Our Beasts, specifically

My favourite cute YOutube animals, including some familiar faces

Just me and my beasts

So now, another school year starts and I'm back in Peterborough, with a quarter of the present animal life I had with my love in Scarborough. Ah well.
Travelling with me on this particular educational adventure is Eddie the guinea pig and Tommy the hamster. For a recap, here are their images.



Eddie's getting bigger every day, and sweeter by the minute. In the picture above, he is smaller still than a book he is now bigger than. I need more pictures of him. Sadly, he peed on my bed last night during a cuddle+carrot session. Tommy has stopped chewing so voraciously on her bars because there's no man-smell around, and because I've hung annoying toys with bells in all the corners, which is where she liked to chew. Outsmarting a hamster is not easily done.
Actually, when I think about it, something about animal intelligence is offputting to a lot of people. I think that's the root of a lot of people's strange animal phobias and disrespect. Because the kind of intelligent many animals are is not something we can comprehend.
Anyway, with that, I just got an idea of what would make me feel good - I really must go off to the pet store and look at treats for the aminals.

Intense Piggie

Check This Out

And then....

So now, we are here in Scarberia with a great large troupe of very happy, very loved animals. There's Minou, who's on a diet, and looking svelter by the day. After a terrifying mid-camping trip disappearance act, she's now restricted to backyard outings. There's Carma, who's becoming quite the lapcat thanks to our proximity to a large conservation in which she hunts from dawn 'til dusk. Daisy is as obnoxiously dumb and loving as ever, and we're building her a dog run with minimal exposure to other passing dogs so that she can stop her silly barking. And Cuddles is finally on a food that has stopped her diarrhea, and all the cats and dog have pretty pretty collars to carry their Toronto pet licenses.

And then there are the rodents. Seven now in total, and all happy as clams. We did a bit of a spending spree at the new PetSmart on Kennedy, and bought all new cages for all the rodents. Up until then, we'd had a sort of motley crew of mismatching and homemade houses that were taking up too much space and were just visually disturbing and hard to work with. So now Eddie and Marvin are in matching guinea pig condos with nametags and functional spaces. It marks the end of their litter-trained life, which I think is a relief for both the piggies and their diligent cleaners. Tommy and Puffy The WonderHamster (the latter of which is pictured below) also have matching blue hamster cages, side-by-each, which really illustrates WHY Tommy was pregnant when we picked her up at the store; frankly, she's a bit of a whore. But a cute little orange one, so what can you do? Puffy is very bemused and confused by the smell of girl, and has just got a bloody nose from chewing on the bars so much to try and see her. And then, there's our latest additions; Two beautiful black/grey rattie girls - Ella is the larger of the two, with a white point on her chest up to her white chin. Pippie, short for Pipsqueak, is the smaller, with a little white line on her chest, dipping into her equally cute white belly. Pippie is very slow-moving when handled, and she likes to hide in L's shirt. Ella is the investigator and the escapee-in-training - she moves fast all the time, but has moments of great calm, especially on my shoulder, or in the crook of my elbow.

PIGGIES

Yes. This is why I kept a clause in there about this covering any other pets, because I am a voracious lover of aminals. (that was intentional. it's what i called animals when i was a wee bebe - just as pretty boy now says plaskit instead of plastic. classic, really) Anyway, here they are in all their glory. And then I really must get to work. Honestly. Seriously. Marvin is the sweet guy with the big white stripe and Edgar is the munchkin with the black fur with little gold flecks.

Ratchet's New Home...

...is with a friend o' mine who i still live with, kinda, or with whom my things reside, anyway. She fell in love with wee Ratchet-poo while playing with him in my room, and decided to take him on. So there you go.
I have adopted Tommy, the mommy hammy, and she is the new subject of this blog - though its focus shall extend itself to include any other pets I am exposed to/may acquire.

