Our lovely Porkie died suddenly on Tuesday. She had been very slightly off her food for a couple of days, but not to the extent that I felt she needed to see the vet. I'd been to see her around midday and take her some melon, and when I went out in the afternoon to take her some vegetable scraps I couldn't find her. She had busted out of her side of the garden into the side I grow my veges, and I found her lying under the pea plants.
She used to sleep with her eyes open- it always scared the hell out of me, because she would look for all the world like she was dead. She died with her eyes open, looking like she was asleep.
We got Porkie on an impulse in August 2003. She was tiny, and incredibly cute. It took a while for us to think of a name for her, and eventually she was christened 'The Pork Beast' because of her eating habits. The name was inspired by the crazy website called Fat Chicks in Party Hats, and Porkie sure lived up to it. She was an eating machine. In fact, I wouldn't rule out her death being due to obesity-related causes.
She used to squeak whenever she heard the sound of a plastic bag rustling, thinking that plastic bags always contained food. She was less and less inclined to run around as she got older, preferring cuddles and sitting on my lap to watch tv. Still, 3 years is not old for a guinea pig, and I anticipated she would live to a ripe old age. Our fish, Big Red, also died on tuesday, but she was the same age as Porkie, and had been ill for a long time. Needless to say, Tuesday was a pretty shitty day, as far as life goes.
Whenever I prepared vegetables for dinner I would always cut off a little bit more than I needed to in order to share it with her. I would always keep an eye out for nice tomatoes at the supermarket because they were her favourite food. Personally, I hate supermarket tomatoes, but Porkie loved them and would look quite comical running around with an entire large tomato in her ridiculously tiny mouth.
Before we got Pork Beast I had always thought of guinea pigs as silly, flighty animals. I soon came to realise that my impression was based on my experiences with guinea pigs that had been bought as pets and essentially dumped in a cage in the backyard, having little interaction with their owners. Porkie was engaging, beautiful, bossy and always hungry.
I miss her like hell.
The only reason a photo this crappy is going on the web is because it's the only one I have of me with Porkie.
5 comments:
Aw Porkie looked cute!
RIP Porkie.
PS Awesome to have a GP that wasn't scared of you. For the most part they seem to hate people handling them. It looks like that wasn't the case with you lads at all!
*hug* He sounded like a beautiful pet. It sounds like life has been very shitty recently indeed!
Gam bears a striking resemblance to Lenny Henry, the British comedian, in that top photo.
Thanks guys :) Porkie was an awesome pet, we were very lucky to have her.
Anthony- I think someone else once commented on a passing resemblance Gam has to Lenny Henry... I forget whether Gam thought that was a good or a bad thing!
PS- would you believe she used to fit right through that green mesh with ease when she was a baby? No wonder it annoyed her later!
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