I'd come as a surprise to the school's second-grade teacher, Ms. Highland, who'd adopted my mother from a guinea pig rescue center and somehow without anyone realizing that she was female and already well into a pregnancy. And it was a fairly long time, a whole year, in fact, before anyone realized that I'm female myself. My brother had died after just a few hours, and without a name, but I'd taken care of that after just a very few months. Ms. Highland hadn't thought she could take on all the responsibility for an additional guinea pig, so she'd persuaded Ms. Carson, the first-grade teacher, to adopt me. Ms. Carson had had two classroom guinea pigs in years previous. This first volume of my memoirs, most of which I've written myself, although with a certain amount of help from Bill, are generally about my first year as a classroom guinea pig with Ms. Carson. About learning all kinds of fun things at school but even more about all the various families who'd taken me home to care for me over weekends and holidays.