Today my boy got his first Christmas present…
He got mice! Yep, he did 😉
If you have been following our blog for a while, you will know that we lost our dear Nox last year and our dear Puddles early November this year. Since then, we have been discussing and contemplating whether we would have more Gerbils or some other pet.
When we received Nox and Puddles from one of my dear writer friends, we didn’t have to go through the formal purchase of pet process. Now that we have to, i found out that they are really quite strict in our part of Switzerland and insist that our cage wasn’t big enough for Gerbils according to recommendations set down by the VZFS (The Association of Zoological Businesses Switzerland). BUT one really nice lady from a newly opened pet store (not the one closest to us, this is one 30 mins away by car) went through all the rules with me (over the phone) and checked all recommendations for me and finally recommended that we switch to having hamsters or mice (Farbmäuse in German) if we did not want to invest in a new bigger cage (which would have costed between CHF150 and CHF250).
SO today we welcome Patch, Patches, Ruby and Sam (short for Samantha) into our home and hope they feel welcomed and enjoy being with us as much as we are already enjoying their company. They are cute and great climbers but oh so fast!
Tobias named Patch and Patches, i named Ruby and Walter named Sam.
They really do take pet ownership seriously here. When we bought our oh-so-cute mice today, i had to sign a sort of contract to say that i have now undertaken the responsibility to care for these creatures and another piece of paper which states clearly a few important points of care for the 1st ten days (such as not giving them undue stress and not taking them out of the cage for the first 10 days, giving them vitamin drops etc…). Then we were also given a book of basic information for small house pets.
i remembered when i bought hamsters from pet stores back home. We simply went there, chose the ones i liked, paid for them and brought them home – end of story, nothing to sign or read and certainly no association to set down any rules to follow.
But i guess it’s in the best interests of the animals and of course, it does make people think twice about pet ownership.
Anyhow, join us in welcoming our new pets!
syc
trippingdifferently 