Vale Pepe, Best of Cavys

I didn’t really have pets as a kid. Not the kind who were around long enough that you remember them. My dad kept snakes for a time, and those terrified me. We had guinea pigs when I was three, and a budgie for a short while, but the phase where pets and my life intersected was largely done by the time I turned seven.

When my partner and I started living together, she brought her guinea pigs with her. They occupied a corner of the flat and interacted with one another, interrupted quiet writing days at home with demands for food and attention. They were a constant source of distraction and joy.

I told myself I wasn’t a pet person, but they suckered me in anyway. There were noses to boop and personalities to learn and a surprising amount of affection for a critter that only weighs a kilogram.

We lost Pepe, one of the pigs, last Friday. He’d gone in to the vets for an ear infection back at the start of June, and they’d noticed there were problems with his teeth. We tried to fix it, and then tried to fix the fix, and it gradually became apparent he wasn’t bouncing back the way we’d hoped. His pain kept getting worse, and so it was time to say goodbye.

And I was not a pet person. I hadn’t ever had to say goodbye to a sick pet before, especially not after two months of working to keep the little guy alive. I’d certainly never been around a pet for two straight years, getting to know their personality and love them, making them part of my life.

Pepe wasn’t the pig I expected to care for the most. My partner got her other pig right as we started dating, which meant I got to bond with him as a little tyke. Pepe was already heading into middle age when he moved in; he was quieter than the other pig, more gentle in his affection.

He won me over, in that first year. Partially it was the way he’d nuzzle your neck like a tiny vampire, or the joy he took when he’d jump in his hay tray and wait for fresh hay to get delivered right on top of him. His love of ear rubs, and the effort it took learning how to rub his ears the right way.

Partially it was just the fact that he was even-tempered and sweet, always polite about letting us know when the time for pats was over and it was time to go back to the cage.

Losing him caught me harder than I expected. I kind of fumble around the flat, trying to get work done and failing. Not really sure how to write around the big lump of grief that settled in. And I’m kinda okay with that at the moment, while I’m sorting through all the feelings and our lives are reconfiguring to fill the spaces filled by both him and the care he needed in his final weeks.

He was a good pig, and we loved him.