Hamster Talk

Oh, the joys of hamsters!

I was lamenting our hamster population to a friend the other day and she shared a couple of her own hamster stories.

First, I have always been afraid that one of our cats would get to one of our hamsters. Tigger has almost succeeded, twice. Once, he completely demolished the cage by knocking it off of Sarah's desk! I found the hamster huddled in the wreckage while Tigger looked on hungrily.

Well, my friend had also always feared this. And, alas, one day one of her family's hamsters came to a dire end. Unfortunately, she didn't know this. And also unfortunately, she had to get up in the middle of the night for something and... SQUISH. Yes, she found the hamster all right, in the dark. She told me that she immediately thought of the trauma this would cause her 5-year-old son and she hoped...

"Oh my gosh, I sure hope we have MICE!"

Now, that is LOVE.

Fortunately, her son didn't realize that his hamster was gone right away. Yep, she kept up the pretense of a living hamster for a YEAR by keeping lots of extra bedding in the cage. He was older by then and better able to cope with the loss. What a mom!

Then she told me about the plight of their other hamster. It escaped. That's an old story with hamsters, of course. They are all escape artists. They hunted all over the bedroom and throughout the second floor where it escaped, no hamster. Two cats. Poor poor hamster.

BUT, lo and behold, she was doing laundry in the basement (yes, TWO FLOORS DOWN) and picked up a sock... and found a HAMSTER. Imagine that! Now, I would have SHRIEKED and probably lost the hamster again (or killed it from the sheer terror it would have felt from the volume of my yell), but she protected it and got it safely back in the cage.

She is some woman. And some mom.