Pets

Dogs and cats looking for a home:

go in adopt a dog or adopt a cat, where most of what turns up are mixed-breed street dogs and cats taken in by a family or a foster home. They are passed on, not priced. The rest of dogs and cats is kit, and the pieces that keep their value are the ones that do not hold a smell: a plastic carrier, a metal crate, a scratching post with its sisal still tight.

A birdcage is not a hamster cage:

the bars that keep a canary in will not stop a dwarf hamster squeezing out, and a cage spaced for a parrot leaves gaps wide enough for a parakeet to push its head through and get stuck. A bird needs length to fly more than height, so a long cage beats a tall one. In rodents and rabbits, a rabbit needs floor space to stretch out and solid floor under part of it, because bare wire sores its feet. Reptiles and amphibians live in glass under a screened lid: a turtle needs water and a dry spot under a heat lamp, a frog damp air. Tanks and filters sit under fish, seed and cage covers under birds.

Used cages rust at the welds first:

so look where the bars meet the frame, and at the tray, which cracks long before the wire goes. Parrots chew, and flaking paint or a powdery coating on old wire ends up inside the bird. A plastic carrier fails at the door latch and at the clips that hold its two halves together; squeeze them before you agree on anything. Wooden hutches soak up urine and rot from the floor up, so press on the boards. Trust the bulb in a used terrarium least: a UVB tube stops giving out the light a reptile needs months before it stops glowing, so plan on a new one. Whatever you take home, scrub and disinfect it before another animal goes in, and ask why the last one is gone.

Fireworks nights, from the Quema del Diablo to New Year:

are when pets go missing, and when a few cheap things earn their keep. A tag engraved with a phone number, a collar a dog cannot back out of, a closed crate in an inside room and a latch on the patio gate do more than anything bought after the animal has gone. If one does run, post it in animals lost and found with a clear photo, the zone and neighbourhood where it was last seen, and the day. Keep one detail back, a scar or the colour of its tag, to test anyone who says they have it, and send no money before you have seen the animal: the “I found your dog, pay for the transport first” call is a known trick.

Put the cage’s measurements in the first line:

length, depth and height, so whoever wants it knows before setting out whether it fits in the boot of the car. Photograph it assembled, with the tray, perches, feeders or filter that come with it. If the last animal to live in it was ill, say so. Give your zone in the capital, zone 18 or zone 7, or your town, Santa Cruz del Quiché or Poptún, because a big cage or a full tank is collected by hand rather than sent. When an animal goes with its kit, write down what it eats and let the new keeper meet it first: it settles faster in a cage it already knows. Much of this kit comes from houses where the children have outgrown the hamster stage, and the cage, the wheel and the half-used bag of bedding are worth more to the next family together than apart.