Shaz, married to electrician Mick, 52, said: “They were our absolute favourites – there was something special about them.
“They were beautiful and whenever we went to school fairs the kids loved them. Both of them used to come for cuddles all the time. The day Angel came here and we bathed her she started licking my hand and that was it.
“It’s nice to remember them – it makes me cry.
“I wouldn’t swap this lot for the world. Sometimes it gets you down when you’re losing them through various ways but when I’m feeling down I’ll sit in the shed and they start climbing all over me.
“It picks me up – it’s like furry therapy.”
Shaz, who also works as a cleaner, already owned a family of guinea pigs when she decided to set up Avalon Guinea Pig Rescue at her Ewell Road home in January 2006.
Her daughter Sarah, now 28, noticed that unwanted guinea pig babies were being given away online so the self-confessed animal lover offered to take them in and find a new home.
Within the first year she collected about 30 pets and has gone on to re-home up to 600.
She keeps up to 200 at a time, storing them in two sheds equipped with hutches and heating, while she also has five cages in her living room and kitchen.
Shaz has about 30 large bags of dried food and 25 extra large bags of hay stored around the house. She spends about £400 per month running the centre and paying for veterinary bills, relying on donations and fundraising.
Some pets are given to her by owners who no longer want them but much of her stock is found at Melton Mowbray Market, where they are auctioned for token sums.
Last month, she was given 94 guinea pigs – all but one female and many of them pregnant – that a Norfolk breeder wanted to replace with younger animals.
Shaz, who is helped by friends, said they were cruelly treated and has so far re-homed about a dozen.
She said: “It’s disgusting and I was gobsmacked – they’ve gone through back-to-back breeding and their stomach muscles are shattered.
“These people have no value of the animals whatsoever and sometimes sell them for 50p each to be used as snake food or for ferret training.
“It got silly as we ended up coming back with big numbers but they needed to get out of there.”
With Christmas around the corner, Shaz expects a large number of enquiries but will turn down anyone who wants them as presents.
She said: “We put our foot down and say to people they can’t have them for Christmas because they’ll come back in a month.
“It’s often an impulse buy. Kids see guinea pigs in a pet shop and think they look cute but then get bored of them and can’t be bothered to clean up after them.
“Unless it’s someone we know or they want to replace a guinea pig then we tell them to come back in January.”
Shaz, who also has a Mastiff-Alsatian dog called Monty, five, took in Angel after learning about a man breeding guinea pigs in Keyworth.
She said she thought she had dark fur until she washed her and realised it was actually white but had been covered in mud.
“It was disgusting,” she said. “She had urine burns around her bum because she had been living in her own faeces.
“She had four babies but they all eventually died and she got depressed. She stopped eating and died.
“They like living in a herd and Angel couldn’t live without her children.”
And for Shaz, she couldn’t live without her guinea pigs.
Anyone interested in adopting or re-homing a guinea pig should contact Mrs Kelly on 07835172047.
