Wednesday, November 09, 2005
A happy hamster is...
A hamster with full pouches and a wheel to run on!
I just left Tink running on her wheel. She likes to load up her pouches from her food tray, and then before she does anything else, she has to run on her wheel. Does she think she's going somewhere, I wonder? After she's run a bit, only then will she get off and hunt out a place to bury her stash. Sometimes she won't find a place she likes, and then she comes back to the wheel to run some more. Maybe, she thinks she's travelling on to a better place? Or maybe she runs on her wheel because she doesn't know what to do. Maybe she's thinking it through on the wheel. After a couple of rounds of wheel, poking-around, wheel, poking-around, she usually ends up dumping her stash in the same place she always dumps it.
Currently, that is in a pile on the top level of what used to be her little house. And she buries the rest on the bottom level of her house. You can see some of the stash behind her, in this picture. She's moved out of her house completely, it seems, and it's since become a storehouse. You'll notice from all the recent pictures that she's taken to sleeping all squashed up in one of the corners of her aquarium. Dunno why....funny hamster!Maybe I'm giving her too much credit for thinking. Maybe she just has this instinct that tells her to run! run! when her pouches are full.
I've read that some hamsters have moments of pure abandon and glee, where they'll do back flips in the air for no reason. Tink has never done that. Sometimes I wonder if that means she isn't happy. Maybe she's just demure, I tell myself. She does hang from the aquarium screen sometimes...usually when I've taken her wheel out of her cage for some reason or other. I always thought it was because she was bored...or maybe she was trying to get out...or just wanted to sniff a different stratosphere. It's hard to tell with any pet, isn't it, when they're happy? Well, except for cats, I guess, since they purr. The others, you just have to guess at.
Oh, and some people's hamsters really like rolling in sand. They seem to enjoy it, I've heard. But do they really?
Or is it just some instinct-thing? I gave Tink sand early on, but she didn't seem particularly thrilled with it. She didn't roll in it, anyhow. She peed in it once, and that was the last time I gave her sand.
I have seen her rolling in her bedding, sometimes. But then I figured maybe her back was just itchy. Maybe hamster happiness is just in our heads. Sigh! There's just no telling, is there? Oh, and I've heard some hamster-owners tell of their hamsters squeaking with joy when they were given a particular food. But again, sadly, Tink has been completely silent on the subject. And how did they know it was joy, anyway?
I have a theory about hamster-people, which I will enlarge upon some other day. But basically, I wonder if it isn't a certain kind of person...an introspective, obsessive-compulsive, creative type, perhaps?..that is drawn to hamsters. For evidence, I present to you all the hundreds of hamster sites out there on the web. In fact, I'll put a few choice links here on my sidebar. Better yet!--a page of links which substantially proves my point! You will not find such an explosion of creative energy about any other animal, I can almost guarantee it!
Ah, how I love my fellow hamster-people....
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
That's a chicken-lovin' hamster...
So far, there doesn't seem to be much difference in Tink's glucose levels. I just tested her yesterday, and her ketones are still super-high, and the glucose looked to be down just slightly. I think I'm going to try to find a way to post her test results here. Maybe I can put it in my "profile". Some way, anyway, to keep an online record of them....
Today I found her chewing on her basket-house again. She won't chew her wooden chew-sticks and she won't eat her Timothy hay, but she will chew wire and eat her basket-house. I just don't get it. I assume the basket is ok for her, being made of dried grass or reeds or some such thing. I'm also assuming that she wouldn't eat it if it was bad for her. (Do I assume too much?) She ate the whole top of the basket that way, actually. Maybe it's time to get her some new veggies.
I think I'm going to try to feeding her Glipizide twice a day, now. I'm not sure that once a day is cutting it. And if the ER part of it is ruined by the cutting of the tabs, then I probably need to feed it to her more often anyway....
It's so mysterious to me that she seems to like the Glipizide. She used to fight against drinking broth with fennugreek powder in it, but this stuff she laps right up. I'm surprised, because it looks really gross to me....the Glipizide kind of melts into the broth and forms this really sticky, stringy goop...like egg whites, almost. But bluish-red, from the colors of the tablets. I tried the broth with fennugreek, once, just to see what it tasted like....but I haven't had the courage to try this stuff!
I'm storing the crushed tabs in this tiny tupperware that used to have cloves in it. I washed it a couple of times, but it still smells like cloves, and so now the Glipizide smells like cloves, too. I've been wondering if it's really the clove smell/flavor she likes? That part smells good to me, too. But then again, who knows what tastes really good to a hamster? Do they have the same kind of taste preferences we have? Are they partial to things that taste sweet, or fried?
I gave her some chicken from the Cheesecake Factory, but I think it was too spicy for her. She took a couple of bites, but then she dropped it really fast, like a hot potato. So I guess she likes fried chicken, but not spicy chicken. I even washed it for her, hoping to wash off most of the spice. But even watered down, it must have been too much. It was pretty spicy to begin with. (I'm not sure I liked it too much, myself--it was good wrapped in the fried wonton and covered in ranch dressing, but on its own? Maybe not.)
Still, she's a chicken-loving hamster. It amuses Brett, that southern-fried-chicken-loving-boy, to no end, that she gets a tiny bowl of fried chicken every now and then, and eats it right up. I even started freezing it, so it would last longer, and she liked that almost as much. Those are her chicken-popsicles. She likes frozen tofu, too.
Well, I'm off to bed....
