the perfect piggie pair

Hey guinea pig friends — this is H — and I’m M!

Here we are in our “siamese piggie” pose. H is on the left and I (M) am on the right.

We’re happy to be back online after our human, Teresa, finished an intensive weeklong class in advanced levels of improv.  Our other human, Jesús, is now back from Peru to photograph our every move and document our glamorous life now, too.  This marks the beginning of a fabulous week — don’t you agree — M?  WheekWheek to that for sure, H!

Obviously, we’re just showing off how cute we are 🙂

Our plans include many things now we’re settling into our routine for the semester: to eat kale, to popcorn, to squeak and wheek.  And we can bask in how cute we are and how our humans can’t wait to see us when they come back from a long day at school.

Perhaps the best picture of our relationship — here we are showing “affection” for one another.

It is rather amusing that we’re now referred to as “squeaky babies” by our humans right in time for us to turn into adults by the end of the month.  They do have some of the strangest names for us, H, you’re right.  And how can they forget we’re on the cusp of a huge life event?  Yeah, M, calling us “babies” will only be accurate for a couple more weeks and then we’re full grown!  Whoa!  That’s intense!  Yeah, M, but just think about the party our humans will throw — we’ll have a carrot cake for sure!  YUM, H, yes, our humans do seem up for throwing a “Sweet piggie 18” party for us. Oh, yes, M, that party is such a big deal in the piggie world.  I’m glad we have our humans and I’m glad we have each other.  Awwww, H, you just made me squeak.

Time for kale!  Oh yes!  And we hope your humans all appreciate your wonderful squeaky qualities and celebrate your major life events in style.

H&M

 

the cleaning human came by today

Hi guinea pig friends — this is H — and I’m M!

I remember we’ve talked about our new piggie pad (or cage for the human speakers) before, M.  True, H, we have and we mentioned how much we like our popcorn fleece and are confused by the little monsters one… Yeah, M, why would they get us the little monster fleece???  No clue… Anyway, today’s post is about when the cleaning human stops by. 

The cleaning lady (our human, Teresa), sure does seem to carry a lot of tools with her…

Her schedule is pretty predictable now — she comes every third day to revamp our piggie pad.  It’s wonderful when it’s done, but look at where she puts us while she’s working.  Yeah guinea pig friends, you’re seeing correctly: a clothes basket!  She lines it with some sort of strange fleece, too, H. I’ve heard her call it a diaper.  Wonder what that is?  She was telling Jesús about how absorbent it is and how she finds them in the adult incontinence aisle at the drug store.  So many words human have no meaning for piggies in that sentence, H, I honestly don’t know how you remembered that gobbledygook!  Practice, M.  It takes practice…

As you can see, M and I wind up in the clothes basket with some hay as our human does the dirty work.

Anyway, she’s concocted a piggie safe cleaning spray using essential oils and other ingredients.  It smells funky if you ask me, H!  From what she and Jesús have said it’s way safer than the store bought chemical kinds of cleaners.  What’s a chemical???  No clue…  Humans and their odd terms.  Why can’t they say things like: hay, wheek, treat, kale, carrot, apple slices, green pepper — words guinea pigs respond to??  It does make a piggie wonder…

Before the fleece gets put in there’s a layer of newspaper and towel in our food/potty area and the layers of towels everywhere else.

As our cleaning human goes about her tasks, she rolls up the soiled fleeces and towels, throws away the existing newspaper/diaper combo (between the sheets of newspaper is a segment of adult diaper), and then sprays down the red base surface with her cleaning solution.  How did you squeak all that in one breath, H???   I come from a long line of great squeakers of the piggie-verse — just trying to keep up the great squeak-dition. WheekWheek to that!

Our favorite part is when we get put back in with the fresh fleece and fresh hay is put in our hay ball! #wheek

Once the whole base has been sprayed and wiped down, our cleaning lady reassembles the towel layer and creates a new newspaper/diaper section for the food area of our piggie pad.  She sort of takes a long time to do all this…  So we normally eat all the hay by the time she finishes.  But it’s fine though because when she puts us back in the piggie pad she refills our hay ball!!!!  WheekWheek!!! We love our hay ball!!!

We hope your cleaning humans give you lots of treats!  And we definitely hope they fill your hay ball once they put you back in your piggie pad!

Peace, hay and squeaks to you all!

H&M

little miss smarty piggies

Hey everyone — I’m H — and I’m M!

H is really excited about reading — she wants to eat the page. M has buried her head in the fleece and fallen asleep.

