Okay, this has absolutely nothing to do with tourism, Hamilton, traveling or anything else we usually write about. But it would be utterly remiss of us not to tell you about the amazing month we have had, even though it’s entirely irrelevant.
We have adorable pet guinea pigs. We have mentioned them before and, if you’ve stayed here, you might have noticed that we use their names for things like wifi passwords. It was a bit of a missed opportunity, in fact, not to name ourselves the Pring International Guesthouse, so we could use “PIG” as an acronym.
Rescuing
As well as our own pets, we volunteer with the Toronto-based rescue organization All Creatures Rescue. In early April, a dog rescue was called in to help with a sad situation in a puppy mill. When they arrived, they discovered a cage with 20 guinea pigs in it, and called in ACR to help. We took in two very young girls, probably not more than a month old, and we named them Martha and Veronica.
After a few weeks, two things became pretty clear. The first one was that these two girls were not the least bit tame and were quite stressed out. They didn’t seem to get along at all and would squabble and try to bite each other if they got too close. The second thing was that Martha was pregnant.
It’s not too surprising, since guinea pigs become fertile very early. And the whole group that was rescued was in a single cage, males and females together. But it’s not an easy thing to have a pregnant guinea pig who is barely more than a baby herself. We took the best care of them that we could.
Babies!
On June 10th, just when we thought Martha couldn’t possibly get any fatter, she finally gave birth! Two little babies, one boy and one girl, perfect little twins. We named them Castor and Pollux.
For two weeks, we had the joy of watching these two tiny creatures as they grew. They went from helpless to fearless very quickly! In just a few days the were following the big pigs everywhere, trying to be part of the herd. But, as we learned from their mother, they grow up very quickly. At two weeks, it was clear that Martha was all done with being a mother and would no longer let them nurse.
That signalled that it was time to separate Castor from the female guinea pigs. This was really difficult. He was still so tiny and would cry very loudly. We didn’t want him to be lonely. But there was a solution. Among the rescued guinea pigs were other pregnant females and one of them had given birth to another baby boy. He was a week older than our babies, and his name was Chestnut.
We introduced Castor to Chestnut and they got along at once. We made the decision to adopt Veronica ourselves, and the others will be available for adoption with ACR. It will be sad to say goodbye to them, but they will make another family somewhere very happy.
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