In a Year of the Mouse my little sister decided to please me on anything a similar gift — a talisman in the form of a live sociable rodent. 
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And, knowing my ineradicable bent for to animal husbandry, she quite fairly believed that I will shut eyes to that the animal presented to me much more a mouse. And even much more largely than a hamster … Because it — neither that and nor another … It — a guinea pig.
At once about "sea" … To float this животина is not able. And even to bathe her it is not recommended, unless in exceptional cases — if устряпается from head to foot. That, by the way, too it is improbable — each fifteen-twenty minutes the animal is cleaned and tries to clasp tiny forward pads the massive head that and behind ears all it was pure and beautiful. And the nickname "sea" is transformed from the beautiful — "overseas" …
My mumps appeared not simple, but thoroughbred. And any ridiculous hair whirlwinds on a bottom, on shovels and on a forehead were an indicator of its breed.
— Abyssinian rozetochny … — the little sister told to me, probably, having repeated words of the factory owner. It then I already learned that there are pigs long-haired and wire-haired that the deduced breeds almost and that my gift costs to half-hundred slightly less, than the Persian kitten.
Any arguments in favor of a mumps in lips of the little sister were inexhaustible. And to walk with it it is not necessary, as with a dog, and гона at it as at cats, does not happen, and she eats everything … More shortly, I almost let’s itself convince that in my life the being met ideal for the contents in house conditions. Especially, it looked at me absolutely innocent glazonkami-beads and the ridiculous lokhmatopopost caused affection and pity …
So I also had Busya.
In the instruction with which me supplied also which in detail described all aspects of life of guinea pigs from the birth before burial — one detail was not mentioned at all. The mumps chirps. Well, or sings, as want. As a canary or other birdie, with that only a difference that, having thrown a cage with a popugaychik with a dark bed-sheet, you will cause at feathery a blissful somnolence, and at a mumps — it is absolutely not obligatory. Irrespective of weather conditions, time of day, desire to marry or existence in a food feeding trough, the pig will sing. When it would like. Laziness to read? Then listen!
Ilona Groshev reads
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Besides, the management contained requirement which has absolutely unsettled me. The mumps needs hay. Real hay without which pigs long and decay. Also can even die, that, naturally, I did not want to allow.
Three days all my acquaintances looked for hay.
In the city center in general with hay it is problematic, and in the suburb at me, as ill-luck would have it, nobody lived. All came to an end that on picnic to the country I went with the sick head and instead of admiring pripoproshenny a snowball fir-trees, demanded to stop at the next country economy where kind peasants оборжали my request to sell them hay «here in this here a bag…» Otvalili so …
That a mumps everything eats — the most naked truth.
Another thing is that telephone wires, pencils or a silk nightgown as components of a diet of your favourite can not suit you. And some fruit and milk not so suits свинкин a stomach … And so — yes … As a variety of svinkiny forages, perhaps, does not concede in pet-shops to the range of cat’s canned food. At the worst, in a supermarket always it is possible to buy muesli which before emergence in we wash the house of Busi, caused in me only curiosity, without the slightest desire to get a product.
Our Busya lodged in a big square basin, from where the measured crunch and a whistling at night reached. At night, it appears, all rodents are active and hungry. And if the wall of a basin is not represented to a curious hamster or a rat by a barrier, to our mumps its thoroughbred bottom — a pride and holeniye subject — became the heavy limiter. However, then she learned to get on the lodge, and already from there, having got up courage, to get over on boxes of board games in the big world of a bedroom …
I, in turn, was pleasantly pleased with that having acquired one way, the mumps is lost, without having found its components (having cleaned from its way of a box, I with pleasure observed how the mumps is trampled down on a roof of the house, without deciding to jump off any fifteen centimeters) …
Generally, think, solve …
Even if the unpretentious cactus in a pot demands your attention and leaving, about животине with character (and pigs possess it — believe me!) and it is not necessary to speak. As having discredited myths about itself as about an unpretentious element of an interior, the guinea pig will open to you mass of small pleasant surprises about which you at all do not suspect …]