after the deluge, the enlightenment (a wizard curse)

So the Rain

Well, it hasn't rained in a few days, so there's that. The entire backyard is all visibly soaked dirt, and I won't talk about the patio because it's beyond words. Last week we had a lot of people out of the office literally due to rain, and this week (and next) being the graduation for most of the state, it's been--well, wetly triumphant, maybe?

So More Things

So you may not know that guinea pigs have entered my life. Apparently, this has been a thing for a while, I just didn't know.

Let me explain.

They weren't mine, I want that clear. My youngest sister purchased them some number of years greater than two and less than five ago, and they came to her as small and are now super-sized guinea hogs, if you will. They were given a standard cage and toys and being low maintenance and fucking hateful--they make my former rabbit warren look loving and kind--we all just sort of existed in a detente where we moved them around as needed and fed them while they pretended we didn't exist or attacked whoever was foolish enough to try to keep their cage clean and them healthy, because they're malicious.

Here's where this gets weird.

At some point in the last eighteen months--and I can't tell you how or when, it just happened--I began buying all their food, snacks, and litter, feeding and bathing them (bathing. them.) and had been for quite a while because my sister isn't actually anywhere near them (ie, no longer lives here) and somehow, I...took over, like some kind of unholy geas and I don't know how or why.

I'm bathing them. Let me clarify this, because this is where I'm convinced I pissed off a sorcerer or a wizard and this is actually a curse.

I actually get a giant towel and Child (to distract them from going for my throat), grab each one and put them in a box (with minimal bloodshed), carry them to the bathroom, fill a tub--my bathtub--with water (not too warm, not too cold, I test this) until it reaches just their bellies and set them in there to swim and glare at them hatefully before shampooing them one by one, risking my fingers, or at least bits of them, because guinea pigs can't be fucked to do the minimum amount of work to keep themselves clean no matter how often I clean out their truly nightmarish cage and if they weren't bathed, they'd be quite literally made of fur and their own excretions. Then I rinse them, check their fur for issues--risking so much finger-flesh--towel-dry their ungrateful asses (now with shiny fur), and take them back to their fresh cage where they immediately create more filth to wallow in while I return to my bathtub and stare in horror at what I have to clean up (and that shit is deliberate, and I do mean shit. What is wrong with them?).

A couple of times a month, I do this.

I'm doing this of my own free will, and I honestly can't tell you why because I hate them, they hate me, and it makes no sense and I can't emphasize this enough, I can't work out when this started. However, I had a revelation this week while miserably cleaning out their hideous cage and resenting the fuck out of anything with fur; I don't have to live like this, this is bullshit.

Time to deal.

I hate them but at this point it can't be denied they're mine--once you carry the scars of their tiny teeth, someone is owned and it's not gonna be me--so they're going to live to a standard by which my rabbits once lived, because no pet of mine (fuck my life, I have guinea pigs) is going to look like their owner isn't creepily overinvested in their lifestyle and living accommodations.

Midwest Interactive Guinea Habitat Plus - that's eight to nine square fucking feet lined with PVC canvas containing a ramp, a care area, and is recommended by veterinarians. I'm throwing out everything they're using now; their resentful little asses are gonna experience a lifestyle upgrade. They are getting a new grass house, a grass ball, new chewtoys, a new feeder, and fuck my life, I went shopping for absorbent pads used on people beds for those who need such things for night accidents to line this sucker with and I also got them treats and snacks because reasons. I googled guinea pig food type for the most nutritious and evaluating if it would be in their best interests to start them on a Central Market and Whole Foods diet of overpriced organic vegetables and greens.

You know what guinea pigs do? They wallow. That's it. They lay there, resenting the effort it takes them to eat their own food because that requires movement. They bore the cat. You can't get lower than the cat thinking you aren't even worth watching hungrily. They're like furry rocks made of hate and a lack of motivation. They are a literal rebuttal of the theory of evolution, because selection should have wiped them out and yet, here they are, alive and forcing me to re-evaluate how trustworthy science really is.

It gets worse.

While shopping I learned; guinea pigs are neglected as hell when it comes to fun pet shit. Hamsters and ferrets, mice and rats, toys and pipes and hammocks and awesome playscapes, but guinea pigs? Do they get giant-ass playscapes I'd like in human-size? Nope. Do they get tubular extravaganzas? No. I admit, furry hate-rocks wouldn't use them, but that's not the point; this should be equal opportunity and guinea pigs are getting the short end of the stick here.

...I hate them, they loathe me, they are furry hate rocks who I genuinely think would kill me if they were less fucking lazy, but on their behalf I've been hating the entire pet industry and googling PVC piping to see if it comes in transparent so I can build them a playscape so as not to be inferior to fucking hamsters that they'll never use because they are furry rocks of hate. And I gotta bathe them tomorrow because the cage should be here when I get home from work and they are gonna go into their new home clean and this isn't happening, it can't be.

Wizard curse, it's gotta be.