Ruby, Grey and Bruni’s rescue story

The guinea pig traffic light

[as featured in The Guinea Pig Magazine]

Ruby enjoying her treat

Three cute little faces were on the internet advert photo looking like a guinea pig "traffic light" - white, grey and brown. Their owners really must be in big trouble if they are forced to give their pets up, we thought. It was a cold autumn evening, I layered a rigid sports holdall bag with bath towels, threw in a couple of muslin cloths to cover the piggies from the top and we were off for the impromptu rescue mission. We entered a block of flats, got to the door, a couple of very young women let us in and said the guinea pigs are ready to go. They led us down the stairs and it immediately stroke us there was absolutely no natural light in the walk-though room except one very dim ceiling light, so the animals must have been living in pitch-black darkness except when someone switched on the light passing through in the evening. There was a plastic cage covered with thick layer of poop with one plastic house, one bowl, no food or hay to be seen anywhere and three scared to death small guinea pigs fighting for the space in the house trying to hide. The girls assumed we knew nothing about cavies and happily announced that the guinea pigs are more than happy having just a bit of straw and dried food and handed in half-empty bag of straw and awfully smelly out-of-date cheap guinea pig dried food bag. At this point my husband and I simply tried to catch the pigs who weren't at all used to being handled and get them home as soon as possible to feed. I couldn't help but kiss the poor things as I managed to catch them. The agreed £20 we gave to the girls was a mistake we regretted a number of times. We shouldn't have given them any money at all for treating animals this way.

Out on the street we bought a bag of ready-to-eat salad to give piggies a few leaves. Tube was shut due to a football match and the pigs had to endure a long bus ride till we were able to change for the tube. Despite all the noise of traffic looking petrified piggies were trying to bite a little off the salad leaves. On arrival trio had their nails trimmed and were left to settle in their new house where each pig had her own house in the cage to hide from big scary us and all the new sounds and smells of the new house.

With time their cage evolved into a large dual level structure fitted along the living room wall and while being completely free-range they always go back to sleep in their beds that are made of cat litter trays lined with vetbed. There are 4 piggie beds under the recliner sofa where they go to sleep every night and won't sleep anywhere else and there are quite a few more piggie beds on the ground "floor" of their cages construction. Ruby, Grey and Bruni love to lounge in the fleece beds, which when they first appeared in their trays scared them a little and there was a bit of rumble strutting going on in front of the fleece beds, because guinea pigs though it was some kind of fleece animal laying down there occupying their tray.

The girls grew up to be large, brave and very curious pigs. Bruni has become a self-proclaimed sentry of the herd, standing on guard whenever any new sounds can be heard. She was chirping a lot when our old boar has become mortally ill with cancer and we believe she could sense someone was about to die.

mixed organic grasses, barley, oats, alpha-alpha, coriander

The herd has expanded with one more adopted saw a year later and all four of them wheek for food all the time when not sleeping despite being spoiled rotten. If I fed them salad, carrots or sweet bell pepper, it doesn't count, they will still ask for the same thing from my husband, because they distinguish who gave them food and who didn't yet and since he usually feeds them all the time whatever I give just doesn't count. As we say, they don't know that I told my husband they have already received a carrot. The pigs distinguish our footsteps and start wheeking opening their little mouths wide their voices breaking down when my husband wakes up and begins to walk around upstairs, which they don't do with me - they know he is their main slave, who takes care of their food, poop scooping, cleaning and washing every day.

Life has changed: instead of watching TV half of the time we simply watch guinea pigs and they watch us. When we come to watch TV in the evenings, they come out from under the recliner to the top of their two-level house and lay down alongside us, quietly oinking under their breath as they stretch their little legs showing foot pads: brown, pink, black and lilac little piggy legs. We haven't gone on holidays for years being simply too scared to leave them in anyone's care and I do not know if in their lifetime we ever will manage to find someone we trust enough to look after our precious little furry bosses, but there are no regrets, because the daily pleasure of being with them outweights the few weeks abroad a year.