Welcome to Cavy Castle! Where Capy talks for far too long about her favourite animal, the guinea pig! There's several layers to this page, the first being dedicated to my guinea pigs, all about them, and then the rest is various rambles about piggos in general. If you like guinea pigs, you're in the right place! And if you don't, then what's wrong with you???
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Poirot is a teddy/rex mix with black, white and a hint of ginger markings. She has curly, crazy whiskers that sometimes get stuck in her mouth and make her pull silly faces. She's really not very bright, but more than makes up for that with how incredibly piercing her glares can be. She's also a big, round lady who spends a considerable amount of time eating. While glaring, of course.
Bergerac (also known by Burger-Bun) is less of a guinea pig and more of a force of nature. She can and will injure you. It takes a well-trained piggo wrangler to keep her under control, and even then, it's not a guarantee. Her guinea pig form (probably a disguise...) has smooth fur and a brown and golden head, with the biggest, angriest eyes ever. She's also probably flaring her nostrils in indignation right now.
Ever since I was a little kid, I've always, always been a big fan of guinea pigs. I got my first two pet guinea pigs at 5 years old (a little young, but my parents did most of the looking after), and they were my world! I'd asked for them for Christmas, and on Christmas morning, 2005, I ran downstairs to find a guinea pig cage sat in front of the fireplace. No, the fire wasn't on, we weren't crazy.
The guinea pigs were hiding in their little house, timid due to being in a strange, new place. So I didn't even know what was in the cage, or if there even was anything in it. Eventually, I got my dad to show me. He opened up the top of the cage and put his hand in through the front entrance of the house. After a bit of scrabbling, he got hold of one of them, and gently pulled them out.
This guinea pig, who would be called Mali, came out of the house head first, and she was so pointy, and a light grey colour, so I thought she was a rat. But the rest of her came into view and she was rather potato shaped, and had no tail. Guinea pig!
He then got the second one out, Mali's sister, who'd be called Sali, she had dalmation colouration, which means her head was black and her body was white, with black spots down her back and a white patch on her nose. I've also since decided that Mali was partially albino, she had light grey fur as mentioned before, but also slightly lighter patches of fur around her eyes and mouth, and red eyes.
Spent Christmas and also the next seven years doting on them, and while there's stuff I'd do differently now, with more knowledge and experience, I do think they had quite comfortable lives.
Between 2012 and 2017, I didn't have any pet guinea pigs, and while I really, really wanted to have more, and my obsession with them continued, it wasn't until September of my first year of A-Levels that I got more.
While my mother was in work, a co-worker asked her if she was willing to adopt some guinea pigs. His grandfather used to be a guinea pig breeder, but had since retired. He had about 14 guinea pigs left when his health started declining. There's only one guinea pig rescue in the whole of Wales and petstores can charge up to £50 to take in older animals. The only other option was having perfectly healthy animals put down, which he really didn't want to do.
By the time my mother was offered guinea pigs, only 5 guinea pigs were left, the others having been given to other willing pet owners. My mother, luckily, agreed to take in three. We'd have room for four but that would've left one guinea pig alone. From what we know, those two did get homes in time, in case you were worrying.
She phoned us as soon as she could to tell us the good news. I can't describe how happy I was to hear.
On the 14th of January, my mother came home from work with a chip box full of hay on the passenger seat of the car. She said that the only sign on life she'd seen was while driving, they'd occasionally hop up in the box and she'd see their little heads peeking out of the hay.
We'd already bought a cage, hadn't had the time or money to quickly come up with furniture and proper bedding. Luckily the cage came with a house and we filled the bottom with more hay to make it soft and warm until we could buy something better.
I got the honours of putting the guinea pigs in the cage. My dad held the box and I had to catch each of the piggos and put them into the cage. I picked one up, she had smooth, sleek fur, a white body with a brown head and golden fur on her snout. A very pretty guinea pig. She was wide-eyed and flaring her nostrils, stressed in her new environment, so I quickly and carefully put her into the cage and she disappeared into the little house.
The next guinea pig I picked up surprised me. I can't exactly remember which of the two I picked up first, all I remember is that they were so very fuzzly. We hadn't been told that one of them was going to be a rex. It was pretty exciting because we'd only ever had shorthairs before that.
The excitement only escalated when we picked up the second and realised that we in fact had two rexes.
After that we let them hide for a couple days, to get comfortable, feeding them three times a day. We soon decided on names for them, Poirot, Murdoch and Bergerac. All named after different fictional detectives.
Sadly, we lost Murdoch to illness last year, but Poirot and Bergerac are still going strong, at 3 years and 3 and a half years old respectively. And Murdoch did have a good time while she was with us, always exploring and getting cuddles.
Love my piggos, current, past, and future.