Today we wanted to talk about one of our hobbies: reading.  Well, H, if the picture here isn’t enough to give it away, I’m thinking reading is one of your hobbies — not mine!  Oh, well, I think of “reading” in a loose sense of the word — I’m just trying to eat the pages of the book really…  WheekWheek, that’s what it seems like in the picture of us, yes.  Well, M, I am trying to give our human, Teresa, some moral support as she plows through all the plays by Molière, Racine and Corneille for one of her summer reading lists.  That’s nice H, I think I’ll stick to napping when the books come out…

H is reading a play by Molière — L’école des femmes — from the looks of it.

While M is napping, I try to do my piggie best to read along with our human.  When that fails — I eat the pages to distract her from her reading list.  I‘m so proud of us because we are the best guinea pig pals for her!  H, you’re distracting her by attacking the object she’s looking at and I’m distracting her by being a further distraction by how adorable I am while I sleep.  She can’t resist us — three Wheeks to us!

H also likes to help our human, Teresa, on the computer with her typing.

And finally, I wanted to say that when Teresa uses her computer I like to help, too.  Although the last time you “helped” you wound up crawling up her shirt to her shoulder where you proceeded to try to eat her hair.  Shameless diversion tactic, I know, M, but I had to distract her from her prospectus somehow!  Oh I’m pretty sure the chunk of hair that fell on her keyboard distracted her quite a bit…  Yes, she put me back in the piggie pad really quickly after that, true… Ah well, a piggie’s work is never done!  I’m off to the pigloo, H, care to join?  Yes!

À bientôt dear readers — this is H signing off.  Harumph, just because she can read the French books, doesn’t mean she has to show — what are you going on about, M??  Nothing — time for hay!  Oh, yum!

H&M 

we went to D.C. and now we’re in NC!

Hi fellow guinea pig friends!  This is H here — and M, too!

H (on top) and M (bottom) in the vroom mobile (or car) at a rest stop around Richmond, VA.

As you can see from this particular pic — we’re in what the humans call a car!  It was quite a road trip from Ohio to D.C and then from D.C. to NC!  Yeah, this time we made sure our human, Teresa, documented our love session at one of our stops.  This way you guys can see a little bit of how packed the vroom mobile was with her stuff for school.  This whole “grad school” thing sounds like a lot of work to me, M!  You said it, H, I hope during the school year our humans still have time for all the activities they do with us.  I heard our human, Jesús, say it would be a priority 🙂  WheekWheek — as it should be, H!

A close up of us in the car sitting on Teresa’s lap at one of our rest breaks.

So our week in D.C. was a blast!  We met wee humans —  I think they’re called “children,” M — ok, we met two children 🙂  It was fabulous to see their faces as we zoomed around our playpen and came over to say “squeak” to them.  Our human, Teresa, was so busy hanging out she didn’t document our vacation there very well… But that’s ok, M, because we had a blast and enjoyed being in yet another new environment.  And I loved meeting the wee hu– I mean — children!

And here’s our cage set up at home. We don’t have any feline visitors so the top can stay off. We miss Charlotte the cat a little bit though…  Oh — you can see H right by the forest — she’s hiding a little bit 🙂

And now we’re home in NC.  After an eventful summer of traveling from NC through VA and WV to OH to IN and back to OH and then to DC via PA and MD back to NC via VA — stop M!  I’m dizzy hearing you list all the places we were… Sorry, H.  At least now we’re home!  Yes, our piggie pad is as it should be.

Happy squeaks to you all as you do your summer travels. May all your vroom mobiles carry you safely to your destinations. WheekWheek!

H&M

we can see the forest

Hi to all our guinea pig friends — this is H — and I’m M!

H is coming out of the forest to join me (M) as I eat hay.

Today we wanted to share the most marvelous improvement to our piggie pad (humans know this as a cage for some reason…)!  Yes, H, we wanted to show everyone our forest!  We overheard our human, Teresa, talking with our grandhuman, and they decided they wanted us to have one.  They were inspired by one they saw online: the guinea pig market “fleece forest”.  At first, they considered buying one, but then they found a fleece blanket they weren’t using and decided to experiment.  This is what they came up with:

Our grandhuman is holding our forest before it’s put in our piggie pad (or cage).

They put it in a corner of our piggie pad and connected it to the grating with cable ties and bent a wire hanger to hold it up over the hypotenuse — it worked!  And we love it!  We popcorned for an hour when our humans installed our forest in our piggie pad.

More forest, more hay, more eating. Life is good!

Now I prefer to eat with half of my body hidden. Yes, M, and I like being able to zoom through it when it’s time for my floor exercise.  We both like doing that, H!  True. It’s great for hiding and zooming!  We give it a hearty WheekWheek of approval!  And two paws up!  Well, four if you count that I give it two paws up, as well… WOL (Wheek out loud), M.

Here you can see a better view of the forest as H eats some timothy hay.

In closing, we’ll add this last little video that our human, Jesús uploaded of us a while back just for fun.  We just wanted to show a little bit of how our gymnastic floor exercise routine looks.  Now you can imagine us as we race through our forest, too!

