naming all of my inanimate objects. I don’t think this is weird at all contrary to whatever Jian might say. I think it’s rather fun & unique. I’d much rather say, “Can you bring Richard over here?”, instead of saying “Can you bring me my iPad?”. Or I’d rather say, “Can you get Stephan for me?”, instead of saying “Can you get me my phone charger?” Doesn’t that just sound more interesting? I think so. I’m so happy I have new mascots for my blog! Let’s all welcome Irving & Gaspard!! Cheers!
Today’s song of the day:
Rabbits & Foxes 