Hello, I’m Pippin, and I’m a guinea pig. Today I’m going to discuss Cancer and Cystitis, neither of which are much fun. Why arent we doing more fun things with our A2Z Challenge? Oh, they come later.

We’re helping out our Mummy, Jemima Pett, who is doing the A2Z this year by putting together all the posts we’ve done here on George’s Guinea Pig World, to make a book on Guinea Pig Care from A to Z. You can see her posts here: jemimapett.com/blog/. We’re filling in the gaps this month.

Cancer in Guinea Pigs

The good news is, cancer is not that common in guinea pigs. The bad news is that it has no cure, unless you can cut it out (if it is a certain type of lump). And like with people, it can turn up anywhere, and usually gets noticed by a lump. Mummy’s asked me to do Lumps under L.

So, of the guinea pigs I’ve known, Victor and Ludo both had cancer of the lumpy sort. Victor and Locksley may have developed lung cancer, but we never knew, and our lovely vet treated them for their symptoms. Victor had a lump that got diagnosed as a sort of tumour (which is what the cancer forms in the shape of a lump) that he couldn’t have, because ‘guinea pigs don’t get that sort of tumour’. Well, they do now. Trust Victor to have a condition unknown to veterinary science!

Victor had a skin cancer, which started with a funny mark like a thread, or the map of a river, running on the bare skin behind his ear. Mummy didn’t think anything more about it until it started to get beads along it, which turned into lumps. ‘Like a sort of earth mushroom’ she said. She never got a really good picture of it, because Victor did not like having his photo taken. The only thing to do with these cancerous lumps is to operate and remove as much of the lumps as you can. Which Dr Rebekah did, but it came back. And Victor started to have breathing problems, and Mummy wondered if he might have developed lung cancer too. But nobody was going to put him through any more painful things, so he had painkillers, and lots of love until he died. I still miss him. He used to get very grumpy with me, and we fell out, but I think he had lots of painful things even when I first met him.

Sarcomas

The other type of cancer that we know about is a lump type called a sarcoma. Percy, Ludo and Roscoe all had sarcomas. It forms a hard lump under the skin and it is usually relatively easy for the vet to take it out completely. Roscoe’s went splendidly. Ludo’s went okay, but he was ill with other things, and Mummy thought she wouldn’t put him through the operation, since he might die, when it was a relatively benign lump. Then it grew, and started bleeding, so he had the operation to remove it. And although he recovered from the operation, he was getting old, and decided he’d had enough. He died last summer. But it wasn’t from the cancer.

Percy had a sarcoma in his jaw. His couldn’t be cut out, although the vet shaved his neck and scanned him to diagnose it (top picture). Mummy even took him from Norfolk to another specialist vet in Northampton to make absolutely sure, because she thought it might be best to put him to sleep forever. And after that trip (which confirmed our then vet’s view), he seemed so well she decided he should stay with her and have a nice spring and summer, and he passed on to the Rainbow Bridge nearly six months later.

So the thing about cancer is you can’t do much about it, but take your piggy to a proper guinea pig vet for the best advice and treatment, and love him or her to bits.

Cystitis

Cystitis is a burning pain when you wee. Humans get it too. It’s usually an infection, which may mean antibiotics. But it can be inflammation due to bladder stones, or sludge when they haven’t got to the stone size. You might suspect your pig has cystitis if they squeak when they pee.

Our vet read about a new treatment for bladder problems using a dilute solution of Potassium Citrate. It’s used by humans as well. You can get it at the chemist (don’t say it’s for a guinea pig, say it’s for yourself, or a friend, or some human, anyway.) Get the pure stuff in a brown bottle, not a chewable tablet or anything like that. Then it needs a dilute solution of 0.05 mls in water, twice a day, and it helps keep your bladder clear of stones, cystitis and everything else. It’s magic.

And it tastes okay. A bit citrussy. I have it twice a day, and Ludo had it twice a day and he said it was wonderful. Mummy draws 0.05 into a small syringe, then draws up 0.5 of water, and we drink it from the syringe. Easy!

So that’s our letter C for the day. I hope you learned a lot. If you have an animal that you have concerns about, take it to a vet, or to one of the pet charities that does medical examinations. There might be a simple solution, or it might not be a problem at all!

See you tomorrow

Pippin xxx