Happy birthday, bathtub boys!

Happy birthday to me! By way of a present to myself we decided that today would be the day we re-introduce Augustus and Snowdon to each other. They've been living in separate pens for three months since the nasty fighting that began when they hit puberty. You may remember they began fighting only two days before their scheduled neutering at the vet's, and have had to be separated since then.

"Give them three months apart before reintroducing them," we were told, so since October each one has occupied a different pen in the living room, side by side but separated by bars. It's been a daily rota of pen-swapping so they both get equal time out of their cages and we've made sure that they've always been able to see and smell each other.



For most of those three months Augustus would still nip at Snowdon through the bars given the chance but suddenly that changed about two weeks ago and they began to groom each other and lie close to each other.

So today being the three-month mark (and coincidentally my birthday) we decided to begin the reintroduction process by putting them in the bathtub together. Stressful? Oh yes! Snowdon sat and cowered and refuse to eat snacks while Augustus ate anything put in front of him and kept trying to leap out of the bathtub in homage to Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.



I think another couple of days of bathtub-panic and maybe a little ride on the washing machine together during a spin cycle (in a box of course) and they might be ready to hang out together in the living room. There's no way I'm going to leave them together unaccompanied for a while, though!