New Additions

Now before you all think I'm pregnant with twins, like my mother-in-law did when I told her she had two new grandchildren, I'm not.

Thursday night Jason and I adopted two male guinea pigs from the local pet store. We had been contemplating this for a while after I saw a pair of female guinea pigs up for adoption several weeks ago. Since that time I've been doing some research and we've been looking around on the Internet for any other pairs of orphaned piggies in the area. Jason recently decided to stop back in at the pet store and saw these guys, so when we went out for my birthday we went in so I could handle them a little. We spent my birthday evening doing some shopping for the necessities and picked them up on the way home.

Unfortunately there is one small problem. They DO NOT like each other. The manager on duty at the time told us they came in together and would share the same house, etc. They were jumping all over the place and making tons of sounds in the box on the way home, but I assumed it was just because they were nervous. We set up the cage, inserted the house, and supplied them with food, Timothy hay, and water. One feels he is king of the house and won't let the other in - though when I came home from church today I discovered he's been ousted and is now inhabiting the cardboard box Jason put in in sheer sympathy for the previously homeless guinea pig. When I fed them this morning, the other one decided he was ruler over the food supply (namely the Timothy hay) and wouldn't let the other have any. Great! So one will die from a draft and the sheer stress of being exposed to movement and sound and the other will starve to death.

I took something back to the pet store on the way home today and talked to another manager. She told me if they don't get along they probably never will (how could they have been living together then?) and that we could bring one back in since we just adopted them. We actually wanted to get two because then they have constant company if we have a few days we can't handle them or take them out. So now we either have to figure out how to get them to tolerate each other or give one back and be stuck with a sole guinea pig in a humongous cage. At least then there would be less doo-doo. That's a definite plus. I told Jason maybe we should make a stink and tell them we intentionally adopted two and were told they would get along. I don't know how far we would get. The last thing I want to do is have to pay for them to take them back, on top of losing the money we "donated" for adopting them in the first place!

And we haven't even named them yet!