Introducing...

Nibbles

The best way to get over a pet's death is to replace it. It might seem a bit heartless, and you still need to have the commitment to look after the creature(s), but it works a treat as a salve.

We have swapped our hamster-keeping ways for guinea-pig-keeping ways, so that both children could choose one. Hamsters are solitary and they are also nocturnal & bitey sort of beasties, so while decent enough pets, we thought something rather bigger, more cuddly and gregarious might be the route to take this time.

I'm very pleased with them: already they are giving the children a lot of fun and pleasure. They are both rather nervous at the moment, the guinea pigs, not the children. So much so that I was only able to take an unblurred photo of the slightly bolder one, Nibbles. Bubbles seemed under the impression that having her image taken would remove her soul and scooted round at high speed, breathing "no cameras, no pictures, bloody paparazzo!"

It's a bit of a bum buying pets for the children, 'though. I don't get to name anything anymore. I used to love naming my pets as a child and came up with some humdingers, such as Honeybee Peachy Tuft, which name was longer than the hamster afflicted with it.

Rosie, Sam, Pinky and ...

My daughter is miffed with me for always referring to one of the fish as the Brain. She named them Rosie, Sam, Pinky and ... well, you can see why I started calling the last one the Brain. And now even she has forgotten what she originally called it, but she is determined not to have the Brain. She decided today it would be called Millicent. Well she didn't, but I can't remember what it was now, and anyway, it's called the Brain!

It's not fair, I don't get to name anything*.

Sulk.



* except my cacti: Spike (imaginative, eh?) & Drusilla.