We got Muffy and Hazel back in 2001 for free.  I came home from school one day, and there they were!  My mom and sister had picked them up at the petstore (they were free along with their cage), and were planning to give them away to our relatives. Even though they were a very unexpected addition to our family, they became ours very quickly and we didn't want to give them up.  Muffy and Hazel couldn't have been more opposite if they tried.  Muffy was big while Hazel was small, Muffy was more outgoing while Hazel was reserved, and Muffy loved food more than Hazel did.  Because of that last fact, Muffy and Hazel had to be separated from each other.  Hazel liked to save some of her food for later while Muffy liked to eat it all at once.  She would eat more than her fair share of the vegetables every day leaving Hazel with barely anything.

Muffy was a very sweet girl and like all of our pigs, she had some quirks about her.  For some reason, she loved to eat the masking tape that held her newspaper up to the sides of her cage.  There were so many times that we have to pull tape off of her fur because she got it stuck.  Also, even though she was so big, Muffy could stand on her hind legs for a really long time.  Our other pigs did it very rarely (until Noriko and Saki came along - they do it all the time), but Muffy had really strong legs and stood all the time to get a treat.  She would follow us across the room on the floor if we held a treat in front of her face.  It was so cute and she got her exercise and food, making everyone happy!

I can't believe that Muffy was our last remaining guinea pig out of the original five.  She was wonderful and such a sweet girl, but it was unexpected.  She seemed okay with everything, considering that she lost her best friend in the whole world, Hazel.  She looked so small in her expanded cage (we took out the separator after Hazel died), and seemed to enjoy the extra room.  In the beginning of 2007 however, Muffy began to look really rough.  There was some discharge around her eyes and her fur looked really messy all the time.  She was still eating, drinking, and acting like herself, so we didn't worry too much about it.  We knew that she was old and that there wouldn't be much that could be done for her even if we brought her to the vet.  She was fine until the day she died, not ever going downhill as Hazel and Aya did in their last days.  She passed away in her sleep one night in March and we think that it was just due to old age. 

Muffy was a great guinea pig and was so unique in both her temperament and looks.  Everyone loved her and she seemed to like the attention as well.  She was so big, which made it a lot of fun to cuddle her.  All of the vets that she saw throughout her life said that she was obese and we should probably try to keep her weight in check, but Muffy was of a larger build than our other guinea pigs and was never going to be their size (she was just a big girl!).  She outlasted all of them in the end anyway, so I think that we did something right.  Muffy was such a sweetheart, and we loved her so much!

- Jen