OK, this is a long and rambling story, but it does have a happy ending, so please read it through until the end!

Lately I’ve had a case of puppy fever. Seeing new babies at the dog park and imagining what an awesome big sister Lola would be had me itching to get a second dog. Peter told me one of two things would have to happen for us to bring another dog into our household:

I would have to take up half of Lola’s feeding schedule and take her on long walks in addition to our 6-days-a-week dog park visits.

OR

The universe would plop a dog into our lives with a series of events that would be impossible to ignore.

Well, on Wednesday, it happened.

Our three Guinea Goddess are together again. First we lost Isis, then Mona earlier this year, and Mimi last month. I miss all three of them terribly.

Peter or I have fetched their fresh veggies every night since I first got Isis in January 2005. It still feels so weird to finish cleaning the kitchen after dinner and NOT reach for the fridge to grab lettuce, carrots, or red bell peppers. I have to keep reminding myself that our routine has just…ended.

Here are their three completed urns.

I used Egyptian imagery for Isis (of course):

Mona, born in November, got a Greek cornucopia, since she is named after Pomona, goddess of the harvest:

Mimi was named for Artemis, Roman goddess of the hunt, because the orange on her head looks like an arrowhead when viewed from above (I threatened to name her “Insert Food Here,” but Peter argued against it):

They’re probably together somewhere giving each other hell. Isis is running laps and bouncing around, Mimi has climbed head-first into a pile of hay, and Mona is popcorning so hard she flips herself over…repeatedly.

We picked up Mona’s cremains yesterday from Steve at Carolina Pet Cremation. He did a beautiful job and included a lovely packet of condolence and memorial material.

This, however…this caught me by total surprise and left me sobbing for a while. I was truly moved.

I will be woodburning and painting a design on the top of her urn like I did for Isis. I’m thinking a cornucopia, since she was named after the goddess of abundance.

Mona has gone to join Isis at the Rainbow Bridge, leaving Mimi as our sole remaining Guinea Goddess.

She turned 6 years old in November, and her health had been in slow decline for the past year. I suppose her age was catching up to her a bit. In July we took her to Banfield because it seemed that her right eye was no longer functional; she had a noticeable head tilt, the eye itself was glazed and a bit sunken, and there was no blink reflex. She was diagnosed with an ear infection that had likely caused pressure or damage to her optic nerve, and we were told that she may or may not regain sight in that eye. She was perfectly ok with that, going about her happy guinea pig life much as she had been. She really perked up and even gained a little weight.

Yesterday, Mona discovered that there’s more to the world than the six-inch-high plastic base of her cage. Ever since then, she’s been popping her head out of her doorway, standing on her hind legs to try to reach pretty shiny things on my craft table, which is above and behind her, and “pssh! pssh!”-ing all over the place, LOL. (She’s still tiny, and wheeking is a “learned” behavior, so we think she’s just not quite got the hang of it quite yet…but it’s funny listening to her bop around her cage and hiss like a radiator.)

She’s even managed to move her house out of the corner so that she has room to run around it. Just in the last few days she’s become much more brave and curious, running to check out new things — or just regular old things — every chance she gets and chattering away to herself or whoever will listen. She’s a little charmer, and she’s going to fit right in with the rest of our family just fine.