Ode To Past Pets

I couldn’t have started this project in a more perfect way if I had wanted, being an animal lover and in particular guinea pigs I have had many past pets 4 hamsters, 4 guinea pigs a rabbit and a few fairground fish which are no longer with us.  In fact I can’t remember a time I didn’t have a pet of some sort. My first 2 guinea pigs were the best pets ever and in a way were almost like mini dogs.  Though it may be when I got them I was at more of an age to appreciate them than the fair ground fish I got as a child and the rabbit I barely remember which my grand father had bought us for a ”surprise”. My first 2 guinea pigs were brothers and although I worried I had picked 2, which hated each other and were doomed to spend the rest of their hate filled lives together, they got on brilliantly. Once settled into their new home they would beg (squeal) for food mainly lettuce grumble when angry and give a good purr when happy.  They’d fall asleep on me as I handled them, they learnt their names and even how to tell me when they wanted to go back to their cage. They had also learnt when it was time to go back inside when they had had a long day of running around in their large outside enclosure. They even ran to me when they had scared themselves whilst exploring and had somehow managed to knock over a few pans from the kitchen cupboard they jumped into my arms trembling and would not move.

Needless to say, when they both died at a nice old age I decided to do something to remember them by. My first thought was to create wooden beads from the very chewed and nibbled branches of the plum tree, which they had loved to eat.

My first attempt at creating a " Piggy" bead still unfinished years later:

   I had wanted to start the project on the eve of their deaths so I waited for a year and then another…and another… until enough time passed that I realised it wasn’t possible especially since I had tried to get the branches out of the shed they had been stored in and realised with some alarm as I looked around at the junk laden shelves we had a case of wood worm. And so the project was halted again, as time has passed I have thought about this project every so often with the thinking of “ wouldn’t it be good” and whenever you start thinking like that you know that for whatever reason its something you are not going to get around to doing.  And so as time passed my thoughts evolved until I was ready to start the project and I opened my sketchbook…

The sketchbook couldn’t have been more perfect I’d bought it because of the picture of a guinea pig on the front wearing the hat of a rather famous comedian I’d bought it because I thought it was funny or at the very least quirky as did the boy on the till who also liked my guinea pig games calendar I had bought along with the book.  The sketchbook had remained sealed in a cellophane wrapper for a few months after I had bought it and I couldn’t help but smile at what was written in the book:

And so I have started my project in a timely and an eventful manner.