Hamsters amuse as pets

Feb. 6, 1995
Hamsters are soft, furry, useless critters that sleep all day and chew their cages all night trying to escape. If their bedding is not changed frequently the room begins to smell like a zoo. My daughter wants more than her four.

While she cleans their cages, they tour the house inside plastic balls as they frantically search for a way to escape their spherical prison. Recently, she came to me in awe. “I heard the hamster bump his ball against the bathroom wall. When I went to look, the sphere had popped open and stopped next to the cat’s pan. The hamster was walking around the edge of the pan. When he noticed me, he promptly hopped back into his plastic cage and began rolling along as if the lid were still on.”

Sometimes we agree on the hamsters’ cuteness. Recently she called,

“Mom, come look what the hamster is doing.” When I got there, the hamster was stretching his tiny white body over the edge of the three- inch high pink cat bowl. With paws tightly grasping the rim, his nose luxuriated in the cat food. A couple feet behind him, the white cat warily viewed his antics. His yellow right and blue left eyes looked crossed from back and forth watching that mouth-sized critter brazenly helping itself to cat food.

The hamster continued to stuff cat food into his cheeks even after the cat was placed right in front of his hamster nose for a picture. The hamster did not blink, let alone leave the dish, until his cheeks bulged twice their size with stolen cat food.

“Now, if we just teach the fish to eat cat food,” I mused, “we could save a lot of money on pet food. No more exotic foods for the hamsters and fish, we’ll buy el-cheapo brand of cat food and all the pets will happily ‘pig out “on cat food.”

No one liked my idea.

Actually, hamsters don’t eat that much. It only looks like they do. After their bowl is filled with food they stuff their cheeks and hide food around the cage in the wood shavings. The bowl is big enough that when it is empty the hamsters curl up and sleep in it. With four hamsters and three cages, two have to share a luxury suite of cedar bedding, running wheel, food dish and plastic exercise tunnels.
At least they are supposed to share.

Hamsters are greedy. Some more than others. My daughter has learned to be careful which two share the big cage. One hamster hoarded every scrap of food he could and refused to let his suitemate have any. I think he slept with one eye open, waiting for food to be put in the dish. At the sound of dried food clinking, he made a hamster 100-yard dash to the bowl, stuffed everything he could into his elastic cheeks and headed back for the exercise tunnel. He did not stop until he had moved all the food from the dish over to his territory. That hamster was put in isolation and another, more amicable one took his place.

OK, they are soft, furry, selfish and not very useful, but once in a while they do amuse me with their antics.

(Joan Hershberger is a news clerk at the NewsTimes.)


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