Meet Oreo!

We just adopted a four-year old male guinea pig, Oreo, on Wednesday.  I have a young vegan activist friend (college student who helps care for my animals if we are gone) whose teen sister's friend needed to find an immediate home for Oreo. Her loser dad decided he didn't want the guinea pig in his house any more, and she had to get Oreo out immediately, as if he were a piece of trash or ugly furniture. He spent all day Wednesday in his hidey (igloo), poor little guy. I kept giving him fresh greens from our garden. He loved them and would eat them and sniff my hands. By Thursday, he was out of his hidey, moving things around in his environment and being quite friendly with me. He's already learned to look for goodies when he sees me. He will have to interact with the two girl piggies through a divider. He's not neutered (the girls can't be spayed--too dangerous), and at four, he's too old to safely go through surgery. We don't want 6-8 babies, so they will have to visit through the bars.

This afternoon, L had the Flower and Trixie out with Tica.  Tica is extremely non-predatorial and really enjoys interacting with the rats and guinea pigs, so we allow the more outgoing little ones to have supervised time with her. Tica is only five pounds (she's 7 yrs old) and handicapped, so we think she enjoys the little ones, because they are completely non-threatening to her. Trixie and Flower like to climb on her, groom her, sniff her butt (and that's when Tica leaves the party), and generally amuse themselves on her.  Tica likes to try to catch their tails with her front paw. Even though she has claws, she doesn't use them when playing with them. She's very gentle.