Here are the animals of my current existence:
Daisy - a dalmatian of ten years, who looks five and acts like a wee suck. My love always says she would climb inside her pocket if she could. If you knew Daisy, this would go without saying. Biggest lovingest dog around. I bought her a pretty collar with daisy flowers on it. When you feel her, you have to scare the cats away, because otherwise they'll push her out of her own food. I don't think I've ever seen her teeth, and she only ever growls in her sleep, when she's having very intense dreams.
Karma - a small grey inbred barn cat with attitude for days. She's my little buddy. We play together in the evenings. She's a bit of an ass, tho, always after the rodents and the dog and the other cats, and knocking things off counters and attacking you at odd moments.
Minou - a large round black and white cat with a very distinctly lady-like manner about her. Sleeps most of the time, eating and playing with Karma the rest of the time. She has the most perfect purr, she never knocks anything over or scratches where she shouldn't. She's a pig with food, but she's not near as pushy as Karma is. Basically, she's the perfect cat.
Cuddles - Cuddles is the daddy cat, despite being female. She's talkative, and bonded primarily with her mama, but she guards the house fearlessly. She's often misguided though. Any tension that she senses usually results in the dog getting attacked, because I guess she figures that dogs are inherently suspect. She's hilarious and very pretty.
Tommy - MY hamster, now, as decided by myself and the boyo. She's a caramelly colour with eyes that seem more beady than most hamster's eyes for some reason. She runs incessantly, and chews all the right things, instead of going for her cage bars. Her favourite thing is running in her large pink hamster ball.
Creamy - the boyo's hamster, what he named himself. Loves her ferociously, and honestly, I don't think I've ever known a four-year old to be more conscientious and caring over the long term than this little dude has been for his little Creamy. She's a sweetie, having been hand-raised patiently. She's a bar-chewer and a ball-runner.
Bandit - my love's hamster. the sweetest little dude. he's just not normal. he seems downright insulted when you put him in a ball, and he likes to wrestle and play with cat toys. he's more comfortable in his owner's hands than anywhere. he seems smart, almost, which is strange in a hamster, really. anyway, he's definitely special for a hamster.
The Ducks In The Pool - Yeah. Apparently they're here every year. I have dubbed them Erold and Edith, because of the way they walk. Don't ask. Anyway, they're there doing their thing, so I figured I'd record that.

So that's the word. Talk to y'all later.

Update Number Two

So Ratchet, the brown guy, has won himself over by virtue of a generally good disposition and two escapes. He is totally my hamster now. However, some doubt remains as to whether I'll really be keeping him. I'm really bonding with Tommy, the mommy hamster, and Evan's really in love with Creamy, the girl creamy baby he fought to keep. I also feel kind of bad for her, because those Crittertrail cages aren't really as big as they first appear, you know? But in any case, I'd be totally fine either way. But now onto the story of Ratchet's two escapes.

1. He was fighting with his creamy cagemate, Pinky, and so they needed to be separated. Pinky does most of the running, so I left him in the cage with the wheel and put Ratchet in a box. Love and I were headed to her place overnight, so we decided it would be best if the cage was off the ground, lest the housecat get into the room and into the box. So we balanced the box on top of the telly. Well, it fell. I got in that morning and it was spread out all over the bed with no Ratchet in sight. But he was easy to find. He must have just stayed where he fell, between the bed and the red chest on its side by the wall.
   
2. I had him out in the ball and he was having, well, a ball. I was talking to Love on the phone and noticed that he had stopped bashing into my chair. There was the ball, open by the door. He proved himself again. I got down on all fours and whispered "Ratchet!" and he popped his head out from under my bookshelf.

Now Pinky's in the box. He's been much more earnest in his escape attempts. He chewed through two layers of the cardboard in the corner, and he's discovered how to climb the side of the box. I'm a little concerned, as he's on his own tonight. Hmmm. We shall see. It hasn't happened yet, but the cardboard was looking a little thin and I was too stressed about my essay to do anything about it. Anywhooo, that's the update. Peace.

