A Guinea Pig's 12 Pleas For Owners
- Please save me. There are guinea pig shelters and rescues. Find me in one of them. Do not buy me from a pet store or a breeder. (Note: Many shelters and rescues also have baby/young guinea pigs!)
- Please do not keep me alone. I can and will feel lonely. I need a companion. Think of me. You want me, you must follow my needs.
- Please bring me in your home. The outdoors is no place for a creature as small and vulnerable as I am. Keep me warm in the winters and cool in the summers. Keep me in a room where you and your family are most often in so you can see and remember me. Keep me in a room where I can know you are there, and be reassured.
- Please provide me with a spacious cage. Keep me in a cage roomy enough for me to run and popcorn and rumblestrut in as much as I desire. In a small cage you will be bored with me because I cannot move. I cannot be happy in an inadequate space and will not get the exercise I require.
- Please know what I need to eat. Feed me hay that is green and fragrant and soft. I need it to wear my teeth down and to aid my digestion. I need plenty of vegetables that are green and leafy and high in Vitamin C, which I, like you, cannot produce for myself. The pellets you feed me need to be plain and high quality. Make sure the water in my bottle is clean and change out my water bottle every morning so when I take a drink, the water will be cool and fresh.
- Please do not leave me in my cage all day long or I will become bored. Take me out to play and explore and run around. Make sure the room you choose for me is secure from electrical wires and holes where I can disappear in. Make sure the room I play in is safe from your dogs and cats and any other pets you may have.
- Please do not give me an exercise wheel or a roll-around ball. These toys can hurt my back and my feet. I am content with paper bags and folded- over newspaper. I enjoy towel tents. I like tunnels and hidey houses where I can get away from things that frighten me.
- Please groom me. My nails need to be clipped and my fur, when dirty, needs to be shampooed with a product designed to clean my fur safely. If I have long hair, you need to trim and brush me to keep me clean.
- Please do not leave my care to a child. I cannot be taken care of by a child. I am not a play thing. I am not a toy you take home on a child's whim. I am not a gift or a reward. It is your responsibility to take care of me, to feed me, to clean my cage. Let your child hold me on his or her lap and pet me under supervision only. I have fragile bones and teeth that easily break. Though I am small, I need strong hands to hold me.
- Please love me. Be patient with me. I am a fearful prey animal. With time and love, I will gradually open up, and once I do, there is no looking back. All I require are gentleness and patience.
I am not like a dog in which I show my affection freely and obviously. I show you my recognition and gratitude in ways so small and subtle that you may miss them if you don't look closely.
- Please know me and my ways. Like any other living, breathing being, I can get ill. But unlike predators, I hide my illness and weakness in order to survive. It is your responsibility to keep track of my weight and to notice when I am cold and when I am overheated. Know my body and the feel of my fur. Know my eyes' brightness and my ears' sensitivity. Notice when my health is failing me. For my sake, know me.
- Please make my aging years as comfortable as possible. Though I am old, a health problem does not mean it is the end for me. Take me to a vet, just as you would if I were a couple years younger. The age I am is no excuse to miss a trip to the vet. Perhaps five to seven years is just a blink to you but it is my whole lifetime. I am grateful for all the years you cared enough to want the best for me.
(Pooka and Pixie)
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"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."
- Anatole France
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated... I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man."
-Mahatma Gandhi
The Homeless Animal's Prayer:
I ask for the privilege of not being born... not to be born until you can assure me of a home and a master to protect me, and the right to live as long as I am physically able to enjoy life... not to be born until my body is precious and men have ceased to exploit it because it is cheap and plentiful.
I ask for the privilege of not being born... not to be born until you can assure me of a home and a master to protect me, and the right to live as long as I am physically able to enjoy life... not to be born until my body is precious and men have ceased to exploit it because it is cheap and plentiful.
- Unknown author
"Only animals were not expelled from Paradise."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
"The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, 'Can they suffer?'"
- Jeremy Bentham
"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."
- Henry Beston