My Pet Hamsters

Peter’s new weirdness

Peter always did weird things to the stuff in his home, and it always had something to do with sleeping. Last time, he liked kicking out his roomies from using the wheel, just to sleep on it!

He’s a hassle again to his roomie, Abester How can he not, when he’s blocking the passage-way “downstairs?”

Hamster in a cup

Need coffee? Just add water!

Careful! It’s little hamster Abester

New house

I’ve been meaning to blog this for some time now, but never really had the time to take photos. Anyway, Peter and Abester have a new house. Take a look:

Losing Sheero is very painful, I’m still finding it hard to write on my dog blog. Our hamsters seem to be enjoying their new house though. Besides, I’ve finally got the batteries on my camera fixed, so you’ll be seeing more of these little critters in the coming days.

Meet Hawee and Nannee

These two hamster brothers have been with us for some time now, but we haven’t really found the right names for them till now. Since they strongly reminded us of our two “brother dogs,” Harry and Choknat, we named these two after their doggy counterparts!

Like the two dogs, these “hamster brothers” are pretty close, in a hamster sense at least. We see them cuddling up together while sleeping and play as if they’re dogs And yep, we’re sure they’re brothers. They were beloved Wendy’s sons.

Three blind mice (or baby hamsters, should I say)

Our female pet hamster, code named Abester, has just recently produced 3 healthy litters. Initially, it was four but one got eaten by Mommy herself. Hamsters have cannibalistic nature and they usually eat their own babies when threatened. Breeding hamsters seem to be a lot complicated than I thought it would be.

There was no warning or indication. No swelling tummy or unusual odor. We knew she was pregnant but we did not know when she would give birth. Our female hamster was in a small clear plastic housing together with 3 other male companions. I was watching National Geographic. Then I heard some commotion. To my surprise, Abester has produced 4 tiny miniature hamsters scattered all over the cage. She obviously felt threatened so she was already starting to munch on one of the litters. I quickly got all the other male hamsters out of the cage.

We had to use old newspaper to cover the whole cage. We also had to refrain from cleaning the cage to avoid triggering the hamster’s cannibalistic behavior. This gave the female hamster security for her and the babies. After a few days, the remaining 3 litters have survived. They all look like just their Mommy.

Memories of Wendy

We miss Wendy…

She’s the friendliest of our hamsters, making sure that she’d say hello every time we’re near her cage. She and Peter are my favorites, and they’re two of the three hamsters we’ve named—the third one was Abe-ster. The other three of our hamsters remain nameless.

I don’t know… But for me, we don’t name pets we don’t intend to keep. Leaving them unnamed makes it easier to part with them—there isn’t any emotional attachment. Well, we definitely had some emotional attachment to Wendy. It’s really sad that she’d be the first to go

Farewell, Wendy

Goodbye, dear Wendy. We’ll miss you

Why my sister’s hamsters are so fat

My hamster-expert uncle told me that hamsters have fast metabolism—they’re very active creatures. It’s either my sister’s hamsters just have a problem, or they’re just freaks of nature. I prefer to attribute it to the latter, for the simple reason that it’s really hard to find the underlying cause. I’m a bit new to hamster care, so I really wouldn’t know as much as I would about dogs.

The underlying cause is probably just weirdness.

And here’s Wendy posing for the camera.

Well, at least Wendy’s trying to make an effort to exercise. Peter is so lazy that he doesn’t even bother—the exercise wheel is just a makeshift hammock for him.

Social networking for hamsters

I thought I’ve seen it all with Dogster and Catster. I was very amused to find that my dogs can have their own “online circle of friends,” and now, I’m even more amused to find that there exists a similar networking site for pet hamsters and gerbils: hamsterster.com.

And to think I was skeptical for putting a blog for my hamsters. The creator of this site takes the cake, though it says on the About page that he doesn’t own a hamster. Ah well. Regardless of which, hamster owners have him to thank for giving them a venue to show of their little friends. Thanks, David!

The jealous female

A few days ago, an uncle of mine came over for some design work. Before he got into dog breeding, he used to care for a bunch of hamsters. I think he got into hamster breeding a bit, until my great-aunt (his mom) decided that they needed to get a dog. But before the hamsters went away, he pretty much had a thorough understanding of their behavior.

My uncle said that female hamsters are the trouble-makers in the breed. They’re more aggressive than the males. He’s right, actually. I noticed the same in our hamsters. Ever since we started caring for Wendy’s babies, we were able to somehow get an idea of how hamsters interact in a group.

The female ones are indeed very aggressive. The females that we have are the ones who usually fight over toys, food, and territory. My uncle said it’s a good thing that these females grew up together, else, they’ll probably end up killing each other. It’s ok to have two males and a female, but never two females and a male.

Heh. Funny how this behavior is similar to humans huh? Women are usually more jealous than men