Some people have a dog or a cat or may be both. We don’t have a dog but we have 2 cats and we have Solo.

Solo was born in our hands and little did we realize what life had in store for us after this event.

He ( may be she?) is now nearly 3 months old and follows us everywhere we go when outside of his box, choosing to walk along mainly between our legs: In that he is a cross between a toddler and a puppy. But being a guinea he pecks at everything including our legs, shoes, trousers….which is not particularly comfortable when we have bare legs. We now wear long trousers and wellies for protection. Pushing him away doesn’t work: he comes back pecking even more as to say: Hey! What are you doing man?

So the best thing is to really make sure we don’t tread on his toes which is a highly skilful thing given that he weaves in and out of our legs at high speed and with 190 degrees sudden turns!

At night he is in and  in his box in the living room by the window, and in the morning he goes outside in a bigger box facing our front door.  There is a tarpaulin protecting him from the sun or the rain like today. He has space, food and water and his box sits on grass. We move the box every day so that he has a new bit of grass to inspect and feed from. He has to be protected from the cats until he is a fully grown guinea by which time, he won’t need an outside box when we’ll be around. He seems content enough in there until he sees one of us coming out of the house. Then he wants to be let out to play.

This is September and the temperatures are still clement for him to be outside during the day but what about this winter? Even though his night box is small, he is very keen to get in there  in the evening when we bring him in but we cannot imagine keeping him in it the whole day for weeks on end….not fair.

He has no interest what so ever in the other guineas nor the chickens. Does he even know he is a guinea? We asked ourselves tonight. The only thing that is clear to us is that he wants to be with us all the time whether we’re in or out.

As soon as we sit down anywhere he jumps on our lap. He loves it there. From there he grooms himself no end.

We love this little guy but the problem is he shits everywhere and it stinks! In his night box we have a towel that we put in the washing machine every day for a short cycle. We use 3 towels in total for him and it works quite well. Paper towels we tried and they get shredded to bits in no time at all….Useless.

The bean season is coming to an end, and by now Solo knows the way to my little garden in the orchard. I go down there with him every other day to pick beans peppers and aubergines. It is fenced to keep out the cats mainly but also the rabbits and the deers and this makes it a very safe place for him to mess about in and he loves making himself a dirt bath when he is not busy checking the vegetables….

He also accompanies Geoff when he goes watering his tomatoes in the tunnel. The problem is, he enjoys the tomatoes as much as we do! Wed read that guinea don’t bother with gardens vegetables…. Solo does!

Is he really a guinea?

Watch this space….