Daphne: In Memoriam

We lost a guinea pig yesterday. The lovely Daphne, with her flowing white locks and her haughty vibe, like a Greek Goddess. She actually appeared on this blog a few days ago, on the picture for the post about Zoom meetings. She lived here, in my study, alongside the aforementioned Chuzzlewit and his partner Princess Peach. She was not best mates with these two by any means, but she was a good neighbour. She was also one of our more confident guinea pigs who didn't mind being handled or being stroked on the head or cheek.  She'd had a couple of quiet days where she'd nibbled at her food and resisted the arthritis medication that she usually loves, so we took her to the vet who advised us that her time had come. RIP queen Daphne.

We've had a large collection of guinea pigs for the best part of a decade now, so we've grown quite used to their deaths. It's never pleasant, of course, but it happens, and we can comfort ourselves with the lives we provide for them and our attentive care. As rescued pigs, all of our gang have come from vague and dubious origins, some kept in appalling conditions and neglected, others abandoned in out-of-the-way places. So we do what we can to give them luxurious indoor living on cosy fleeces, with a plentiful supply of hay and veg, and the finest tap water that the borough of Stretford and Urmston has to to offer. And, of course, companionship with their own kind even if, in the case of Daphne, this had to be in a neighborly setting. Whatever occurred in Daphne's past had clearly given her some long-standing anxiety about living in the same quarters as other guinea pigs, as evidenced by various scraps she's had with the various pigs we've tried to bond her with. So Daphne ended up being our one and only solo pig, like some diva starlet demanding her own dressing room.

The death of Daphne now takes us down to a total of eleven current guinea pigs, while the total we've had since the first group is probably between twenty-five to thirty individuals (plus a number of fostered pigs who have passed through). Some, like our curly-haired Crystal, we've had since their birth, others like old man Cuckoo (RIP) we received in their twilight years for largely palliative care. Most, like Daphne, come to us in their young adulthood, which is around about the time when former owners will get bored with them or frustrated by their unanticipated longevity. 

The most important moment for me is the naming. It's almost ceremonial. We don't often go for anything cutesy or boring, opting instead for names with personal or artistic resonance. Many of our pigs have a literary bent. Daphne was named after Daphne Du Maurier, after Hannah went through a phase of reading all of the latter's books. Chuzzlewit is, of course, Dickensian, as is Merrylegs in the next room. We also have Homer (of The Odyssey rather than The Simpsons) MacDuff and an Agatha (as in Christie), while the name of our rabbit Marble was a mishearing of 'Marple' which stuck by virtue of her speckled markings. Our very first gang, way back in the day, were granted the names of Greek gods: Hera, Hebe and Attica (although this latter is a historical region of Greece rather than a god, but we liked how it sounded). I've always preferred grandeur over cutesy, because there is great and profound importance behind those fuzzy cartoon faces. 

So Daphne has moved on to the great Olympian Valhalla in the Sky, or, more profoundly, is returned to the matter and fabric of the organic universe to mould and fuse into new molecules and fresh currents. We preserve her in photographs and memories, and in the ping of an echo whenever we reach for a Du Maurier tome. Indeed, tonight we'll likely stoke the coal of the Netflix engine and partake in Ben Wheatley's new adaptation of Rebecca. Such a sentiment is beyond ridiculous; a daft frivolity of we mere mortals as we try to make some sort of sense out of the great chaos of life and death. But, like a warm guinea pig burrowed in fresh hay in the suburbs of a rainy city, there's true comfort in it.