We are a small caviary located in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Our guinea pig journey started in the spring of 2003. We were visiting a local pet shop to 'look' at the animals. We already had a cat, Flick, and two dogs, a beagle mix named Jake and a basenji named Kolohe (rascal in Hawaiian). On this visit we chanced upon a beautiful guinea pig who, I have since learned, was probably a 'standard' perfect ridgeback boar (golden agouti). The pet shop worker didn't know what breed he was and referred to his coloring as broken because "he had more than one color on him". I knew the guy wasn't right but didn't know what the pig really was. So we went home and read about guinea pigs and decided to go back and get him. He was already gone, much to my regret. As a result, I was 'bitten by the guinea pig bug'. Since Ridgebacks are so rare, we checked all the breeds available, and realized Teddies were pretty great too. Our problem then came to finding some. It turns out western Pennsylvania is the black hole of cavydom. There were no formal breeders in our county. And no Teddy breeders for hours in any direction. [I've since found two breeders about an hour and a half away.] We acquired our first two guinea pigs from a vendor who sells at Rogers Flea Market in April of 2003. We were told they were Teddies though of mixed descent. Both were fluffy babies. As they grew, the fur flattened on one, the other became a pet quality teddy. Shortly after, we attended our first cavy show and saw 'real' Teddies. Unfortunately, there weren't any for sale. I resigned myself to a long haul trip to get some stock and returned with 5 good Teddies. At this writing (Oct/2003) we are now up to 12 pigs total. I had a tough time deciding on a name for our caviary. I considered something along the line of 'Furry Therapy Cavies' because one of the reasons I justified to myself getting into guinea pigs was for stress relief for my daughter and myself. I have a son who is autistic and has been critically ill the past year (unrelated to his autism) and our very sensitive daughter was showing a lot of anxiety. From our dealings so far with other guinea pig enthusiasts, I've met many people with disabled children who seem to have turned to these pigs also. And one mother told me her teenager only really talks to her while they work together wrapping the hair on their pigs. But I expect our caviary to go beyond this starting purpose. So I picked a more permanent name. Q.T. Cavies. And so we began. This site is dedicated to Snowy, Taffy, Bambi, Lucky Penny, Penny the first, and Penny the second, the pigs of my childhood. |
