I’m pleased to tell you I’ve been a very good boy this week, and Mummy’s very happy with me.
Roscoe, on the other hand, is in the doghouse. I wonder why they call it a doghouse? He’s moved into Biggles cage and Biggles has moved in with Neville again.
Mummy got fed up with the way Roscoe kept on at Neville. Then she saw a video from Auntie Sophie with some boars she was match-making with, and showed them starting to face up to each other, so she separated them. Well, Neville and Roscoe have been doing that for weeks. So the next time they started, Mummy decided it was time to separate them.
She did this last summer, if you remember. After about four weeks Roscoe and Neville spent most of their time lying together with the cage panel separating them, so she decided they’d made up.
This time, Roscoe has been lying next to the fence panel, but Neville has kept well away. Then when Neville was by the fence panel, Roscoe went to the other end of his cage and nonchalantly ate some pellets. Apparently, because their fence panel is underneath my cage, so I have to guess what’s going on, although Biggles will tell me if I ask him politely enough.
So that’s where we are at the moment. And Mummy took a picture of the big hole in the wall they made last week.
Apparently it’s been filled in with glass doors, so it doesn’t get cold and wet indoors. Looks like there’s some nice grass there to be explored, doesn’t it?
More news next week. Hope you have a nice week with not too many holes in your walls.
Mam seemed excited when she came back from travelling last week. She was only away two nights so we stayed here, with lots and lots of hay and nibbles. The second day I found a carrot cunningly hidden right at the bottom of our hay pile. It was still fresh, too! It didn’t last long, mind.
It’s very peaceful when Mam’s away. I can laze about on the bed, or ont he other pile of hay, or curl up in the tunnel, or in the dark corer in the run. Sometimes I curl up by a food bowl, all the better to just reach out and nibble a bit when I get the night pangs. Neville’s generally very civilised about giving up these places when I want to use them.
Mam said that this week will be when the worst of the banging will be in our new house. They are making a hole in the wall so we can have glass doors put in, like we have in the kitchen extension now.
There will be some more banging on the roof some time, and smells when they put the new tiles down with a sticky compound, or so she expects. But if they aren’t doing either of those we’ll be able to go down with her. She’s not taking us down this week because of the banging, and because it shouldn’t take more than a day. If she’s going to have to be away another night, she’ll ask one of our Aunties to nip in and give us more hay and food. I wonder who it’ll be?
She says that once the floor is finished we should be able to move in down there. She’s already taken our big cages down, not the holiday cages but the ones we lived in downstairs.
It’ll all depend on how much packing up she’s got to do here. But basically we’ll switch from being mostly here except when we go there for four or more days, to being mostly there unless Mam needs to be back here for four or more days.
I’m glad Mam’s counting these things in threes and fours. Those are easy numbers for guinea pigs to count. Seven works well too. Any other number gets complicated.
I wonder how big the hole in the wall will be and whether we’ll be allowed to go through it?
Hello, everyone, Bertie here. I hope you all survived the first few days of the new year okay.
We started on some yummy new hay that Auntie Doris and Uncle Bob brought when they visited. We don’t understand why we haven’t had it before, because it comes from Norfolk Pastures, who do our normal hay. Mummy doesn’t know either. She says our Corn Store doesn’t stock it, and she’ll ask Mr Ken why.
Typical, isn’t it, to find a yummy new local product just when we’re about to leave.
We don’t know when that will happen. Mummy is going to visit without us in the next two weeks, just for two nights each time. She says she’s going to take our big cages down in the car with her so that we can live in those when the time comes for everything to be packed up. She’s also taking the Christmas decorations, which she packed away last night. She said she might as well put them in the cupboard in the new house as put them in the cupboard here. Doesn’t that apply to everything, Mummy?
I did like the Christmas tree. It was very pretty, with twinkly lights, and pictures of all us George’s Guinea Pig World piggies hanging from the branches. There were also gold and red balls, sparkly birds, a llama made out of reed, a metal reindeer, a wooden map of Iceland, several pretty bells, and some tinsel which is all glittery like snow.
But it’s gone now (sigh).
I don’t know what we’re going to do for the rest of January. Nothing much, I think. Just eat our hay and pellets and dream of grass in the sunshine somewhere, sometime.
It’s been a very confusing week. Mummy asked why we hadn’t posted on Monday. I said, ‘when is Monday?’ I’m Roscoe, of course.
So Bertie said ‘we’re doing a post on Wednesday’.
That’s today – New Year’s Day! The start of 2020. And by my reckoning, not the start of a new decade, ‘cos that can’t happen until the end of 2020. Ten is the end of a decade, not the start of one. Eleven is the start of a new decade. Apparently silly humans are arguing about it because 20 starts with 2.
Bertie suggested we have new year’s resolutions.
Bertie: I will eat all my pellets up by morning. (No change there then)
Biggles: I will get more exercise. (That would be good for you, Biggles, and I encourage you in that.)
Neville: Is still thinking about it. Not that he’s slow, he just wants to make it something worth doing.
Me: I will try not to push Neville around so much, but that rather depends on whether Bertie gets me all riled up during floor time.
