1 + 1 = 3

In January 2009 I acquired a rabbit. I am the year of the rabbit so I called himby the Chinese word for a rabbit: Tuzi, the first syllable pronounced like the whoo of tu-whit-a-whoo, the 'z' pronounced as if tz and the 'i' becomes a mute e. Initially Tuzi was contained in a smallish hutch but more recently, in a larger wire enclosure. A few weeks ago, he discovered that with judicious digging or biting through wire, he could escape back over the road to where he came from. My neighbour has several other rabbits. After a week where Tuzi was getting out twice a day and then again the following morning, I enquired at a pet shop and was told rabbits like soft toys for company so I dutifully bought him a soft green dinosaur which he had the good taste to ignore. So my neighbour bought over one of his rabbits to keep mine company. I have called her Tuzilina.

When Tuzi wasn’t escaping he was mooching rather a lot, so I was expecting to have twice the mooching. Instead, there is a great deal of rabbit activity now that he has his sister for company. He has heard that people breed like rabbits so he wants to too, but at the moment, he is not humping her, just chasing her energetically. So I have discovered that one rabbit energy plus another rabbit energy does not equal two; they equal three.

The world of mathematics has been turned upside down.