on various other species

Jitterball - my first gerbil. he was splotchy black and white and he escaped exactly forty times. he moved from nova scotia to manitoba with me. at one point, he escaped in one of our hotels while we were out at dinner. he used to get terrible seizures and nosebleeds, but he lived to be four, which is a relatively ripe old age, especially with a move across most of canada.
Knorrig - my second gerbil. knorrig means "nibble" in german. he was a classy black gerbil with a white streak down his chin. he never escaped. he spent most of his life destroying cages and chewing bars and smelling like ammonia. in my childish stories that i made up about my animals, he served as a head general in saffron's army. he also got terrible seizures and nosebleeds, but i pretty much expected that after Jitterball. he lived to be three, and he was never really very pleasant.
Honey - a budgie we adopted from a neighbor after she apparently killed and ate her cagemate. she sang nicely and had an adorable tendency to throw things out of her cage and scream until you put them back. she was never really hand tamed and we ended up giving her away. i tried really hard to train her, but it never took. ah well.
Portia, Jeremy and Fred - three small goldfish who all died getting trapped in the same toy. stupid toy design. before that, they all had suffered a painful ailment called tail-rot, which necessitated seclusion in a jam jar with medicated water one after the other. after all that, i bought them a new toy to congratulate their health and vitality, and then they all got stuck trying to swing up the end of the boot. gosh darn it.
Aretha - a black rat with white paws, she was my best friend through most of high school. she was always small, but very sweet. i would open her cage door as i sat down to homework, and she would run all about my desk, down my leg and onto the floor, settling into my lap for a nap after about an hour on the loose. i even took her to school once in my hoodie pocket, and she was so well-behaved that my rat-phobic english teacher bought a rat for her son thereafter. i ended up putting her down when she was three because she had developed quite a painful-sounding wheeze. i thought maybe it was the more common rat lung ailment, but when i took her to the vet, he found a lump in her lung. poor sweet rattie girl.
Pigwidgeon - my brother's guinea pig and the sweetest thing in the world. he would breep for attention regularly, and we'd play with him in the backyard for hours. he lived four years and died of no discernable problem, which is strange, because they can often live for eight or nine years.
Madonna - i couldn't be completely without animals for long in residence, and i ended up getting a betta who had a strange habit of dancing to madonna songs that were often cranked while i wrote papers. hence the name. he died after two years, probably of old age.
Petey Quaife - named for the bassist in the kinks, Petey was a red-eyed saimese-coloured rat with a strange skin condition. i was very allergic to him, as a male rat, because of the oils in his skin. his cage was a bit of an adaptation, and it never suited him well. i'd let him swim in the bathtub and run around the apartment when my roommate wasn't in, but he wasn't ever very still, and unlike Aretha, never took to comfortable naps on my lap. he would have to hide wrapped around my neck or in my sleeve, and the itching would get too unbearable, so i'd have to put him back before long, poor bugger. the only thing that alleviated his skin condition was frequent bathing with dove soap. He, along with Winton, was given to a drug-using friend of mine to care for, a man who later attempted to rob five banks in Peterborough. Shortly before this, he set them free. I doubt Petey made it out there in the wide world, but for some reason I can imagine Winton surviving.
Winton - a hooded gray and white rat, Winton was ordered especially for me from the local pet store to keep Petey company. but he was always very aggressive with his potential buddy, so they never got to be close. he was skittish from the start, though his skin bugged me much less. when i let him out, he would simply try to get back into his cage, which never worked out because it was a fishtank and he couldn't jump. we never really bonded, he and i, because i bought him shortly before the birth of my cat, and once the cat was around, i was scared to let him out for any extended period of time - not because of the teeny kitten, but because of his mother, who was always very ferocious.
Blue Razumikhin - the cat-love of my life. he was born in my shower because the neighbour's brother was brewing crack in the washroom where the mother cat was staying. the kittens, for the most part, stayed with me until they found homes, and i bonded particularly with Raz because of his dog-like charm and pushiness. he was named blue because one of the nights when they were at the neighbour's place, they dyed him blue with food colouring to compliment their leafs game. razumikhin is a character in dostoevsky's crime and punishment who falls in love with protagonist's sister. he was always very friendly and clumsy and sweet, which suited his namesake's character as well. i moved to an apartment in october with him, where he had the run of the house and a window in the basement to go in and out of. but i spent almost every night at my girlfriend's house, and one day, he just disappeared. i still long to find him, but in know it's over even if i do, because he does NOT get along with lisa's cats, who are older and settled in their dynamic. nonetheless, he was my perfect cat. he had a purr like a tiger and this lazy elegance to him, but he'd fetch little bits of paper for you and follow you around the house like a puppy. god i miss him. i'll never stop missing him.

there are others whose stay with me was too short and/or painful to mention, and i have yet to address the various dogs in my life, but these are the ones who taught me something, in one way or another, whether it be merely basic cage repairs or how to dismantle plumbing to rescue them or how to let go.

So They're Here

In a Crittertrail One cage with blue carefresh bedding. Two wee hamsters, Ratchet-poo and an unnamed creamy boy. They look like miniature full-grown hamsters now, and their awareness of their surroundings is making them in a bit of a skittish state. But they're sweet and cute and lovely, so there you go. Actually, I may just pester them currently, as they are awake and moving about. That's the update for now. Tata.

Welcome Ratchet-Poo, Bandit and Creamy!

So we went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth for so long, and finally, we got realistic with ourselves. I am keeping one, the sweetest boy is keeping the momma and one baby, and the prettiest girl is keeping one. At one point, we were each considering keeping two, but that's just silly. So now, here they are. Ratchet-poo is mine, and henceforth the subject of this blog.