Happy running and eating — and popcorning in your forests!

H&M

movie nights H&M style!

Hi guinea pig friends!  This is H and I’m M. 

H is watching a movie while sitting on our human, Jesús.

If you haven’t noticed from our opening picture — movie nights are the theme of today’s post.  We love when our humans watch films with us. Or tv shows, H, because we’re super into Veronica Mars right now.  Oh, so you’re admitting you like what our humans watch, M??  Yeah… Guess their taste isn’t so bad after all!  Well, let’s hope not since they make short films themselves.  They’re very excited about their most recent episode of their own series — Jesús even wrote a post on his blog about it.  Silly humans!  Guinea pigs are far more important, obviously!  Yes, H, back to our movie nights!

Another movie night setup. This time we’re at our grandhuman’s house. Notice the top is enclosed to keep out our feline friend, Charlotte.

Each house we visit we have our own special setup for movie nights.  At the vacation house and at home in NC we get to run all around our fleece blankets between Jesús and Teresa. And you can see that at our grandhuman’s house we have a run that’s covered to protect us from Charlotte the cat. In general we have fun because we get to explore and play with our humans.

Here we are at home in NC watching a movie with our human, Teresa.

Hope you enjoy your movie nights! WheekWheek, H!

H&M

our green tunnel went bump in the night

A big hello to our guinea pig friends out there – I’m H and I’m M!

Here H and I are next to our green tunnel. Also, our fleece is “little monster” themed. Wonder why our humans chose that?

Today we want to tell you all a story about our green tunnel that happened the other night.  Apparently, our human, Teresa, thought it was time to wash our tunnel, and so she took it out of our piggie pad (or cage in human-speak) around bed time.  After she washed it, she didn’t put it back in our cage immediately. H, you’re right — instead she placed it on a desk near our piggie pad to finish drying.  Yes, M, she did, and then she went to bed and started reading.  You would think she would have been more alert and realized our furry feline friend, Charlotte, had nudged open the door to join us…  Yes, we’ve already had an adventure with Charlotte the cat, but this new tale we’ll recount now takes the carrot (or cake for our human readers, or catnip for our feline friends).

So there Charlotte the cat was making her way cautiously towards our piggie pad unbeknownst to our human while she read her book… Yes, Charlotte was looking at us from behind the wall of our home with her big innocent eyes as she cautiously reached her paw through one of the many windows.  Oh, it occurs to me, M, that the humans might call windows spaces in the cages grating.  Sure, H, quite right.  Anyway, she reached her paw in repeatedly, but eventually she decided the best view of us would be from up high.  Apparently, she wasn’t looking carefully when she jumped on the desk, because she knocked our green tunnel off it when she jumped up.  And then a great commotion took place!

This is M being cute near the tunnel and our hay.

The tunnel fell with a loud crash — a crash so loud it startled both us and Charlotte.  In her alarm, Charlotte catapulted herself off the desk — and she landed on the roof of our piggie pad — which started to skid on the wooden floor under her weight.  Which, of course, made her even more alarmed — and then she flew from the skidding cage onto our human, Teresa, in bed and knocked the book out of her hands.  And that startled Teresa and made her jump which meant Charlotte was jolted once again.  And so Charlotte launched herself off of Teresa in the bed and flew into the wall — which she bounced off with a thud — and then she slammed herself into the door which closed with a giant boom.  Finally, poor Charlotte wound up huddled underneath the bed.  Our human was more worried about her than us at this point, which I guess makes sense.  But we were pretty unnerved by the whole thing and decided to hang out in M’s pigloo together for a while…

Obviously H is cuteness personified as she’s coming out of the green tunnel.

This just goes to show that green tunnels and felines don’t mix!  We recommend that the humans keep the tunnels where they belong — with the guinea pigs.  Otherwise, we’re convinced that green tunnels left in the wrong paws can cause some major destruction!

Hope you all manage to keep your feline friends away from your tunnels!  And we hope you have another green-filled day!

WheekWheek!

H&M

dedicated to our green tunnel (and other green things)

Hi to all our guinea pig friends — I’m H and I’m M!

This is M at the edge of our green tunnel. Since this post is in appreciation of it, we thought it appropriate to start with this pic.

We want to talk today about something we use often in our piggie pad (or cage for the uninitiated in guinea pig lingo). Yes, H, and we’d like to remedy the fact that it goes unmentioned and taken for granted.  Today we honor our green tunnel!  Besides being a fixture of all the piggie pads we’ve had, we like that it can change shape.  Every time our humans change out our fleeces and towels they put the green tunnel back in a different configuration.  Thank you, tunnel, for being your flexible, bendy and green self.  It has been a treat to run into you and hide from our humans, Jesús, Teresa and our grand and great-grand humans, whenever they try to pick us up. We hope fervently that even though we’re growing bigger every day we’ll continue to be able to run through you for a long time.  Oh M, I wouldn’t worry too much about that — I overheard our humans Jesús and Teresa say that they would get us a bigger tunnel if we outgrew our current one. Phew, H, that’s a huge weight off my mind!

