The Piggies

I am growing to regret giving my Littles guinea pigs for Christmas. Yes, they love them, and yes, they are cute and their "weats" are adorable and they're fairly friendly. But y'all, they stink. They make so much waste and have such a strong smell... they can only go about 3 days before the entirety of upstairs starts smelling like rodent.

Now I did do my research and reading before I adopted these guys, and I am aware of the fact that the males have a stronger smell than the females. However I'm not talking about animal smell. I'm talking about how gross they get, and how fast it happens. (Also, in my defense, I couldn't find any female guinea pigs for sale when I wanted to make my secret purchase, so I went with the boys en lieu of forgoing the gift idea completely.)

My original plan was to have the kids care for these guys 100%- all the feeding, all the grooming, and all the cleanup. Unfortunately like so many other things that is not how it's turning out. Because we have the pigs stashed in the playroom (upstairs), it's a complicated process to clean out their cages in a timely manner without making the entire house a nasty mess in the process. My kids just haven't proven prudent enough to get this chore done without creating exponentially more mess spread everywhere. They do still help when it's cage-cleaning time of course, but I can't remove myself from the process completely, and so this has become my chore as well.

And then there's the issue of time. I hate it so hard, but it's our routine now- we're not home until after 5pm and sometimes 6pm four nights out of the week. On those nights we touch down, do dinner as efficiently as possible, do our homework check, rush to bath time and drying hair and brushing teeth and getting things ready for the following morning... and then it's basically bed time. There's just not a lot of time for them to hang with their creatures aside from poking a carrot stick in there in passing and talking to them when they walk through the room.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall that to say I've been floating the idea out to them here recently that maybe we should think about finding Charlie and Wilbur a home with a family that can give them more attention.

My suggestion has not been well-received.

Funny thing, though- every time I mention re-homing the piggies, this happens...

...and their interest lingers for a few days following the fear that my suggestion seems to bring.

So maybe at this point there's still hope? I dunno... all this cuteness doesn't make them smell any better, and I am getting kinda stuck on that.

It sure is cute, though.