Bye bye, guinea pig

Date: 8:17am, 31 Oct 2011

This weekend we said goodbye to a member of the family. Caramel the guinea pig is now living in a leafy Hertfordshire village at a guinea pig sanctuary. Guilt. It's a long and torturous story. We had two guinea pigs and they hated each other. They uttered war cries as soon as they were within 10 feet of each other so they have been residing for the past year and a half in adjoining cages. The theory was that they could chat to each other across the void and come to some sort of understanding. We put them together from time to time, for instance, daughter two created an Olympic course for them to complete together or took them skateboarding - to see if the theory worked. It didn't.

Poor Caramel occupied the smallest cage and has not had a lot of running around time recently. This is because I appear to be the only person interested in his well-being and I have been a tad overtasked [multi-tasking is for wimps]. So it came to pass that I rang the RSPCA in September and was put through to a very nice lady who said with a sigh that there may be a room for Caramel in the future, but "we are a bit full up now with mums who bought guinea pigs for the summer holidays and are bringing them back because the kids have got bored of them". Double guilt.

Last week she emailed to say a space had been found so on Sunday, after a sleepover session with daughter three and the baby [I managed to defer the midnight feast until 6.30am], I was up cleaning the cage out and trying to give the impression that Caramel was the best cared for guinea pig in the entire world. Daughters two and three and the baby were "helping". The baby was getting a bit het up every time he was not allowed to do something, eg, eat the sawdust. His form of protest is to roll up in a ball and face the floor. It is not very effective. Daughter two wanted to give Caramel a shampoo. I was disinfecting his hutch, which we had agreed to donate, so had my back momentarily turned. It was only after the bath that I mentioned that the guinea pig shampoo smelled a bit funny. "Oh, I couldn't find that," said daughter two. "I used the nit shampoo." Uh oh. Luckily, I think she only used a drop. I had visions of the guinea pig expiring en route to his new home.

We got a bit lost finding the place. The GPS seems to be quite good at the first bit of the journey and then gets rather confused near the end. We wound up by a golf club. Daughter two was very excited as there was a chicken on the loose and a dead hedgehog on the road. She made us hold three minutes of silence in tribute. Eventually we found the house, which was packed with chinchillas, rabbits and guinea pigs. I handed over Caramel, hoping his new owners wouldn't detect the waft of Derbac. "He smells very good," said the man. I attempted to change the subject. Daughter two had a tour of the place and now wants to move in. "Can we invite Caramel's new owners to my birthday party?" she asked enthusiastically. She was really keen on all the animals. Too bad her enthusiasm doesn't extend to actually looking after the ones we actually have.

I felt a bit of a tear rise to my eyes as we left Caramel behind. A bit of the family had been lost, nay, abandoned. When we returned home I asked everyone else if they missed Caramel. "Not really," said daughter one, not even looking up from her homework.

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Related tags: Guinea pigs