Buster, the city rabbit
A rabbit in the city centre? It’s possible! Berchem couple Olivier and Valentine bought their lop-eared Buster a year ago. Now he’s best friends with Elias, six, and Matias, two. He’s thoroughly at home, inside and out.
“We live in the city,” explains Olivier, “but we still thought it was important for the kids not to lose their feeling for nature completely. We often go to the Wolvenberg park on the other side of the Singel. But we could do more. So we brought Buster in-house. Quite literally so.”
Time, attention and space
But the couple didn’t decide overnight. “You mustn’t just buy a rabbit on impulse,” Olivier points out. “They take time and attention. And space. When we bought this house, the courtyard was just a characterless place with dull grey tiles. We took up half of them and sowed grass. The other half is a sandpit for the kids.”
Rabbit with a second home
Buster has a fine spacious cage in Elias and Matias’s playroom. Olivier: “That’s where he mostly stays. He gets a lot of attention there. But we take him outside once every day, so he can enjoy the fresh air and the fresh grass. For that we bought a rodent enclosure. So we don’t need a cumbersome outdoor pen.”