Sweet! A new pair of shoes!

Hi!

A few days back my sister went to the thrift store and found some beautiful shoes. They were a bit too big for her so she asked me if I wanted them. She took them with her (after all, who would leave shoes that cost only three euros all alone in a shop?) and I tried them on. They are also slightly too big for me, but I can at least walk in them.

It was a bit rainy this morning, but during a short sunny period of time I was able to make some pictures with my sister Mayke. She was kind enough to help me out by making pictures of me. 

Meet Mellow, the sweet yet slightly slow pony who lives in a nice meadow behind our house. 

Miep also wants to know what's going on

Moomin and Sopje are very curious creatures! 

девушка (Little Girl in Russian) (My sister likes everything Russian) and Alice are a bit shy and stay in the background

Hi Floortje!

I hope you have a great day and that your weather wherever you are is better than it is here in The Netherlands!

Love,
Mia

Guinea pigs: a history - Part 2

Now then.
She was little more than two months in our home. (Just calculate with me, that’s about eight/ nine weeks, which is about 60 – 65 days) (ring any bells?). Well, just another hint then: she must have had sisters and brothers and as is to be read above she must have stayed with them for at least four weeks. And at four weeks she technically can get pregnant.
   So now back to the day that she was about two months with us. My mum called us to come and look outside. We followed her. And what we saw were four guinea pigs and a rabbit. Four. Instead of two guinea pigs, we saw four.
   Moomin had become a mommy.

This is the Little Boy

And this the Little Girl

So Macho

   We were over the moon that the babies were alright! They could’ve been mutilated or dead because the father must’ve been one of the brothers of the mother (complicated, eh, the mother is Moomin in this phrase). The babies were very healthy and soon became rather fat. One of them was a little girl and the other a baby boy. They were beautiful.
Of course they, too, had to stay with their mommy for at least four weeks to be nursed and fed by her. Then, Little Boy became a Little Man a little too early.
    We made sure that he left the house as soon as possible, but we fear it might have been too late.

   Now, a few weeks after we “got rid of” the boy (we gave him to the local pet shop, as a thank you for giving us three guinea pigs while we paid for just one) Little Girl (still nameless I’m afraid) is VERY fat. And I mean VERY. We are very scared of the consequences, we were lucky that the two little ones had survived the randomness of genes, but now.. Two generations of inbreeding can’t be good, can it?

Love,
Mia; hoping everything will be fine..

Guinea pigs: a history - And a major problem

Before I start with the problem, I should tell the history of our pets.

It started on a Thursday in April. I was at home (I can’t remember why because it was a normal school day) when my mum said: “let’s buy a rabbit for each of you!” she meant me and my sister. So we went to the local pet shop to collect two rabbits. First we saw a beautiful white rabbit marked with dark grey ears, feet, tail and nose. She had beautiful red eyes (which only I seemed to find beautiful, some kids were adoring other rabbits with black eyes and one said “MUM THIS ONE HAS RED EYES! IS SHE EVIL?” only she said this in Dutch because little children in the Netherlands generally don’t speak English to their parents).
   I loved the rabbit. She just hopped around in her little glass cage and I wanted to rescue her of this loveless life in a shop. So we bought her.

   Then we went to another shop (the rabbits in the first pet shop were already bought but not yet collected by their new owners) to find a rabbit for my sister. Instead we found the most amazing guinea pig I ever saw in my life. It was the smallest thing that could fit in a child’s hand. Not that we put her in a child’s hand, but considering we did, it would have fit. So we bought her too. The shop assistant assured us that guinea pigs and rabbits would easily live together. The only problem is, she said, that guinea pigs want to communicate with each other with their cute sounds and rabbits don’t make sounds. They communicate with body language.
   We came home and put the pets together in their little home and watched them getting to know each other. It was quite interesting so we watched them a lot.

(I love this picture so much!)

   I named the rabbit ‘Alice’ and my sister named her punk guinea pig ‘Sopje’.
   When we had them for a while, my sister decided that Sopje needed a companion to talk to. So she bought Peetje. That little thing looked just like a lion with her curly golden hair.

   The tragedy of Peetje’s death was already published on my blog, but I’ll briefly repeat it.
   The door of their home didn’t close properly, Peetje fell out in the big, dark unknown and was captured by a great scary dog (a jack Russell called Jackie) and dies.
   So it’s just Alice and Sopje again.
   My sister feels sorry for Sopje again and buys another guinea pig.
   Bla, bla, bla.

   No just joking, this is the interesting part.

   This little piggy is called Moomin (you know, the moomins?). She’s adorable! We got her when she was about eight weeks old.

Wait, I should give you some information on guinea pigs:

* GP’s are about twenty-eight centimeters long
* GP’s look extremely cute (as seen on the pictures of ours)
* GP’s are active by day, not by night as you would’ve expected
* GP’s are pregnant for about 63-72 days, and can get pregnant when they’re just four weeks old
* GP’s give birth to one to six babies, but some nests include even twelve little readymade guinea pigs
* Little GP’s must stay with their parents for at least four weeks

TO BE CONTINUED

Love,
Mia (and the main characters in this story: Alice, Sopje and Moomin plus babies (and Peetje, may she rest in peace))