Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Tink died tonight
She died in my hands.
I can't stop crying.
She shouldn't have died. She was getting better. I thought so, anyway.
Then, tonight, I found her hunched in a little ball, and kind of swaying, or heaving, as if her breathing was labored. But she wasn't making any noise, no wheezing. When I picked her up, she bit me viciously, several times. So she must have been feeling really bad.
Then she just sat, all hunched up, with her eyes closed, and her body heaving in that weird way. I stroked her little head for a while. She was making her clicking noise, really really faintly. Maybe I should have put her back in her cage. I don't know. She hadn't eaten her food, or drank her water, for a day. I put some tofu near her, and some water, but she turned her back on them. It was the first time I've seen her uninterested in fresh scents. And when she did that, I noticed she wasn't using her hind legs. She was dragging herself forward with her front legs, only. I tried to drop some chicken broth down her throat, but she wasn't swallowing. Then she made a funny gurgling noise, and opened her mouth really wide, like she was gasping for breath, and her good eye went really big. And that's how she died. She stopped moving after that, and went limp, and wasn't breathing.
I closed her eye, and her mouth, and curled her up in her favorite sleep position. I've wrapped her up in soft tissues.
I've cried and cried, and still can't stop. Maybe I killed her. Maybe I made her choke. Maybe the chicken broth went into her lungs and she couldn't breathe. Maybe my handling her when she was so ill made her have a heart attack. Maybe if I had just left her alone. Maybe if I had noticed earlier, and gotten her to eat earlier.
God, I miss her so much already. The apartment is so quiet. I'm going to bury her up in the wilderness at the end of Lake Ave, with her favorite rock. It's really beautiful there. It's a good place for her.
So, this is the end of the blog. There isn't much point to it, without Tink.
I can't stop crying.
She shouldn't have died. She was getting better. I thought so, anyway.
Then, tonight, I found her hunched in a little ball, and kind of swaying, or heaving, as if her breathing was labored. But she wasn't making any noise, no wheezing. When I picked her up, she bit me viciously, several times. So she must have been feeling really bad.
Then she just sat, all hunched up, with her eyes closed, and her body heaving in that weird way. I stroked her little head for a while. She was making her clicking noise, really really faintly. Maybe I should have put her back in her cage. I don't know. She hadn't eaten her food, or drank her water, for a day. I put some tofu near her, and some water, but she turned her back on them. It was the first time I've seen her uninterested in fresh scents. And when she did that, I noticed she wasn't using her hind legs. She was dragging herself forward with her front legs, only. I tried to drop some chicken broth down her throat, but she wasn't swallowing. Then she made a funny gurgling noise, and opened her mouth really wide, like she was gasping for breath, and her good eye went really big. And that's how she died. She stopped moving after that, and went limp, and wasn't breathing.
I closed her eye, and her mouth, and curled her up in her favorite sleep position. I've wrapped her up in soft tissues.
I've cried and cried, and still can't stop. Maybe I killed her. Maybe I made her choke. Maybe the chicken broth went into her lungs and she couldn't breathe. Maybe my handling her when she was so ill made her have a heart attack. Maybe if I had just left her alone. Maybe if I had noticed earlier, and gotten her to eat earlier.
God, I miss her so much already. The apartment is so quiet. I'm going to bury her up in the wilderness at the end of Lake Ave, with her favorite rock. It's really beautiful there. It's a good place for her.
So, this is the end of the blog. There isn't much point to it, without Tink.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Easter...Tink's Bloody Sunday
Happy Easter!!
Tink got her Easter dinner early...boiled egg and fresh baby broccoli...yum!
The good: she's back to her old sluggish self. I guess that's good? And the lump under her chin is gone! Yay!The bad: her bad eye appears to be bleeding. Every morning, as I said earlier, I
take a q-tip and some sterile eye irrigating solution, and wipe the gunk off from around her eye. Today, it was crusted over, so it took almost 15 damp q-tips. Then I noticed that the q-tips were turning brown-ish. Then red. Which freaked me out a little. Once she could open her eye, she did, and I could see why it was bleeding -- there was a bloody sort of blister on the surface of her eye. The eye itself is even smaller than it was two days ago, so I'm thinking that I was right in thinking that the layers are sloughing off. Maybe this is some inner part of her eye? It looks disgusting, anyway.
And I saw her scratch at it with her little nails, and smear blood all over her nose. That must be why her eye was so crusty. I'm at a loss here, but I think I'd better not intervene. I'm going to just leave her be and let nature, and her instincts, take their course. If she thinks she should scratch at it...well, maybe she should. Maybe that's part of the process of getting rid of the degenerating eye... Anyhow, I can't think of a way to stop her from doing it. And I can't think what else I could do -- there's no medicine to put on it, besides her drops, which I DID apply, but I'm not even sure if I should be doing that. It's one thing to put them in a regular sort of eye, but should they be put in a bleeding, open-wound of an eye? And the ointment is just a kind of artificial tears, like her drops are, so I don't see any point in putting more on, and making her all greasy all over again. I don't know. I'm going to look "eyes" up on the web and see what I find.
After I lay down for a bit. Still feeling awfully sick. (And no worries -- I am very very very carefully washing my hands before and after handling Tink, and keeping her away from my face and my breathing. The last thing she needs is to get a cold, on top of everything else.)
Crazy yesterday
<== the enormous block of tofu slowed her down only a littleI am feeling really sick this weekend. Yesterday was bad -- I woke up at 8 in the morning (and I had only gone to bed at 3 am, so after only 5 hours of sleep) with weird weird dreams -- the kind that you feel you are clawing your way out of, trying to wake up, but you can't, you know? -- and found I was so stuffed up I couldn't go back to sleep. Also, I could hear Tink scrabbling in her cage and I was wondering what she was doing. So I got up and took some Nyquil, and then took a look at Tink.
