And then there was one...

As if losing Gus scarcely seven weeks ago wasn't bad enough I've now lost Jacques too, and at almost exactly the same age as well.

The symptoms were almost identical to what happened with Gus, except that when I got in from the Sunderland match at 5.45am and found he didn't look right, it was nothing like when I found Gus in that state. Jacques was a bit hunched and his eyes looked tired - like little guinea pig-sized bags under his eyes - and worryingly, he'd lost weight. Now, unlike Gus, Jacques must have lost this weight in no more than 10 or 11 days because he was perfectly normal before I went to Austria last week and all the time I was away Jon kept an eye on him and fed him every day. I was in the house briefly Friday night before heading up to my parents' for the Manchester United and Sunderland games and he was very much his normal self, though I didn't get him out so I don't know if he'd lost weight. But he was running around and wheeping as normal. Because he looked not right but not bad I didn't phone the vet this morning and try to get an emergency appointment, but just made a normal one for the evening surgery. However when I got home he was much worse, lying on his side, and when I picked him to take him to the vet I knew immediately that it was hopeless. He was cold, just as Gus had been by the morning, so I realised the vet would undoubtedly have her work cut out because just warming him up would be a struggle.

And so it proved. The prognosis was very poor but she kept him in and gave him some drugs to try to revive him. However she phoned me a couple of hours later to tell me he'd died while she was trying to keep him going. So it seems he went downhill even faster than Gus. The vet didn't even have to ask me to confirm that she should give up and put him down, he died anyway.

It's all very sad indeed. Of course he and Edward were great friends. So he's on his own now, as is Carly, my remaining guinea pig. I'm hoping they will make friends now that they are both on their own. Jacques was such a lively little soul, always running around his cage, bright-eyed and with his coat in great condition, always at the bars when you went near, hoping for a piece of broccoli or a carrot, very vocal in classic wheep-wheep guinea pig style. And he was so cute. RIP, little fella, January 30, 2002.