Ratchet-Poo



Bandit



Creamy

hamster history

I got my first hamster when I was in grade one. Her name was Sarah, and she was pregnant. We didn't know that of course. She ate half her litter. Five survived and one was named E.T. after the movie. Yeah. He became the mascot of the third grade classroom at O'Kelly Public School.
My second hamster was Samantha. I got her when I was eleven. She escaped into the piano in the living room and we took the whole thing apart before we found her, somewhere between G and F#. Like many other female dwarf hamsters, she developed cysts on her hamster boobies. Very gross, but she was too cute for it to matter. She was my best friend for FOUR YEARS.
My third hamster, concurrently with Samantha, was Gabrielle, after Xena's hot sidekick. She was diabetic and pregnant. She died shortly after her litter was weaned. There were ten of them at the start, but three died. She was unmemorable because she was extremely unfriendly, but one of the babies, Jenny, was heartbreaking to give away.

My fourth hamster was Saffron. She got a sort of fake pregnancy, and died shortly thereafter of a horribly common hamster ailment, wet-tail, which is like diarrhea but way worse. I nursed her for weeks, until I saw she wasn't having fun anymore. The day I stopped nursing her was the night she died. I've never stopped wondering if she could've kept living. That's a lot of responsibility in eighth grade. While she was alive, she was a good friend. She'd sit in my hoodie pocket while I read for hours on end, never peeing, never getting squirmy.
While I had her, I had Paddington, a greyish teddy bear hamster we rescued from an unloving home. He was very very sweet, but his eyes kept sealing together. He escaped for three weeks once, and turned up FATTER than when he'd left. My brother's creamy teddy bear, Theodore, escaped around the same time, maybe hearing the food was good. But he came back sick from some poorly chosen ingestibles.

After Saffron, Aberforth. Aberforth was a very cool grey colour. He was always small, and when he was just a year old, his testicles got sucked back into his body because of a cancerous growth in his groin. Yeah. Poor bugger.

A year later, Sofi, another dwarf, also bought pregnant. I kept one of her twelve daughters, Magnoli, but she escaped once during a backyard play session and was never seen again. Sofi was the prettiest of hamsters, and like Samantha, developed cysts on her boobies. More experience and education meant that for two years, I drained these cysts with a syringe every month. Sadly, she died of wet-tail like Saffron.

I added it up, and I've had rodents for 3/5ths of my life. Hamsters make up eight years of that. I am not meant to exist without a small animal. It's just not meant to be.

Twelve days until Poo arrives!

a bevy of updates

so the wee baby family grew and grew until, one day, three of the babies had names.
one, a grey/black hamster with lighter eye patches, was named Bandit.
another, pinky-creamy like Tom, was named Creamy.
and a third, still mysterious and unchosen, had the name Poo, though no one yet knew it. least of all the wee baby.
there remain a brown coloured hamster with a white belly, and two indistinct creamy ones who haven't made themselves likeable by nature of their activity.
the brown hamster, bandit and creamy are all bombing around the cage, climbing things and experimenting, playing with each other, sniffing things and being fondled by the prettiest girl and her beautiful boy. they will all be friendly, for sure.
Poo must be the most active of hamsters. s/he need not be distinctive in any other way other than his/her level of activity. that is the gadfli's only requirement for hamster companionship. and a lack of incestual pregnancy would be good too, but this ain't no rando pet store, so we can rest assured at that.

an introduction

once upon a time, a very pretty girl got a very sweet hamster from a pet store for her very beautiful son. the beautiful son was playing a lot of Tom and Jerry on the ps2, hence, the very sweet hamster was named Tom. it didn't take long for the realization of Tom's apparent lack of testicles and apparent presence of nipples to set in. after that, it took even less time to notice a suspicious bulge around her midsection.
on january 31st, a litter of five wee hamsters was born, naked and pink. they grew so very fast, and homes had to be found pronto. the pretty girl decided she would take one, and for a time, the gadfli thought she would two. but upon reading up on hamster care and caging, and realizing that there is apparently a very real difference between syrian and dwarf hamsters, the gadfli got realistic with herself and decided to take one wee baby. she decided that, no matter what, this baby hamster's name was to be Poo. simple names work best for animals, in her experience - they always live the longest and fullest lives, and nothing weird happens to them. so Poo it was.
Poo has yet to be chosen from the litter of five, but when he/she gets here, he/she's going to be the most over-documented hamster around. this is because the gadfli AND the prettiest girl are OBSESSED with blogging and with hamsters, so what better way than to waste your rec time by recording for posterity the intimate lives and details of small fluffy rodents via blog?

so there you have it. the birth of Poo and her/his adventures in the grand world. please enjoy.