Now this was really weird. Tink was like a maniac -- like a hamster on Speed, or on chocolate-covered expresso beans. I know she's more alert and active at night, but this was WEIRDLY alert and active. She has her usual pace, and this was like she was on fast-forward. Or 8 months younger. She was zipping around and around her cage, hopping on things, jumping on her wheel for 2 seconds, then jumping off, zipping through her little house, and if she ever stopped it was just for a second, for her to stand on her hind legs and sniff the air (she could smell me). And her good eye was really wide open, really round.
Now you have to understand...this is after a couple of weeks of her barely stumbling around her cage, what with the eye thing, on top of the diabetes -- and even before that -- she was never active like this. At first I was happy, and laughing, telling her how nice it was to see her so well. But then, as I watched, it started to dawn on me that perhaps this was not her "being well", but something else.
The only different thing I'd done was put vitamin drops in her water. Now, I know they have some glucose in them, but I thought since she was recovering with the bad eye, that perhaps it would do more good than harm. But after watching her spazzing-out, I thought I'd better take her water out and replace it. No more vitamin drops for Tink!
I took her out of her cage and let her zoom around the bathroom for a bit. She was really starting to worry me. I had noticed she hadn't eaten any of her tofu and veggies -- where was she getting the energy? And it couldn't be good to be over-exerting herself, could it? So I took her in the kitchen and got out a block of her favorite tofu. That slowed her down for a couple of minutes. She ate like 4 bites of it.
And the scrabbling? She has this little feeder container, that holds her seed mix, and it's supposed to just dribble down and replace what she's taken out. But she had taken it into her head to empty the thing. When I first came over to check on her, she was in there, dragging and kicking seeds out with all four legs, and she had basically emptyied the bin onto the floor of her cage. I wonder if she was looking for something specific, or if she just decided she wasn't going to wait for things to come to her, she wanted choices. She's a smart hamster. So no more seed-bin, either, for Tink! I'll go back to putting her mix in a bowl, since she seems to want better access to it.
Anyway, so that was Tink yesterday. When I got up again, at like 2 pm, she was fast asleep, and sleeping hard. No surprise there, she must have worn herself out, poor thing.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Squeak!
I just thought of it...I know what Tink's squawking reminds me of. It sounds EXACTLY like a squeaky toy. Clara and Erik's dog, Turtle, has one, and every time he chews on it, it squeaks. I guess it's supposed to sound like some small animal, dying.
And now I know it does....disturbingly so....
And now I know it does....disturbingly so....
More worries...more questions...
<== the eye stationTink is still recovering. Still keeping that eye closed. Still not back to her happy, healthy self, yet.
I took a look at her eye tonight, and am wondering...it looks less whitish, somehow. More black, more normal-ish. I wonder if that means there's a chance for it? But it looks even smaller than last time. Maybe the surface of it is sloughing off? I guess I don't know much about eyes. Maybe if I have a chance, I'll look it up.
<== weird lump under her chinA couple of days ago, I had a terrible "oh no!" moment...I was looking Tink over, and I found this little lump right under her chin. I took a picture of it, and am going to ask my sister about it, because she had a mouse that developed a tumor, and I wonder if this could be something similar? But the next day, and then again today, it seemed much smaller, and I'm breathing a tentative sigh of relief. Maybe it was just the hamster equivalent of a zit. Which would make sense, considering she's been pretty greasy, and that lump is on the same side as her bad eye, where all the ointment's been applied. But THEN I had another worrisome thought -- what if it IS a tumor, and what if there's more than one? What if it was a tumor pushing her eye out like that? But then, why would it just go away? So maybe it's not a tumor. See, now I have tons more unanswered questions.
Anyway.
I've been gone the last night and today, and worried about leaving her, but she seemed just fine when I got back today. Maybe a little fatter, or is that wishful thinking?
Her fur on her face was back to normal, but the fur on her back still looks greasy. I've been dabbing some warm, soapy water on it with a q-tip, and then rinsing it off...maybe every two days or so. I keep hoping I can help accelerate the cleaning of her fur that way. But I don't know that I'm being much help. Her skin looks a bit red and irritated -- a lot like the pictures in that last post. I think she's been scratching it a lot. I'm assuming because she's trying to groom herself. I hope, anyway.
Worrying, worrying...
I know what Brett would say: "Leave that damn hamster alone!!"
Sigh. But if I could do that...if I weren't obsessive-compulsive, I probably wouldn't have been drawn to hamsters in the first place...
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
A little better
Tink is better, I think. She's keeping the bad eye closed, now that it's shrunk back to a normal size, but every morning I pry it open to take a look, and wipe the gunk around it off. I think her eye is literally dissolving -- turning into mush, I guess -- because it seems like every morning it's smaller and harder to identify as an "eye". I'm a little worried about her other eye, now, because yesterday it looked like she was sleeping with that eye open -- which is not normal. But today it seemed ok, and she does seem to be able to close it. I'm keeping close watch.
She's very grumpy, as is expected. The better she gets, the less sweet and more grumpy she gets. The last two days she's been really bitey -- and not love pecks or nips, either! But maybe that's a good sign -- that she has more strength I suppose? And, she's been getting really vocal. She makes this sound which sounds like a bird "squawk" every time i touch her bad eye. And what about her fur? It's been 3 days since she's had ointment on her, but her fur doesn't seem much improved. I don't want to bathe her, since she's been through so much already. But I would have thought the ointment would have been rubbed off of her by now.
