THERE is a mouse in my house and our daughter wants to know when we catch it, can we give it to her guinea pigs so they’ll have a pet.
The thought of our furry potatoes tending to a pet of their own is funny but having a mouse in the house … not so much.
There’s never ever just one of them, if you see one just know there’s a family of them living elsewhere.
Our guinea pigs, Barry and Caramel, are both male – a choice we made for obvious reasons.
Like the mice, having a male and female cavy means a pet that can go from two to two hundred in no time at all.
My husband had no experience with guinea pigs.
As a child, growing up in New Zealand, he’d hunt rabbits, getting money for them from meat and fur buyers.
The notion rabbits are food and that people wear their skins is horrifying to me.
As children in South Africa, my brother Michael and I returned from a family holiday with a bunny each.
Aunty Fae had a big rondavel with thatched roofing, inside it was hundreds of rabbits.
We spent hours in there letting tiny bunnies hop all over us.
We were each given one to take home.
Both were supposed to be female, but no one told them that.
Soon enough, we had a brood of eight little bunnies.
Those eight became 16 and dad built a pretty decent warren out back.
He dug deep foundations and put ash block in the trenches.
There were places for them to hide and little snack and water areas.
We became known as the house with the rabbits by the neighbourhood kids.
One night a rabid dog came on to our property.
A policeman holding a rifle knocked on our door and told us to stay inside.
The dog was foaming at the mouth and very unwell.
It’d been drawn to our property following the rabbit scent.
The dog had been biting and pulling at the rabbit cage.
When the police left, unable to find the rabid dog, dad went outside to check on his rabbits.
He was very invested in these little furballs he’d worked so hard to keep safe.
Pulling at the wire cage he realised the saliva from the sick dog had got onto his hands.
Dad’s hands had cuts on them from fishing.
There was a lot of watching and waiting to see if he got the virus, but he was okay.
Kid’s pets tend to become parent’s problems.
Our guinea pigs were for our daughter but my husband has fully embraced them.
He watched YouTube videos on them, bought them a bigger cage and told us he is ‘surprised’ how fond he is of them.
Like my dad, my husband is fully invested in keeping the little creatures safe.
They say the mark of a good man is one who is kind to animals and small children.
In my case, I scored twice in life’s good man lottery and couldn’t be happier.
