Kay told us that she grew up believing that we have very strong rabbit identities, even though we were raised with (by?) her and her (our) human family since infancy. So I'd like to talk about it in this post.
Well, I've always known that something's different with us. I can't remember when Kay told us that we're adopted, but I remember not being entirely surprised. I think I was a little more accepting of it than B initially was. I think what we were concerned the most was whether Kay would still love us as much as she does her (our) human siblings, but she reassured us and we were fine. However, up until that point I certainly didn't give much of a thought as to what, or who, I was. I think Kay told us that we're rabbits, but I didn't pay much attention to it, because in my mind the most important thing is that I was Kay and B's little sister.
Our childhood wasn't exactly a walk in the park, in terms of relating to other rabbits. When we started to venture out on our own (when Kay's not looking) to find other rabbits to make friends with, they've already noticed something that's 'off' about us. We didn't talk like them, we were totally uninformed on anything that's going on in the rabbit world. In fact, the only reason we could communicate with them in the first place at that time is because some of the rabbits spoke Human because they lived with humans.
The older ones were kind to us. They told us that our situation is very unique in the sense that they have not met a rabbit who has a relationship with humans the same way that we do. The rabbits who live with humans or come into contact with humans are considered by them as 'pets', or sometimes the humans would be 'mommy' or 'daddy' or the rabbits would be their 'children'...though of course both parties know that they don't really believe it. In all these cases, there's a very sharp boundary between them, usually enforced by the human, like, "I'm a human and you're a rabbit". This was never the case with Kay and us. Also, they've never heard of a human adopting rabbits as their siblings before.
The younger ones, however, weren't so nice. They would tease us mercilessly about our human sister, and how could humans and rabbits REALLY be siblings?! That's absurd, they would say. It's ludicrous, and it's a joke, they would say. They would challenge us to find our 'real' family members and how Kay couldn't possibly really love us because we're not her 'real' siblings, and all other mean stuff. It hurt so much, and for a time we felt really angsty towards Kay...I mean, I would sometimes wish we were raised in a 'normal' rabbit family, and maybe if she didn't adopt us, we would have the chance to find our biological families eventually...though as we grew older we know that she's our REAL sister and those mean rabbits were just being horrible to us because they were envious. I bet they wish they have a sister like ours!