And she's still hunching.
Poor thing. She's been through so much! It's so inspiring. She just keeps plugging on, no matter how bad life gets.Sunday, April 09, 2006
The Franken-Eye
Tink's normal eyes
I went up to visit Clara in San Francisco for about 10 days. I was supposed to relax, hang out, and get lots of job applications done. Unfortunately, there was a most tragic turn of events. I had brought Tink, in her aquarium, and a big tub of toys and food up with me. Six days into it, I noticed that Tink seemed to be having trouble closing her right eye. I showed it to Clara, and she thought we should at least put something on it, to keep it moist. She told me how when they operated on mice, they had to put vaseline on their eyes because the mice wouldn't close their eyes when they were under anesthesia. I hunted online for dwarf hamsters and eye trouble, and found this article on Sputnik and Kosmo, two dwarfs who had glaucoma. It also mentioned something about putting ointment on the eyes, so they wouldn't dry out. So Clara and I dabbed a little Neosporin on Tink's eye, and went to bed.
(Note: This was not a good idea, I later learned. Neosporin shouldn't be put into anyone's eye, human or animal. Vaseline isn't great, but it's still better than Neosporin. I read on a vet site about prolapsed eyes in dogs, that one could flush the eye with saline, and then use KY jelly. That makes more sense, as KY jelly is water-based. But, better yet, is ointment from the store especially formulated for eyes. We couldn't have gotten it that night, as all the stores were already closed, but we should've used Vaseline rather than Neosporin. Sigh. I am always learning.)
The Franken-Eye
The next day, Tink looked AWFUL. She had rubbed the Neosporin all over herself while grooming, which flattened her hair and made her look half her size. This in turn made her eye look all the bigger, and scarier. I called her vet in LA, and she said it was urgent for Tink to see a vet, that there might be some sort of infection behind her eye that was swelling and pushing the eye out. So I made an appointment for that evening with an unknown vet up in San Francisco.
The place was very nice, with clean, smart little appointment rooms equipped with metal tables. All the literature and pictures on the walls were about cats and dogs. Ah, the usual pet hospital scenario.
I started to get uneasy -- I had seen places like this before -- two other pet hospitals who claimed to work with exotics, but in actuality seemed to know very little about rodents, and charged you $70 for the privilege of being told that they had no idea what was wrong with your hamster.
The vet was kind enough, but again, there were some little things which made me more uneasy about his abilities with hamsters. First of all, he seemed reluctant to try to pick her up, and mentioned how the dwarf hamsters were very "bitey", which struck me as odd -- because they're not, really, as a species -- I've heard of some darling, sweet hamsters that never bit in their lives. And Tink doesn't, either, unless you wake her up, or she's having a bad diabetic-day.
Then, once he had picked her up, he was having some trouble holding her. He pressed her eye, and said it was "firm", but didn't explain what that meant. He put her back down and didn't touch her again. He mentioned how there might be some sort of infection behind the eye -- exactly what my regular vet had said -- but how there was no way to tell without operating. He offered to stay late and operate, which was nice, at least. He left and sent an assistant in with a print-out of all the costs. I'd seen that before, too. The sign of a large, successful, impersonal operation. It was going to cost a couple hundred dollars in the end, and with 50/50 odds that Tink would survive. Plus I wouldn't be able to stay with her. They'd do the operation after-hours and call me to let me know what happened. Then, if she survived, they'd keep her there overnight in an incubator.
Oh God! There just had to be another way. So I said no to the operation, and yes to drops and ointment. I thought I'd rather be with her if she was going to die, than let her die in some strange place under anesthesia.
She was very tired, too, it seemed -- too tired to bite (which she does quite readily, when provoked), and actually fell asleep in my hand a couple of times while Clara and I tried to clean ointment off of her. That's a first for her. We had taken to trying to clean her with cotton pads and some drops of gentle dog shampoo in warm water, and then using a hair-dryer and tiny, soft cosmetic brushes to fluff her fur. It was a losing battle, though, because even if we did manage to get her cleaner, we had to put more ointment on her, and THAT would eventually end up all over her head, again. She was so tired and miserable, that she just lay in my hands through all this, occasionally dozing off. If she got restless, I'd let her run around on the table, and she looked really frightful -- all hunched and scraggly, with one big staring eye, the other, normal, eye scrunched closed. Clara pointed out her "hunch" -- she said that her mice would do that when they were really miserable or about to die.
Those two days -- Wednesday and Thursday -- were the worst. By Thursday night I was worried that I had made the wrong choice, that Tink was in continual pain, that she had a raging infection in her eye. That night, when I held her, her tiny body was shivering all over. And her beautiful fur, which she had always kept so neat and clean, was matted flat against her head in some places, stuck up in stiff spikes in others. Her little poops were all wrong, too -- the wrong color, and too soft. Probably because she was ingesting about 50 percent of the medicine we managed to get on her, through her process of grooming. Most heart-breaking of all was, though, was how sweetly she was bearing her misfortune. She was more patient than I had ever seen her. By that night, she seemed to have learned to brace herself and keep still when I applied her drops and smoothed on a glob of ointment. In fact, as I held her and gently brushed at her matted hair, she licked my hand and fingers. I think she was grooming me, too. That's when I decided it didn't matter how much it would cost -- I would put it on a credit card -- but I would take her to her regular vet for that surgery.
Friday, I drove back to LA. Tink's eye was looking better, but I made an appointment with her vet anyway, for Saturday morning, and checked on the price of surgery. It was less than half of what that other place was going to charge. Of course. I kept stopping to check on her -- at one point I pulled off of the freeway in a panic -- because she wasn't moving, or responding to my voice. I think she was just deeply asleep. She woke up when I picked her up, thank God, and I doubled my driving speed after that, trying to get her home faster.
