I don’t remember who chose the names for our two gorgeous wee guinea pigs, Cocoa and Bramble, or where we got them from – most likely the sawdust-scented pet shop I always begged to visit on any garden centre trip – but I do remember the night my mum saved those little beauties’ lives.
They weren’t our first pets, or our last. We had a budgie, a hamster and two incredibly loving dogs that I, as a young child, wished were horses and often tried to clamber on to, much to their annoyance.
