Five Lives of Little Dude

Reproduced from the article that appeared in our Suburban Journal dated September 15.

Can I get a hamster?" is one of those questions most parents dread. As a declared animal lover, I was actually OK with the idea.

When I was about 10, I had a hamster, too. He was a beautiful, cream-colored Syrian hamster named Cinnamon. He lived in a glass aquarium with a wire top. Occasionally, he would manage to lift the top off his cage at night when he would play. One of those times, he climbed up on my bed and curled up on my pillow to sleep with me. Really. Just call me the hamster-whisperer.

After taking Adam to the pet store, he decided on a Russian Dwarf variety, which is half the size of the standard hamster. Enter Little Dude, whom he received as a Christmas gift in 2008.  To be quite honest, I did not like him from the start. He was just mean. Not like my pet dog, er, I mean hamster I had as a child. Cinnamon could be handled and would sit contentedly on your shoulder while watching TV.

Not Little Dude. He looked for opportunities to bite the hand that fed him. One time he clamped down so hard he dangled from my finger as I reactively tried to withdraw from him. I nearly flung him across the room.

And let's be honest. It was Adam's hamster, but really my responsibility. I suppose I knew that would be the case. Every week I would clean out his deluxe cage, including the Habitrail tubes that extended his cage.
It was messy, and somehow I found it to be easier for me to do it. Like him or not, he was pampered. Little Dude dined on spinach and carrots, apples and raisins.

The little guy thought he had nine lives. Three times Little Dude was unintentionally dropped, knocking him unconscious for a few moments each time. And, more recently, he looked like he was on his last breath. I found him lying on his side, labored breathing.  Without being bitten, I picked him up and he was like a rag doll in my hands. He stayed that way for three days and then managed to come back from the grips of death. Seriously wrong.

The most recent mishap included our guinea pig, Iggy Piggy Lollipop. While I was cleaning out the Dude's cage, he climbed out and fell directly into Iggy's cage, which was directly underneath. Only I did not realize immediately that Little Dude had fallen from one cage into another.  When I finally discovered it, Dude was hunkered down in a corner, hidden under the bedding. Iggy was running frantically around her cage.
In theory, I should have been worried that the Big Pig would hurt the Dwarf Hamster. But then I remember it's Little Dude we're talking about. Of course, he was fine. That was only his fifth life.

But, alas, five lives was all he had in him. Just when I was beginning to think he would outlive us all, he died peacefully this summer. And I found myself missing him. Just a little.