Saturday was the end of the nightmare. That morning, Tink's eye had shrank back to almost normal size, AND we were going to see her vet. What a relief to get to Dr. Oliver's office! Small, cramped, filled to the brim with pictures and stuffed animals of all kinds. And Dr. Oliver is the best. She wrapped Tink in a towel and started washing off her eye -- and Tink just sat there! No squirming. I said how shocking that was, and she joked that she had a unique gift for torturing animals. But of course, the opposite is true. She has the confidence and assurance of lots of experience, and once you see that, you realize how little those other vets know.
So Tink didn't need surgery, Dr. Oliver thought. She hoped that the eye would simply get reabsorbed into Tink's body, and diasappear. The eye itself was whitish -- Dr. Oliver said it's completely gone. She is almost certainly blind in that eye, and it isn't producing tears, so I have to keep it lubricated with drops -- but no more ointment, yay! And as a result, Tink's fur is starting to look a little more normal. And today, Tink was closing her eye on her own! That means that there's no nerve damage, I think.
The week of the Franken-Eye is over.
I went up to visit Clara in San Francisco for about 10 days. I was supposed to relax, hang out, and get lots of job applications done. Unfortunately, there was a most tragic turn of events. I had brought Tink, in her aquarium, and a big tub of toys and food up with me. Six days into it, I noticed that Tink seemed to be having trouble closing her right eye. I showed it to Clara, and she thought we should at least put something on it, to keep it moist. She told me how when they operated on mice, they had to put vaseline on their eyes because the mice wouldn't close their eyes when they were under anesthesia. I hunted online for dwarf hamsters and eye trouble, and found this article on Sputnik and Kosmo, two dwarfs who had glaucoma. It also mentioned something about putting ointment on the eyes, so they wouldn't dry out. So Clara and I dabbed a little Neosporin on Tink's eye, and went to bed. (Note: This was not a good idea, I later learned. Neosporin shouldn't be put into anyone's eye, human or animal. Vaseline isn't great, but it's still better than Neosporin. I read on a vet site about prolapsed eyes in dogs, that one could flush the eye with saline, and then use KY jelly. That makes more sense, as KY jelly is water-based. But, better yet, is ointment from the store especially formulated for eyes. We couldn't have gotten it that night, as all the stores were already closed, but we should've used Vaseline rather than Neosporin. Sigh. I am always learning.)
The Franken-Eye
The next day, Tink looked AWFUL. She had rubbed the Neosporin all over herself while grooming, which flattened her hair and made her look half her size. This in turn made her eye look all the bigger, and scarier. I called her vet in LA, and she said it was urgent for Tink to see a vet, that there might be some sort of infection behind her eye that was swelling and pushing the eye out. So I made an appointment for that evening with an unknown vet up in San Francisco. The place was very nice, with clean, smart little appointment rooms equipped with metal tables. All the literature and pictures on the walls were about cats and dogs. Ah, the usual pet hospital scenario.
I started to get uneasy -- I had seen places like this before -- two other pet hospitals who claimed to work with exotics, but in actuality seemed to know very little about rodents, and charged you $70 for the privilege of being told that they had no idea what was wrong with your hamster.
The vet was kind enough, but again, there were some little things which made me more uneasy about his abilities with hamsters. First of all, he seemed reluctant to try to pick her up, and mentioned how the dwarf hamsters were very "bitey", which struck me as odd -- because they're not, really, as a species -- I've heard of some darling, sweet hamsters that never bit in their lives. And Tink doesn't, either, unless you wake her up, or she's having a bad diabetic-day.
Then, once he had picked her up, he was having some trouble holding her. He pressed her eye, and said it was "firm", but didn't explain what that meant. He put her back down and didn't touch her again. He mentioned how there might be some sort of infection behind the eye -- exactly what my regular vet had said -- but how there was no way to tell without operating. He offered to stay late and operate, which was nice, at least. He left and sent an assistant in with a print-out of all the costs. I'd seen that before, too. The sign of a large, successful, impersonal operation. It was going to cost a couple hundred dollars in the end, and with 50/50 odds that Tink would survive. Plus I wouldn't be able to stay with her. They'd do the operation after-hours and call me to let me know what happened. Then, if she survived, they'd keep her there overnight in an incubator.
Oh God! There just had to be another way. So I said no to the operation, and yes to drops and ointment. I thought I'd rather be with her if she was going to die, than let her die in some strange place under anesthesia.
I asked if they had some way to clean her fur off, and he said that since she was more comfortable with me holding her, I should just do it at home with q-tips and some diluted dish-soap. Hmm. Not a very satisfying answer...
The next day her eye hadn't improved. In fact, what appeared to be pus had started oozing from the corners of her eyes. I put ointment and drops on her eye about every 4 hours. The eye was becoming increasingly sensitive -- she was chattering continually, now, when I picked her up, and would let out a big "squawk!" when I tried to clean it with a q-tip, and would jerk when the drops hit her eye, which made them run down into her nose, and then she would sneeze and start frantically grooming at her whiskers.She was very tired, too, it seemed -- too tired to bite (which she does quite readily, when provoked), and actually fell asleep in my hand a couple of times while Clara and I tried to clean ointment off of her. That's a first for her. We had taken to trying to clean her with cotton pads and some drops of gentle dog shampoo in warm water, and then using a hair-dryer and tiny, soft cosmetic brushes to fluff her fur. It was a losing battle, though, because even if we did manage to get her cleaner, we had to put more ointment on her, and THAT would eventually end up all over her head, again. She was so tired and miserable, that she just lay in my hands through all this, occasionally dozing off. If she got restless, I'd let her run around on the table, and she looked really frightful -- all hunched and scraggly, with one big staring eye, the other, normal, eye scrunched closed. Clara pointed out her "hunch" -- she said that her mice would do that when they were really miserable or about to die.
