3 posts tagged “guinea pigs”

When we brought home our pair of guinea pigs from a fabulous rescue agency, we thought we had adopted a pair of brothers.  Sure, they had different coloring, but we thought they probably just had different fathers.  A month later, when we had them checked out by our local vet, we learned that there's no way that they could be brothers, as they're completely different breeds (Cinnamon is most likely a Teddy-Crested mix; Oreo is straight-up American).  The vet said not to worry, though; a bonded male pair could live together in harmony, and, since they were herd animals, they really needed each other.  If we saw that aggression was building between the two, though, we should consider neutering the animals, or we might even need to keep them together but in separate cages.

Now, we had seen little skirmishes in their shared cage, which is nearly eight square feet in size, but adding a second guinea pig house so that they didn't have to share seemed to ease the fighting for a while.  Back then, it wasn't fighting, even; usually, the younger guinea pig, Oreo, would growl a little, and the older one, Cinnamon, got the message to stay out of his way.

Oreo

Over the last couple of weeks, though, their fighting has escalated.  Oreo chases and bites Cinnamon mercilessly.   We thought that maybe they were just having a Brokeback moment, but no -- they were drawing blood, especially under each other's chins.  While we never saw Cinnamon bite Oreo, Oreo has some marks that indicate otherwise.  The time had come, we decided, to separate them, at least until we looked into neutering -- which I did, on the web, and, apparently, there's little likelihood that the operation will help, although I will follow up with the vet again.

Cinnamon

So, we now have one eight square foot cage and one five-and-a-half square foot cage sitting side by side on the living room floor.  Cinnamon seems to have chilled out entirely post-separation; Oreo cries for Cinnamon a lot and often climbs up his cage wall to see into his "brother's" cage.  We let them out onto the floor to play together, but the growling and gnashing of teeth starts pretty quickly.  The Guv shakes his head in near-disgust; he has tolerated our adoption of these pets and has even commented on how they're teaching Dash to be gentle, but now they're taking up more space than a pair of Mastiffs.  I committed to caring for these pets for the duration, and I will continue to do so, because we -- well, most of us -- have grown to care a lot about them.   But my mom's comment that they seem like as much work of a dog may be closer to true with two cages to clean... though I still don't have to get up in the wee hours to let them outside to pee, thank God!

This is getting ridiculous.  Oreo has been a bit lethargic, felt a bit swollen in the anterior to me, has a patch of fur missing under his chin, and is sporting a scab on the side of his little left front paw, so I called the local vet.  We decided to take both Cinnamon and Oreo in for a check-up since, to our knowledge, they'd never been examined by a vet.  Petunia was very excited that we scored an appointment on a day she has off from school.  So, off we went.

Upon thorough examination, the vet declared the sore on Oreo's foot to be a healing wound, but, because of discoloration on the skin around his wound, she felt that he might have a little bacteria in there, too.  He wasn't running a fever (and, might I add, now I know how to take a guinea pig's temperature... just imagine...).  But, since he's not himself, he's on antibiotics for a week.  I can use a "pet pill plunger" to feed him the pill or can dissolve it in a syringe and give it to him that way.  He sucked it down, perhaps because it was beef-flavored.  Until today, Oreo was a vegetarian.

In any event, we learned a lot about our furry companions today.  It costs $35 per pet for an annual check-up, which includes trimming their nails, which I will have to do every month or so.  I learned how to clean their ears (a weekly task) as well.  Oreo's missing fur is probably due to rubbing on his wood house; it was good to hear that Cinnamon hadn't taken a chunk out of him.  Much to Petunia's giggling surprise, Oreo (the baby of the two) weighs more than Cinnamon and has bigger "equipment" -- which means that Oreo will be bigger than his big brother.   So, what I thought was swelling in his nether-regions was just, ahem, nuts.

Introducing: The Brothers Pookerton, Cinnamon and Oreo:

Guinea pigs