Stories About Pets

Spoiler: gracie turning her head

Spoiler: I caught gracie sleeping

Spoiler: Jesse laying in the sun

 

I have three female guinea pigs (I call them cuycitas gorditas or The Triple Sow). The two older ones I got at a pet store at the same time. My 3rd baby pig (and forum icon) I adopted from a pet store. She is a furry potato, and she is my beautiful stupid fat baby and I love her. Pure white rodents with red eyes often have terrible fates (snake food, etc) since uniformed people think they are sick or cursed.

Meet my pretty pink-eyed-white pig-pet, Bianca Cuycita.

Spoiler: Guinea Piglet adoption Story

My sour creme sow is perfect in every way.


I wrote the following on the day I adopted her: (its from tumblr so I don't know if the links still work)

Today, i brought home sweet little Snow White sow, Bianca Cuycita. (May-7-2014). My friends capn-canuck and ginnypants found her for me, and capn-canuck fostered her for me until I could bring her to my house.

She’s a great guinea pig, but she has a sad story behind her.

Bianca spent most of her life, almost 4 or 5 months, in a tiny glass display tank at a pet store. The tank is okay for most the time because the tiny, freshly weaned baby guinea pigs that arrive at the store are young and small and cute, and get taken home by people within a week or two of arriving at the store. They aren’t supposed to spend much time there.

Bianca was unwanted because she has glorious ruby colored eyes and pure white fur. Most silly humans thought she was sick or ugly for having red eyes. She is as soft as cloud with a dainty mouth and paws. She is sweet as a vanilla milkshake, and will give gentle cavy kisses to anyone that held her in their hands.

She sat in the glass display tank for almost five months. She grew healthy and strong as all guinea pigs should, but her cage was small and only designed to hold tiny piglets for a short while. She was miserable, watching all the baby cavies leave soon after they arrived.

She would sit still, gentle and quiet, while tiny babies popcorned all around her. She wondered what was wrong with her…why all the friends she ever met left so quickly, and why she was left behind.

One day, my friends saw this large, healthy sow with bright eyes sitting in the tank. They were drawn to her soulful eyes right away. The red-eyed cavy was so happy to be picked up and cuddled she gave them tiny kisses, licking their hands.

My friends sent me a picture of her sitting in the pet store cage, looking both beautiful and healthy. However, there was a bit of sadness behind her eyes.Her story tugged on my heart-strings.

I drove up to buy the adolescent guinea pig about three weeks ago. The second I held her dainty body in my hands and stroked her soft fur, she started giving me little guinea pig kisses, licking and grooming my hand. She is so affectionate, and also, stunningly adorable. She seems calm and gentle, and I think she would love to play with my other two sows at home.

The pet store workers were so happy that the white guinea pig with red eyes had a forever home to go to. They were so worried no one would ever want her, and they felt bad about how long she’d been there. They thanked me for buying her and gave me a discount because they were so happy I took her to a good home.

My husband also got emotional as soon as he saw her picture and heard her story. He picked the name “Bianca” for her. It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.

Welcome to your forever home, and your new loving family, Bianca.

(I'll write a story for the other two girl-pigs later.)

 

A story from yesterday:

When I accidentally poured water all over my desk, my partner, J, got out a bunch of towels to mop things up. We didn't end up using one bath towel, so it sat on folded up on the coffee table because lol what are spoons for putting stuff away. This eventually led to Gordon cat, who loves to burrow under blankets, trying to burrow under the towel. I folded it around him and he was happy as anything.

This meant from then on it was His Towel, and because it is His Towel, and it is on the coffee table and thus near to where both humans hang out, it is desirable. There have been territorial battles between Gordon cat and James cat over the towel that sometimes end in a truce of both of them lying half on and half off the towel and looking very annoyed. It's kind of hilarious.

Anyhow, yesterday was laundry day, and J decided that the towel needed to be washed. Gordon was half-lounging on it when J tugged it out from under him and put it in the bin and oh ,the look of shock and betrayal on Gordon's wee face. His Towel! What a horrible, capricious, cruel thing to do, taking his Towel away, and when he was lying on it!

He managed to get over it when the towel was returned, fresh and clean and folded up into a nice rectangle for him to lie on again.

 

The Cupcake Cleanup Crew
(Phoebe "Fatty McFatfat" Louise on the left, Zee "Fuckface" Adelbertskreiger on the right)

 

Spoiler: update to my last post

a woman in my county was recently caught doing p much the same thing as happened to Thor, so we're all relatively sure it was the same person. justice finally served, I guess.

and so this isn't just a self-serving update, a list of the other cats in the house:

Artemis: queen bitch cat, not to be picked up, will only be petted with feet
Goliath: possibly part maine coon, D found him when he almost ran him over as a kitten, lazy floof-sack
T.C.: short for Thundercracker bc my roommates are nerds, missed her calling as a kitty cirque du soleil artist (Her sister Starscream was rehomed after deciding Kiddo was her personal Megatron.)
Rinzler: black cat adopted solely for his temperament with Kiddo, has a weird obsession with the bathroom

Of all the cats, Rinzler is the absolute most patient with Kiddo. She's two and a half and thinks kitties are for chasing, but I think they mostly see her as a dumb kitten who learns really slowly. None of them have scratched her with the intent to harm yet, just that "what the hell is wrong with you" paw-bop or a light scratch if she doesn't back off. (The usual response to this is "well maybe you won't chase after them next time". This has yet to be the case.) Rinzler has only done this once, usually just letting her lay on him/poke his toepads/play with his tail as she pleases.