Those two days -- Wednesday and Thursday -- were the worst. By Thursday night I was worried that I had made the wrong choice, that Tink was in continual pain, that she had a raging infection in her eye. That night, when I held her, her tiny body was shivering all over. And her beautiful fur, which she had always kept so neat and clean, was matted flat against her head in some places, stuck up in stiff spikes in others. Her little poops were all wrong, too -- the wrong color, and too soft. Probably because she was ingesting about 50 percent of the medicine we managed to get on her, through her process of grooming. Most heart-breaking of all was, though, was how sweetly she was bearing her misfortune. She was more patient than I had ever seen her. By that night, she seemed to have learned to brace herself and keep still when I applied her drops and smoothed on a glob of ointment. In fact, as I held her and gently brushed at her matted hair, she licked my hand and fingers. I think she was grooming me, too. That's when I decided it didn't matter how much it would cost -- I would put it on a credit card -- but I would take her to her regular vet for that surgery.
Friday, I drove back to LA. Tink's eye was looking better, but I made an appointment with her vet anyway, for Saturday morning, and checked on the price of surgery. It was less than half of what that other place was going to charge. Of course. I kept stopping to check on her -- at one point I pulled off of the freeway in a panic -- because she wasn't moving, or responding to my voice. I think she was just deeply asleep. She woke up when I picked her up, thank God, and I doubled my driving speed after that, trying to get her home faster.
Saturday was the end of the nightmare. That morning, Tink's eye had shrank back to almost normal size, AND we were going to see her vet. What a relief to get to Dr. Oliver's office! Small, cramped, filled to the brim with pictures and stuffed animals of all kinds. And Dr. Oliver is the best. She wrapped Tink in a towel and started washing off her eye -- and Tink just sat there! No squirming. I said how shocking that was, and she joked that she had a unique gift for torturing animals. But of course, the opposite is true. She has the confidence and assurance of lots of experience, and once you see that, you realize how little those other vets know.
So Tink didn't need surgery, Dr. Oliver thought. She hoped that the eye would simply get reabsorbed into Tink's body, and diasappear. The eye itself was whitish -- Dr. Oliver said it's completely gone. She is almost certainly blind in that eye, and it isn't producing tears, so I have to keep it lubricated with drops -- but no more ointment, yay! And as a result, Tink's fur is starting to look a little more normal. And today, Tink was closing her eye on her own! That means that there's no nerve damage, I think.
The week of the Franken-Eye is over.
Friday, February 10, 2006
A day of firsts...Tink chatters, gets prayed for, rides her wheel, sleeps on pink quartz...
So, I have read that hamsters will chatter if they feel threatened (or maybe it's angry?) -- anyhow, it's not a good thing. And for the first time ever, ever, Tink did that today. She normally just bites me, and the degree of viciousness
usually corresponds to how annoyed she is. But today, I let her run around in her ball for a long time, and when I picked her up, I found she had soaked herself. That sometimes happens if she pees while she's in her ball, and then just sits there instead of rolling away. I think when she just sits in her pee, it means she's having a bad diabetic-day.
Plus, she had poo stuck to her back! So, I tried dabbing at her with her towel to dry her off. As usual when she doesn't like it, she gently nipped my fingers a couple of times. But then, without warning, she started making this weird noise. It actually sounds more like "tock-tock-tock", than like "chattering". I really wonder how she does it! She doesn't open her mouth. Maybe it's far back in her throat or something? Does she even HAVE vocal chords?
Anyhow, it's pretty loud, and pretty unmistakeable. I was on the phone with Brett when it happened, and he could hear it on the other end of the line. I must confess, even though I know it's probably a bad sign -- it was kind of a thrill to hear Tink making ANY sort of communicative noise! She's always been silent. There's only a few ways she can make noise...like gnawing on metal, or on her china bowls, or running in her wheel really fast. She also makes a crunching noise, sometimes, when she's sleeping, and I guess she's snacking on something in her pouch. And there's the maraca-like rattle, when I pick her up, and the stuff in her pouches shifts around. But none of those noises are done with vocal-chords/throat/voice, and this one, I think, is!!!
It was very exciting for me.
I talked to my Mom and Dad today, and I told them about that, and my Mom wondered if maybe she was feeling bad -- like she had a headache or something? Probably so, I told them. They were very sorry for her, and they said they would put her on their Prayer Chain List. I have great faith in their Prayer Chain List, actually, so I was super-pleased that Tink was going on it. This is the first time they've EVER put a pet on their list, I think. We couldn't think -- between us -- whether there was a patron saint of pets? I'm sure there is, but we couldn't think who, unless it was St. Francis, or maybe St. Blas, on whose saint-day you can bring your pets in to get blessed.
You know what...I should find out when that is. Tink can use all the blessings she can get, at this point!! Poor sweetie.
Well here are some pictures for you....today she was spontaneously climbing her little house and trying to hang from the screen -- she hasn't done that in ages. I think she has to be feeling very energetic. She falls off, eventually, but she went in for a couple of rounds of it today. Once she jumped from her house to the top of the wheel, and then of course it rolled, and she got dumped off. That was the first time I've ever seen her do THAT, too.
