Day: June 23, 2005

All day long all of the kids (and me too) forlornly checked to see if any of the food in the open cage had been disturbed. I was pretty certain that we wouldn’t have a chance to find the hamster until evening. I was right. Link selected my bedroom for story time and half way through I spotted motion in my walk-in closet. Small, furry, brown and white motion. I walked over and there was the awol hamster. I knew I had her cornered, so I called for Kiki to bring the cage while I recaptured the critter. Hamsters are FAST when they’re scared. I didn’t like scaring her, but she simply isn’t tame enough to be captured fearlessly.

So now the Hamster is caged. The hole in the cage is patched. The kids are all wound up and excited. Kiki in particular is beaming with joy. I’m so glad to have the little furball back where she belongs.

A crisis erupted this morning when Kiki discovered that her beloved hamster is missing. Apparently last night Kiki popped out the plastic from one of the habitrail expansion spots so she could see the hamster better. Then we all went to bed. I’m sure it didn’t take the hamster long to discover the hole and disappear out of it. Unfortunately the cage was on top of a dresser, so once the hamter got down there was zero chance that it could return.

We had weeping and sadness. We frantically poked in corners and cleaned the room just in case. Now we’ve placed the cage with food down on the floor in the hopes that the hamster will return. If we can get the hamster coming back for food and water then her eventual recapture is inevitable. If I had live mouse traps I’d set those all over the house, but I don’t know where to get any without spending money. Usually I want the small rodents in my house dead not alive.

What surprised me in this event was my own reaction. I actually like and miss the little hamster. I was having fun guiding Kiki through the process of hand-taming. I was anticpating having a really tame and friendly hamster. Patches is sad too. He’d taken to going to visit the hamster 2 or 3 times a day. In fact the room that Gleek and Kiki share had been relabelled in Patches head as “the hamster room.” For now I just hope that the hamster comes back to eat.