We don’t want to shortchange H’s face time — here she is showing off her “inquisitive” look 🙂

We also want to thank briefly other green things that make up such integral parts of our lives. First and foremost is kale.  You’re so right, M, kale is our favorite leafy green by an alfalfa-slide (or landslide for the humans out there).  And then there’s timothy hay, H.  The holy grail of piggie food, yes.  We must pay tribute to our hay — M — shout this with me on three: 1, 2, 3: hip, hip hayray!  I’ll wheek to that, H.

And here’s M with two green things at once: the tunnel and some kale!

This is our green trinity.  Do you other guinea pigs out there have other green things you love?  We’d be interested to hear your favorite green items.  In any case, we hope you have fun tunnels to run through, yummy kale to snack on and oodles and boodles of hay for your eating pleasure.  Wishing you all a green-filled day!

WheekWheek!

H&M

PS – we just thought of a fourth green thing we love: green peppers!

another road trip & we met our great-grandhuman

Hi to all the piggies out there! This is H and I’m M.

Here H and I are sitting on our great-grandhuman’s lap (H is on the left and I’m on the right). We’re super comfy.

We have another exciting trip to tell you all about.  Last week we went to visit our great-grandhuman!  It was sort of intense because we had another car (or vroom mobile) trip.  Yeah, H, I’m not sure I want to do a four hour trip in the vroom mobile again for a while… M, you’re right.  I think we deserve a break from trips for a moment — do you hear us, humans??? I think if we squeak louder, H, then Teresa or our grandpiggie parents might hear us…  Here they come M, well done!  Oh wait… they’re just giving us more timothy hay.  Well, I’ll take that, M, hip hip hay-ray! WheekWheek to that, H!

Here’s our setup of our run at our great-grandhuman’s house. You can’t see our playpen, but it’s around the corner and that’s where we slept.

Anyhay, now that we’ve had a food break we’ll go back to describing our trip. We were there for an entire four days.  It was a lot of fun for us because our great-grandhuman is a really big guinea pig fan! Yeah, apparently she was a kindergarten teacher and they had guinea pigs every year in her classrooms!  Can you imagine the faces of the little humans as they got to hold piggies like us?  Pure bliss, H, pure bliss…

She’s one contented great grandpiggie parent if you ask me, M 🙂

It was really quite a treat — almost like orange slices — to be held in her lap.  We really, really like our great-grandhuman!  I’ll wheek to that, M!  And we were sad to leave… Truth.  But now we’re home again in Ohio with our grandpiggie parents, our human Teresa and our feline friend, Charlotte. Well, the pigloo is calling — time for a little R&R for H&M.

Hope you have dreams as sweet as apple slices!  Or orange slices…

H&M

we got a new piggie pad and met a cat!

Hi, it’s H and M here!

We’re quite pleased because last week we got a new cage — you guinea pigs out there know they’re called piggie pads.  It’s really quite spacious!  (Our human, Teresa, keeps talking about some guinea pig cages website that has lots of options.)  Anyway, we really, really like it!  It’s even got a roof that can cover us.  It doesn’t block the light or anything it just keeps out visitors… In our case it keeps out visitors of a feline variety!

Look at how one of our new fleeces in our new home has popcorn depicted! So appropriate 🙂

We were really surprised that our grandpiggie parents have a cat!  Her name is Charlotte and she’s a Maine Coon.   I giggled when I saw her though, M, because she was shaved in May and her hair is growing back slowly. H you giggle as much as you like — but I remember how you looked when you had the gimpy paw.  Let the piggie without gimpiness cast the first alfalfa pellet…  Ahem, yes, M, quite right.  Anyway, I really like Charlotte!  She has come to visit us several times when our humans have been watching.

Charlotte looks innocent here, but we know better…

I guess it’s comforting that she only stops by when our grandpiggie parents or human, Teresa, are present… And I’ve tried to make contact with her by propping myself up on the chloroplast and reaching my nose out to her several times, right M?  Yes, H, but she seems startled when you do that!  Isn’t that something, M?  A little guinea pig scaring a feline of such size??  I wonder if she realizes how we’re smaller?  Maybe we come off as really big!  WheekWheek to that, M!

Charlotte looking at us.

In any case, we like our feline visitor friend.  We hope you other guinea piggies have nice cats who come and visit you occasionally, too!

Time to eat our hay.  And alfalfa pellets.  And kale. And apple slices and —

We’ll see you next time!

H&M

PS – I can’t contain myself, M…  Me either, H — it’s popcorning time!