Hamsterrific

I love animals. When I was a kid, if I saw an animal in need, I had to rescue it. No exceptions.

Now that I'm an adult, not much has changed.

We always had pets when I was growing up. At any given time we’d have a cat and a dog, sometimes a bird, sometimes fish, and countless rescued road turtles that laid claim to our backyard.

Despite this, I yearned for a pet that would be all my own. I not only wanted to name him, I wanted to be solely responsible for his health and well being - no need to share him with anybody else if I didn’t feel like it.

Of course I’d have to run ideas for real pets past my parents, but until that time came I tried trapping any manner of insects and small reptiles in tiny homemade cages.

(Yes, that's a lizard. Don't be an asshole about it.)

A bit of research in caring for things like crickets or moths might have served me well, as I seemed to go through quite a few of them during my initial stint as a makeshift pet owner. 

Apparently a diet of processed cheese squares and water is not sufficient to sustain life, because after a day or so, this is what I would find:

As each one died, I buried them in one of my mother’s large flower pots. I was doing 2-3 funerals a week. 

You would think that this would tip me off that perhaps I was doing something wrong here, but no. It was their fault for dying because my care was impeccable.

Now I’m not entirely sure how “upping the ante” equated to “getting a hamster”, but I was determined to go hamster or go home. Small and accessible, they were the perfect pet for one. All I had to do was convince my parents that I was responsible enough to handle it. 

I was prepared:

But I wasn't finished. A friend from school used to have a hamster and I was pretty sure she still had the cage. One visit to my friend and I was ready to prove how well I could care for an animal.

I set everything up on the kitchen table and waited for someone to notice.

My dad was that lucky someone. From the other end of the house, he spotted the cage.

He started to get angry about me having a hamster without permission, until he got close enough to see inside.

"What the hell is wrong with that hamster??"

It sat upright in the cage, pale and alert. 

If I couldn't have a real hamster, this paper one would have to do until my parents changed their minds. They needed to see me interact with a fake pet so that they would be assured of my capabilities.

We went for walks:

We stayed up late talking: 

It took one week for my parents to agree to spend the $4 on a real hamster after seeing the trial run. (I had to promise not to try to walk the real hamster, though).

You probably think I called him Fluffy, but in fact his name was Bugsby and he was in my care for approximately two months before my little sister drowned him accidentally while trying to give him a bath. 

Bugsby probably wishes I stuck with the paper hamster.