Friday 5th Oct 07
Hello. Columbine is in my lap in the fleecy pocket while I type this, snuffling and snotty nosed. Poor little piggie, she has a cold and doesn’t like it. In this she is not alone - I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys the runny nose etc etc. I just listened to her breathing and it was not terribly good, so she has been introduced to olbas oil as well. It’s already working, I can just hear tummy rumbles when I put her to my ear instead of forced wheezing now. (See tips for all about piggy colds)
Columbine has been trying to raise herself in the rankings this week, all part of being a teenage piggy I think. She’s been hustling Columbia (the old piggy) and rounding her up while making those low thrums . She’s also been mounting her, or rather trying to and then getting told off, but none of this behaviour has been shown to Carmina. Carmina is still mum, and therefore not to be messed with.
Tex is proving to be a bit of a handful, far too inquisitive and a born troublemaker. Just like any teenage boy then. On investigating the bag of rubbish from the piggies cage when I was cleaning it earlier, first he bit at the plastic, then, when I lifted it away from him, he put his paws up on it and scored three long rents in the side. Mucky hay etc everywhere….sigh… He’s also taken to rounding us up with low snuff snuff noises when we sit on the floor inside the run. You have to listen carefully, and make sure he doesn’t eat your hair/clothes, but he is amazingly cute as he goes round and round and round and round….
Igor, the dwarf hamster who features in the photos we do of hamster pockets because he’s so photogenic, is no longer able to climb up his tubes very well. He had ladders when he was little (he’s in a rotostak cage with plastic vertical tubes) but he got into the habit of killing them thoroughly, ‘bang bang’ endlessly, which was seriously irrritating. So we took them away and he learnt to climb. Well, I think he’s just plain getting too old to pull himself up now, he’s going thin at the ankles and wrists which is a giveaway of age in hamsters. So I’ve reorganised his cage all onto one level, all the food, water, bedding, wheel etc available downstairs. I think he approves, he seemed very pleased anyhow, nice happy busy busy sort of body language. I confess I don’t like the idea of Igor getting old but it happens to us all. We’ve kept a lot of mice over the years and loved them dearly because mice really do have distinctive little personalities. The trouble is, just as you get to know them properly, they die on you. My science club fell in love with one little mouse. Pandora, the mouse, used to adore going to see all of them on Thurs afternoons. They were trying to find out which food groups she would eat in preference so she was played with and then got treats to eat…mouse heaven! It was a terrible wrench telling them that she’d succumbed to a virus (she was getting on a bit by then).
Columbine is feeling a bit better, she’s woken up from a nice nap and is starting to demand attention and climb onto my arm, front feet weighing heavy for such a little girl. She probably needs the toilet, they don’t like to go in the pouches and you have to learn their signals really as they all have different ones. Children at school were easier, I can recognise a raised hand and twisted expression a mile off. Yup, there’s a weeble, bye for now!
Sarah