A string of guinea-pig deaths

It's been a tough few weeks in the Radford house, guinea-pig wise: We've gone from five guinea pigs to two.

It began with our 12-year-old daughter screaming, "Troubles is dead!" Twenty-four hours later, another death: Smoothy.

The last to go, several days later, was Carmel. The first two deaths were out of the blue; we have no idea of the cause. (Both were 5, which is a reasonable life span for a guinea pig.) But Carmel had long been battling a foot infection that had reached the bone. We tried everything - antibiotics, foot baths, hand-feeding - and she seemed to have turned a corner. And then, not.

Foot infections, called bumblefoot, are fairly common in guinea pigs, it seems. Avoid cages with wire-mesh bottoms (which we had) and keep cages clean to help avoid the problem.