 

Jesse stands on the couch and kneads the throw along the back of it and purrs like crazy. He wants me to pet him while he does it though, so it took me a while to get a pic.

Spoiler: this blanket is my mommy

Sometimes he sits on my lap for extended periods, but usually he only does it briefly when I'm not paying enough attention to him. He will often stand on my lap while I'm trying to upload something from my phone, kneading my legs and alternately licking my phone hand while I'm trying to type and rubbing his jaw against my phone.

Most of the time he squishes up next to me on the couch instead of sitting on my lap. It's just as well, I can't use the computer if he's on my lap, and his claws are sharp.

Spoiler: squish

 

Long Dog had her first shed (in my care) a couple days ago. Finally got a break between shoving mice into her ravenous face to get pictures. Her colors are really starting to show up. She's a cinnamon pinstripe out of Reptile Collective's 2014 hatch.

Spoiler: snek

ETA: Fat Dog is doing her thing where she scratches the top and sides of her head by mashing them against the floor and walking. While making happy grunting noises. Weirdo.

 

Maddie-dog keeps picking up fleas, so now whenever my brother gives her a good rub/scratch she gets so into it you can hear her leg thumping repeatedly against the floor all through the house, with bonus nail-scratchy sounds if they're on a hard floor instead of carpet.

Meanwhile, Saffy-cat has become even more of an indoors cat than usual, because we've got foxes again.

 

Ahhh what an adorable puppy! I just want to scratch his head.

 

He's so small and pudgy, congrats to you and your stepdad!

 

I had to have a few rather stern discussions with Primrose today about being Gentle With Your Human. She has suddenly gotten quite bitey. The discussions consisted of making rude, sudden noises and firmly pushing her away if she got obnoxious with my ankles. OTOH, approaching me gently earned her pettings and soft cooings. It was amazing to watch her trying to take the challenge on board. She has now not only checked herself a few times when she began to bite my ankle, but I saw her check herself over chasing and biting her own tail. She is also puzzled as to whether not biting my ankles as we go up the stairs also means she cannot run boisterously. She is a smart girl. She will figure this out.

 

Foggy has to go to the vet tomorrow for surgery. He's old enough to be neutered now so we're getting it taken care of as soon as possible so he doesn't form bad habits and be a miserable kitty.

 

Spoiler: Snek Feeding

My BP is such a goober. She's absolutely voracious, for one thing. So much for THAT stereotype. The hilarity comes from her eating process.
1) She eats frozen/thawed so she's laaaazy. If I hold the mousicle in tongs and wiggle it, she'll strike and constrict... Sorta. She'll use maybe 1/4 of her body to make a single coil with an air of "Eh, that should do it." If I just drop the mousicle in her eatin' bucket and leave her she won't even do that, she just sidles up to it an chows down. Unfortunately with this method she tends to start butt first, which has other complications.
2) She periscopes to swallow. She'll raise the front third of her body up to make gravity help her swallow, she's that lazy.

3) This last mouse made her visibly fatter, which hasn't happened since I got her and probably means I need to upgrade her to rats. Anyone want 15-20 large frozen mice?

I can get pictures if anyone is interested, but, y'know, dead mouse. She makes some pretty funny faces while eating.

 

@Aviari What does visibly fatter mean in this context, and why does it mean you have to upgrade her to rats?

 

"Visibly fatter": Normally I can't see a visible bump in her body once the mouse gets past her "neck" portion. Not like, cartoon-sized bump, just a slightly thicker section. The front third of her body is very slender, but thickens when you get to parts with more organs before tapering off to her stubby tail. Generally you want to feed prey that is as thick or slightly thicker than the fattest part of their body every 7-10days. As they grow, you feed bigger prey.

"Upgrade": The food scale goes from tiny pinkie mice/juveniles/adults to juvenile/adult/specially bred super-sized rats up to rabbits (some people feed young goats if they have monster-sized species).

When I got her, she was on "large mice". I had a "young rat"-sized mouse in this batch that I was holding off on because I was afraid it would be too big for her to swallow, but she wolfed it down today with no problems.

Also I'm offering food every 5-7days and she's never refused prey, so either the mice aren't enough to satisfy her or she's just a chow-hound. If so, I'm torn because on one hand I want her to grow big and healthy but snakes can get unhealthily overweight too.

 

I think I get it now: so the mouse was a particularly large mouse and it made her have this bump, so you've realised you've been feeding her mice that were too small? Which means you have to get bigger food? Am I understanding this correctly? (I appear to have some trouble understanding language tonight :P)

 

@Emma That's exactly it :D

Also Big Dog just sat down next to my purse, nosing it and whimpering.
My keys are in my purse.
His laser pointer is on my keys.

HE KNOWS.

 

Yesterday Theo went out into the horse pasture! He's only done that once before, because he's scared of the horses (which makes sense, considering he is a smol cat and they are very large and have stampy feet), but I hope he's getting more comfortable. Anyways, while he was out there, he started sniffing around the water trough. I turned away to take care of a thing, and when I turned back he had all four feet on the lip of the trough (which is like an inch wide) and was leaning down to lap water out. I am so sad that I didn't have my phone on me, it was adorable. And then he must've gotten worried by the horses, because he then hopped down - into the trough, so that all his feet were on the lower lip, a few inches above the water. I was just waiting for him to accidentally slip and get a bath, but luckily for his dry fur I rescued him when he started mewing sadly.