It’s Guinea Pig o’clock here at our house, the time when all little girls get a guinea pig.
Because our house wasn’t chaotic enough with two adults, two kids, a sometimes-home teenager, and three cats.
It’s like this: Rio has been asking for a pet for months. The cat we got for her a year and a half ago has settled in to life here, and remains skittish around children and affectionate with me. She’s really not a child’s pet; she’s made herself my cat no matter what the people in the house want. I love her to pieces, and so does Rio. But she wants a pet she can play with.
Like all children, Rio swears blind that she will care for this new pet in all ways every day. Like all wise parents, I do not believe her. So we’re at a standoff: I don’t want to be responsible for a caged pet, but I hear that she genuinely wants one.
While we’ve been having this debate, our close friends got guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are friendly and adorable, enjoy being handled and fed and played with. They seem to be good kid pets, and the ASPCA agrees, recommending them as first pets for even fairly young children.
The guinea pigs turned out to be a boy and a girl guinea pig, and now there are four baby guinea pigs. Well. You see where this is going.
Martin has graciously agreed to be the bottom line adult for the guinea pigs care. So we are adopting two of them. I’m going to pick up a cage from someone on Craigslist this evening. He’s selling it to me for a song because he thinks my name is cool. “How can I turn down someone named Sierra Black? What a great name. You sound like a movie star or a turn of the century South American explorer.”
I told him I *am* a turn of the century explorer, and that’s why I need a guinea pig cage.
We’ll presumably bring the little creatures home tomorrow or the next day.
I hope this is a wise choice and not a crazy one. Or, if it’s crazy, it’s the good kind of crazy. The kind that makes our lives a little richer, if adding to the list of chores.
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