Roscoe and Neville get fresh grass
I expect you want to know what we got for Christmas. Nev and I got a new grassy tunnel, which is lovely and chewy. There’s also a bundle of grassy sticks, which we havent tried yet.
Biggles got a grassy box which he’s enjoying a lot. He makes the same noise chewing it as we do with our grassy tunnel.
Bertie got a grassy bundle of sticks. He doesn’t think much of it.
I asked the others whether we should get Mam to make some new year resolutions. Nev said we should suggest some for her, so here goes.
Mam should spend more time running around the house and less time at the computer. (me)
Mummy should eat more lettuce and cucumber instead of giving it all to us. (Bertie)
Mummy should spend more time cuddling me. (Biggles)
Mam should do all the things she needs to do to move house without worrying about us. (Neville)
I suppose Nev’s got it right there. We know Mam will think of us but she shouldn’t worry about us. We’ll just go along with whatever 2020 brings.
I hope you have a nice year, and manage to cope with whatever happens.
We send our thoughts to Auntie Tori, who is missing Joshua the degu today.
Joshua was one of our best friends, and we interviewed him here earlier this year. This picture is of Joshua on his sixth birthday, so we reckon he was nearly seven when he went over the Rainbow Bridge on Monday evening.
Run free, Joshua. The best degu friend anyone could have. We’ll miss you.
Hello, Bertie here! We’re both going to blog today because it’s an exciting story.
Aye, and it’s Christmas this week too.
Two more sleeps. Well, two for mummy, about fifteen for us.
Aye, I reckon you’ve got that right, Bertie.
But first – a report on our missing week. We were in Hampshire, but not the place we’ve been before.
Aye, you knew that, eh – but you didn’t know that Mam’s bought a new house, did you? Well, she has, and we stayed in it for about a week.
We had our holiday cages and runs on the floor in what Mummy calls the living room. It’s got fawn coloured carpet with brown flecks in it, and one day Mummy came in with mud on her shoes when she gave us some things she’d found in the garden—
Not much, she said there wasn’t much to eat in the garden, not even dandelions.
Biggles like the new grass
Neville and Roscoe tuck in
Bertie east fresh leaves
— yes, not much except grass, but she left mud on the carpet, and when she wooshed it up, she couldn’t see the marks in amongst the brown specks. She called it a magic carpet.
That’s not all she wooshed. The second afternoon she came back from Auntie Anne’s with a big blue bag. It all unfolded on the floor next to us, then she wooshed it for ages, and it turned into a big bed for her. She’d been sleeping on cushions before. And you know, I didn’t realise, but she sleeps in a red snugglesac. It’s a bit longer than ours, and she sort of backs into it with her feet first, instead of walking in and turning round—
I don’t think it was wide enough to turn around in.
— and she lies down and goes to sleep in it. For most of the night.
And a bit more. She hasn’t been waking up till it’s already light. Mind you it’s not very light in the mornings because it keeps raining.
And yesterday was the winter solstice, so the nights start getting a bit shorter again.
Have you said about our adventure with the tunnels yet?
No, I haven’t had time with you interrupting, like. Mam put our blue tunnel in the kitchen for our morning run. The kitchen is a good bit smaller than our one here (we’re back in Norfolk now) and the third day she put our tunnels so they led from the kitchen to the living room. Well, Bertie and I weren’t going to let a chance like that go by, were we?
No we weren’t.
So we went through the tunnels, making sure Mam meant for us to do it, and she was watching us and encouraging us, so we went right ahead.
We did. It was fun.
Roscoe explores
Bertie wonders where Roscoe went
Bertie leaves
Then we did the same the next day.
And you said we could the one after, but Mummy didn’t put the tunnels down, and you went anyway, and came back again to report.
It was grand. I reckon there’s a whole house to explore when we next go down there.
It’s a long way though.
Ach, it’s fine if you go to sleep.
I do. And I hide under my bed, too.
I hide under Neville’s coat.
Do you think we’re going back again?
Not before Christmas. And I think Mam said something about getting a small van for a sofabed and our big cages, just for a trip down and back the next day.
She left things there, you know. Including the cushions.
Yes, but I think the bed’s still there for her. Auntie Anne came with the mini-aunties to meet us, but she didn’t take it away with her.
She took the mini-aunties though. They were nice, I liked them.
Ah, right, they were okay. You can never really trust little hands until you get to know them, though, and sometimes even then.
You don’t like mini-aunties?
I liked them well enough. Nev and me have bad memories of mini-aunties. I’ll just wait a little to get to know them.
They really liked me. And Biggles too. He did his best impression of a teddy bear for them.
He does do that well.
And we saw Auntie Teresa again, and her man, Uncle Lee. Dani was too busy though.
I wonder if it’ll always be that busy when we go and live there.
Is that what’s going to happen?
Yes, Mummy said so. She wants to get our room sorted out first; there’ll be some banging when they change the window into a door and change the floor or something, I think that’s what she said.
It all sounds very complicated.
Well, you know Mam.
Yes, I know Mummy. I wonder when we’re going again?
