Hello there!

Here is another post that I will probably get finished in the middle of the summer. I’m starting it about a week before we are getting the guinea pigs Jan and Cindy. (To understand a bit more about who they are, click here.)  Now, there has been a long process to get to this point.

1. It started with A LOT of research
2. Then compiling all this research into something that resembled “knowledge”
3. Starting to talk to my parents about maybe a pet
4. Broaching the subject of Guinea pigs
5. Constantly listing off cute and adorable facts about Guinea pigs (Step #5 went on for about a year)
6. Then COVID-19 hit
7. My parents realized that I would be spending a lot of time alone
8. So they decided I needed companionship
9.  AKA…….. GUINEA PIGS!!!!
10. Then came to finding the perfect time to adopt
11. And picking the perfect guinea pigs
12. And finding out if we were “compatible” owners
13. We were!
14. Contacting the piggies foster families
15. And setting up when we would pick them up!

This was a very long process, but it was all worth it. But there was still a lot more work left to do: buying the cage, buying the stuff that goes in the cage, setting up the cage, setting up the stuff that goes in the cage, picking new names, and buying food and hay.

Picking names was another hard part of the process. In my opinion, they should fit together nicely, but not be to cringy.

Too cringy: Cherry and Blossom

Me and my friend spent a lot of time brainstorming. Here is the order of what we came up with, and how the names evolved.

• Pea and Soup
• Peach and Cherry
• Peach and Apricot – here I started looking at the names for colours, and there were lots of cute options
• Bumblebee and Apricot
• Bumblebee and Mulberry
• Bumblebee and Dandelion

The final one is what right now I want to go with, but we’ll see if I end up changing it. I think that Bumblebee and Dandelion go well together, and they can be Bee and Lion for short. (At this point I should mention that both the piggies are girls.)

Ok, fast forward the clock in your head about a week. It’s now Tuesday August 14, 2020. Yesterday I spent the day preparing for the arrival of the guinea pigs. Then when my mum came home from work around 5:30, and we headed out to get the guinea pigs! The Guinea pigs’ foster home was in Port Coquitlam. When we got there we talked to the lady who was their foster mum, and asked a few final questions about the piggies.

Then, I put the piggies in a medium sized box. They went on the floor in the backseat of the car, with me beside them. They had a little hay and lettuce in their box with them.

Putting them in their new home was a little stressful. The GP with white on her was very squirmy as I was putting them in. After putting them in their cage, I think they were a bit freaked out. They ran around for a bit, and then hid in the hides that we had in there for them. Next came the hard part: deciding on what names to give them, and who is who.

Here’s what I decided: 

This is Bee. She is the more adventurous  one, and is always the first to come out and eat some snacks. She is also the one who makes the most noise.

This is Lion. She is more scared, and absolutely hates being picked up. She enjoyes lettuce, and chewing on her hide.

Obviously a huge part of owning guinea pigs is taking care of them. I thought it would be pretty hard to clean their cage, but it’s not! Every morning I brush the poop out with a little broom (they poop a ridiculous amount), then add fresh hay and food, and finally replace the water in their water bottle.

Another very important part of owning guinea pigs is to take tons of pictures and videos. Obviously I obliged to this requirement, so here are some adorable pictures and videos.

Yes, Lion is more photogenic than Bee, so there are a few more pictures of her in there. 

There is also a super cute video of the guinea pigs. I suspended some celery from the top of their cage, and they come up with very creative ways to attack it.

Thanks for reading! This is an amazing thing that has happened to me.

Cheers,

– Kate!