Two Guineas

The boys have been wanting a pet for a long time so Marc and I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get them something to cuddle. We didn't think we were ready for a dog so we went to the pet store and talked to the owner to help us decide what might work for our family. The owner is a lovely woman who knows my family because her daughter was in the toddler class I was teaching in the fall of 2014. She went through several different options that might survive my boys' love. Turtles, lizards and rats topped the list of hearty animals. I told her we were hoping for something a little more furry. She said I hoped I wouldn't be offended but hamsters were out. My boys would kill a hamster. Guinea pigs though, they might work. They don't die if you drop them, they don't bite and you can hug them without crushing their internal organs. That sounded good. It was decided, we would get a guinea pig or two. We didn't want our new pet to be lonely. The pet store lady made them sound really easy to take care of too. You just feed them pellets and water and change the litter in the bottom of their small cage 2x per week. You can even just line the cage with a garbage bag she said so you just tie up the bag, put a new one on and sprinkle some litter in the bottom. Easy peasy. The boys should be able to handle this pet completely independently.

The next step was for the boys to earn their pet. We decided not to tell them what kind of animal we were getting to make it more fun and exciting. We agreed that they would have to do all their chores for eight weeks without complaining and then we would bring home our pet. We made a paper chain and each week when we cut off a link we would give the boys a clue about what the pet would be. The clues were things like, "it's a mammal" "it's an herbivore" "it comes in a variety of colors" etc. Finally, on week six or seven Marc said, "it shares a name with a country". The boys started guessing. "We're getting a turkey?!?" Nope, that's not a mammal. Oh, right. Benjamin piped up, "We're getting a donkey?!?" That made us laugh. Donkey was a country we had never heard of. Donkeys are mammals though and they are herbivores but it wasn't the right answer. Gabriel and Elijah figured it out and guessed "Guinea pig!"

Once they knew what we were getting we took them to the pet store to meet the two little guinea pigs we had put on reserve. I had been going to the pet store each week to look at the guinea pigs and when they got some new ones in I immediately fell in love with two of them and asked the store to hold them for us. We've been to the other pet store in town once to get hay since then and I'm still convinced they are the two cutest guinea pigs in town.

We spent the remaining week before we could bring them home figuring out what to name them. The boys brainstormed a huge list and there were some impassioned pleas on behalf of the names that each child liked best. There were Pokemon names, Dwarf names from the Hobbit, names from the book Holes, African names from the country of Guinea, descriptive names like "Swirl" and names from comic books. In the end, we did a complicated voting system and ended up with the names "Calvin" and "Hobbes". Marc and Gabe still really really wanted those Dwarf names but they were okay with Calvin and Hobbes.

Calvin

Hobbes

Finally, we brought them home. Almost immediately, things were not as advertised. First of all, even the gigantic leaf bags did not have a wide enough mouth to fold easily over the large rectangular cage bottom. I had to cut slits in the bag in order to make it sit in the cage the right way. Secondly, after doing some research which I should have done before we brought them home, I discovered that guinea pigs require hay as part of their daily diet. I'm allergic to hay and so are Marc and David John. Awesome. Marc also started reacting to the guinea pig fur right away. The boys were so not independent in caring for the piggies. They couldn't even get them out of the cage independently. I was hard pressed to be able to catch them when I was reaching my hands through the single small opening in the front of the cage. I wanted to cry. This wasn't what I signed up for.

After a lot more research which suggested that two guinea pigs need more space than we were providing, we ended up returning the first cage and basically erecting a guinea pig mansion in our basement. We bought an air filter to keep the hay and fur allergens from traveling upstairs and the new cage had a open top so that little boys could reach in and get the guinea pigs without too much trouble. They still aren't completely independent with them, but they can do most things. I created panels for the bottoms of the cage that you can clip towels and fleece to so instead of putting litter in 16 square feet of cage, it only goes in two litter boxes and then the fleece gets replaced twice a week and washed.

The good news is, they are really quite adorable and it's fun to hear them chatter to each other. The boys love holding and grooming them and watching them run around on a blanket and feeding them by hand. They are very sweet and don't bite and David John especially has really taken his role of caregiver to heart. We often feed the piggies vegetable scraps from dinner preparations and sometimes the younger boys want to feed the little critters other things as well. Recently, we were having BLTs and one of the boys suggested that maybe the guinea pigs would like to try some bacon. I was about to say that they can only eat plants when David John interjected, "You can't feed a guinea pig bacon! That would be like cannibalism!" So, no bacon was had. Sorry little piggies.