I was wondering if she was hot, maybe, today? It felt warm in this back room. I put her pink quartz rock in the freezer to chill it, and gave her an ice cube, in case she WAS hot. But she ignored both the ice and her rock. Later, though, I found her sleeping on it. That's another first. For this particular rock, anyhow.
usually corresponds to how annoyed she is. But today, I let her run around in her ball for a long time, and when I picked her up, I found she had soaked herself. That sometimes happens if she pees while she's in her ball, and then just sits there instead of rolling away. I think when she just sits in her pee, it means she's having a bad diabetic-day.
Plus, she had poo stuck to her back! So, I tried dabbing at her with her towel to dry her off. As usual when she doesn't like it, she gently nipped my fingers a couple of times. But then, without warning, she started making this weird noise. It actually sounds more like "tock-tock-tock", than like "chattering". I really wonder how she does it! She doesn't open her mouth. Maybe it's far back in her throat or something? Does she even HAVE vocal chords?
Anyhow, it's pretty loud, and pretty unmistakeable. I was on the phone with Brett when it happened, and he could hear it on the other end of the line. I must confess, even though I know it's probably a bad sign -- it was kind of a thrill to hear Tink making ANY sort of communicative noise! She's always been silent. There's only a few ways she can make noise...like gnawing on metal, or on her china bowls, or running in her wheel really fast. She also makes a crunching noise, sometimes, when she's sleeping, and I guess she's snacking on something in her pouch. And there's the maraca-like rattle, when I pick her up, and the stuff in her pouches shifts around. But none of those noises are done with vocal-chords/throat/voice, and this one, I think, is!!!
It was very exciting for me.
I talked to my Mom and Dad today, and I told them about that, and my Mom wondered if maybe she was feeling bad -- like she had a headache or something? Probably so, I told them. They were very sorry for her, and they said they would put her on their Prayer Chain List. I have great faith in their Prayer Chain List, actually, so I was super-pleased that Tink was going on it. This is the first time they've EVER put a pet on their list, I think. We couldn't think -- between us -- whether there was a patron saint of pets? I'm sure there is, but we couldn't think who, unless it was St. Francis, or maybe St. Blas, on whose saint-day you can bring your pets in to get blessed.
You know what...I should find out when that is. Tink can use all the blessings she can get, at this point!! Poor sweetie.
Well here are some pictures for you....today she was spontaneously climbing her little house and trying to hang from the screen -- she hasn't done that in ages. I think she has to be feeling very energetic. She falls off, eventually, but she went in for a couple of rounds of it today. Once she jumped from her house to the top of the wheel, and then of course it rolled, and she got dumped off. That was the first time I've ever seen her do THAT, too.
I was wondering if she was hot, maybe, today? It felt warm in this back room. I put her pink quartz rock in the freezer to chill it, and gave her an ice cube, in case she WAS hot. But she ignored both the ice and her rock. Later, though, I found her sleeping on it. That's another first. For this particular rock, anyhow. Hmm. Maybe the Prayer Chain is working....maybe that's why she seems so playful, all of a sudden....
Or maybe she got heat-stroke, and this is the beginning of the end...
Sigh. Ah well, bed time for me. There she goes, climbing her house again -- all lively at the beginning of her "day" and the ending of mine!
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Banana Glipizide
Tink is sleeping right now. I love her little fast breathing when she sleeps!
So I've been feeding her her new Glipizide for a week or two now...it's a special formulation by a real vet pharmacy place. I had to drive out to Culver City and pay $30 for it, and it only will last a month. Expensive, AND a pain. But It's almost worth it, because it comes with a cool syringe, and it's all lovely and mixed already, and supposedly tastes like banana. And Tink drinks it right up. No struggles with this one! The only thing is...I don't know if it's doing any good?
How does one tell if it's working? Is her glucose supposed to go down? Because it doesn't seem to be....
Wondering....
So I've been feeding her her new Glipizide for a week or two now...it's a special formulation by a real vet pharmacy place. I had to drive out to Culver City and pay $30 for it, and it only will last a month. Expensive, AND a pain. But It's almost worth it, because it comes with a cool syringe, and it's all lovely and mixed already, and supposedly tastes like banana. And Tink drinks it right up. No struggles with this one! The only thing is...I don't know if it's doing any good?
How does one tell if it's working? Is her glucose supposed to go down? Because it doesn't seem to be....
Wondering....
Thursday, January 19, 2006
"It's not just me" and How the Terminator Became My Role Model
<== Where's Tink?!?
So here is an email discussion on the HoneyHams webgroup page that I jumped into, and
I thought I'd post it here, because it is such a great illustration of the kinds of things that run
through our heads as we watch our little pets do things, and if we didn't have anyone to ask,
such things WOULD drive us crazy.
See! See! It's not just me!!!!
> On 1/18/06, lovebug_whs lovebug_whs@y...
> wrote:
> > Hey. My Ham Napoleon is doing fairly well. I just have one question.
> > He LOVES flaxseed.. he really dives into that first. He eats other
> > things, but only when all the flaxseed is gone, lol. I make sure he
> > eats other things, but is there any harm in letting him eat lots of
> > flaxseed? I know it's on the safe list, but still! Thanks :)
>>> I would like to know the answer to this too! My four girls do the
> exact same thing when presented with flaxseed, turning into little
> hammy vacuum cleaners. We only give it to them about once a week but
> it almost seems to be the hamster equivalent of catnip!
>> Thanks,
> Ellen
So this is what I was thinking, and wrote back:
Are they ACTUALLY eating it, or just putting it in their pouches?
Has anyone else found it's really hard to tell what their hamster is ACTUALLY eating? Mine usually just vacuums everything up into her pouches and runs away. When she actually is eating something -- like, I can hear her chewing on a seed or nut -- then it's often really hard to find out what she's got, because she turns her back to me when eating / or the item is small and in her paws / or sometimes I swear she's actually just moving it from pouch to mouth (usually when she's resting or napping) directly, in which case it's impossible to tell what she's actually gnawing on. Very funny, though, to hear her chewing on something, and look over, and see that she appears to be doing it in her sleep!
:-) teresa
Five minutes later, I remembered something else:
Oh, and sometimes, when I could swear she WAS eating/drinking something -- like she's sitting there with a slice of squash in her paws, taking little bites, looking like she's completely enjoying her meal -- only to find her the next minute in her house, regurgitating little chunks of squash into her "stash"! So she was pouching it, and not eating it, like I thought! And once, I thought she was drinking up her medicine most obediently -- TOO obediently -- so I watched her a little longer, and sure enough, she brought it all back up once she was back in her cage -- soaking herself,and then she had to dump out all her snacks from her pouches, which had gotten wet, too. Thank GOD little children don't have such pouches....can you imagine????
hee hee,
:-) teresa
See. Since I've started participating more in this group -- like asking questions more -- you may have noticed that the level of blog-writing has gone down as a result.... But it's a good thing. Here, I just ask, and don't get answers.... There, people sometimes actually have answers. The trick, I've found, is to treat it like my blog -- just write and don't worry about whether anyone answers or not, and don't take it personally if they don't. Recently they have been, but if I talk too much, maybe they won't anymore, and then I'll just have to wait a bit and then talk again.
My new motto -- from a radio interview with a Korean-American writer who I can't remember the name of -- "To be successful, you have to be like the Terminator. Relentless -- without pity, and without remorse."
I find that this has been VERY VERY useful for almost any pursuit of almost any goal -- whether it's trying to make friends, looking for a job, or wondering what the hell is wrong with your hamster! It's also good self-talk if you tend to be timid, like me, and tend to talk yourself out of lots of things you want to do. I just saw Last Holiday this weekend and it made me cry like a baby. Like, when the Georgia Byrd character was standing there saying to her reflection in her mirror "Next time around, we're not going to be so scared all the time. We're going to take chances, we're going to really LIVE!" I doubt I was the only one crying, too. It's that double tragedy, of finding one HASN'T lived, and finding it out too late, which cuts me up. Luckily, it's not too late for me -- just like it wasn't too late for Georgia Byrd!
Carpe diem!
(That's my other motto, and it's much shorter, but oh so less specific!)
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Tink back to normal, some interesting hamster info
So Tink is back to her usual self, yay!!!!! Kudos and hugs to the members of the HoneyHams group who were so sweet about sharing their experiences and advice... and putting me on the track of it being a scent gland issue, which is what it was, partly, I believe.
Here is what I think happened:
1. Tink went to pet shop for holidays. Tink was on Aspen pellet bedding, which was pretty new to her, and I wasn't sure she liked it much, even then.
2. At pet shop, Tink smelled lots of animals and hamsters. (Note: that pet shop DOES really smell. Even I, a human, with a wimpy human nose, am bothered by it. Maybe because it's so small?) and started marking her territory like crazy...a la crouching low and dragging her stomach, and peeing in unusual places. Also, Tink starts chewing up her Aspen pellets.
3. Teresa gets Tink back, and is utterly dismayed. Tink seems to be stumbling around cage, very low-ish, and seems weak and confused. Also Tink is peeing everywhere BUT in her little potty.
4. Teresa gets worried over the course of a week. She changes Tink's bedding, pronto -- within a day of getting her back from the pet shop. Note, that this confuses the issue, because now Tink has to scent an entirely new cage.
So what happened? I think that it was a combination of events. I'm going with the theory of many on the HoneyHams group that think she may have just gone a little crazy with the scenting. Apparently, their hamsters do that when they smell other animals. Tink has never smelled other animals before, which is why this was new to me!
Note that she was also, at the same time, peeing everywhere and chewing up her Aspen pellet bedding. What I think may have happened is that she irritated/infected her little stomach scent gland by dragging it over the chewed-up bedding (which looks like sawdust after a hamster has chewed it). I think that maybe it wasn't working as optimally as it should have -- which is why she kept trying to scent her cage for sooo loooong. That, or perhaps she was trying to rub her stomach to relieve its' itchiness/hurting. Either scenario would explain the prolonged stumbling about in the cage, dragging herself very low to the ground.
Now, on Saturday, when I was pointed in the scent gland direction, I did check out her stomach, and take a good look at her gland, as well as her back legs, and tummy (was also wondering if she'd been dropped, or had fallen). I thought her gland looked a little odd -- hair matted over it, and was it supposed to be yellowish? It looked a little...crusty. So I dabbed at it with a q-tip dipped in warm water, and got the hairs smoothed out. Also, her little back paws seemed to have matted hair on them, so I smoothed those out, too. (I was suspicious of anything having to do with moving her back legs...which seemed to be the main locomotion problem.) Her little leg bones looked and felt fine, and there was no swelling anywhere on her stomach or back. Also, when I placed her on a smooth surface (the bathroom floor) she appeared to be walking normally. So the problem was only occurring in her cage.
But Tink didn't improve immediately after that. All of Sunday, she was still stumbling around. This is because, I believe, it wasn't just the scent gland that was bothering her. I really do think she was confused and disoriented from the pet shop, but also that she was having some bad diabetic-days. There are days when she just seems more feeble and weak and grumpy than usual. If it hadn't been for the weird walking, in fact, I wouldn't have been that alarmed, because I'm used to her bad diabetic-days. But, I think she was having those days, along WITH the scent gland thing. All in all, she must have been as completely miserable as she looked....
Only yesterday, Monday, did she seem restored to her full self. And today, Tuesday, as I write this, she's better than her usual self! She's climbing all over the cage, and up on top of her house, where she's jumping at the screen (she likes to hang from there), and mostly failing, but gamely trying over and over. She fell into her wheel, a couple of minutes ago, and decided that's what she really wanted to do, so she took IT for a spin. All of this indicating that she's feeling better enough to play!!! And it HAS been a while since I've seen her so playful.
So I'm thankful and happy, and no longer worried. I'll never know for sure what exactly happened this past week, I suppose, but I think I've got a good, working hypothesis! And I've learned about scent glands, and what other people's hamsters do with them.
Oh, and some people were suggesting that she might actually be a little boy hamster -- as they seem to be more agressive with their scenting, and their scent glands get more problems with them -- as in they get crusty, a lot -- and are much easier to find.
This freaked me out.
But I looked up the diagrams and checked Tink against them, and not only does she have nipples (which boys aren't supposed to have) but her two little "vents" are right next to each other -- no space between them, at ALL, which is what little girls' vents should look like. So despite her un-feminine scenting behavior, I am reassured that she is, indeed, a girl.
Shew!!!! Not that there's anything wrong with boys....but I'd gotten used to her as a girl, is all.
So All Ends Well!!!!
And now I must rush off to work, as I am awfully late!!!
Here is what I think happened:
1. Tink went to pet shop for holidays. Tink was on Aspen pellet bedding, which was pretty new to her, and I wasn't sure she liked it much, even then.
2. At pet shop, Tink smelled lots of animals and hamsters. (Note: that pet shop DOES really smell. Even I, a human, with a wimpy human nose, am bothered by it. Maybe because it's so small?) and started marking her territory like crazy...a la crouching low and dragging her stomach, and peeing in unusual places. Also, Tink starts chewing up her Aspen pellets.
3. Teresa gets Tink back, and is utterly dismayed. Tink seems to be stumbling around cage, very low-ish, and seems weak and confused. Also Tink is peeing everywhere BUT in her little potty.
4. Teresa gets worried over the course of a week. She changes Tink's bedding, pronto -- within a day of getting her back from the pet shop. Note, that this confuses the issue, because now Tink has to scent an entirely new cage.
So what happened? I think that it was a combination of events. I'm going with the theory of many on the HoneyHams group that think she may have just gone a little crazy with the scenting. Apparently, their hamsters do that when they smell other animals. Tink has never smelled other animals before, which is why this was new to me!
Note that she was also, at the same time, peeing everywhere and chewing up her Aspen pellet bedding. What I think may have happened is that she irritated/infected her little stomach scent gland by dragging it over the chewed-up bedding (which looks like sawdust after a hamster has chewed it). I think that maybe it wasn't working as optimally as it should have -- which is why she kept trying to scent her cage for sooo loooong. That, or perhaps she was trying to rub her stomach to relieve its' itchiness/hurting. Either scenario would explain the prolonged stumbling about in the cage, dragging herself very low to the ground.
Now, on Saturday, when I was pointed in the scent gland direction, I did check out her stomach, and take a good look at her gland, as well as her back legs, and tummy (was also wondering if she'd been dropped, or had fallen). I thought her gland looked a little odd -- hair matted over it, and was it supposed to be yellowish? It looked a little...crusty. So I dabbed at it with a q-tip dipped in warm water, and got the hairs smoothed out. Also, her little back paws seemed to have matted hair on them, so I smoothed those out, too. (I was suspicious of anything having to do with moving her back legs...which seemed to be the main locomotion problem.) Her little leg bones looked and felt fine, and there was no swelling anywhere on her stomach or back. Also, when I placed her on a smooth surface (the bathroom floor) she appeared to be walking normally. So the problem was only occurring in her cage.
But Tink didn't improve immediately after that. All of Sunday, she was still stumbling around. This is because, I believe, it wasn't just the scent gland that was bothering her. I really do think she was confused and disoriented from the pet shop, but also that she was having some bad diabetic-days. There are days when she just seems more feeble and weak and grumpy than usual. If it hadn't been for the weird walking, in fact, I wouldn't have been that alarmed, because I'm used to her bad diabetic-days. But, I think she was having those days, along WITH the scent gland thing. All in all, she must have been as completely miserable as she looked....
Only yesterday, Monday, did she seem restored to her full self. And today, Tuesday, as I write this, she's better than her usual self! She's climbing all over the cage, and up on top of her house, where she's jumping at the screen (she likes to hang from there), and mostly failing, but gamely trying over and over. She fell into her wheel, a couple of minutes ago, and decided that's what she really wanted to do, so she took IT for a spin. All of this indicating that she's feeling better enough to play!!! And it HAS been a while since I've seen her so playful.
So I'm thankful and happy, and no longer worried. I'll never know for sure what exactly happened this past week, I suppose, but I think I've got a good, working hypothesis! And I've learned about scent glands, and what other people's hamsters do with them.
Oh, and some people were suggesting that she might actually be a little boy hamster -- as they seem to be more agressive with their scenting, and their scent glands get more problems with them -- as in they get crusty, a lot -- and are much easier to find.
This freaked me out.
But I looked up the diagrams and checked Tink against them, and not only does she have nipples (which boys aren't supposed to have) but her two little "vents" are right next to each other -- no space between them, at ALL, which is what little girls' vents should look like. So despite her un-feminine scenting behavior, I am reassured that she is, indeed, a girl.
Shew!!!! Not that there's anything wrong with boys....but I'd gotten used to her as a girl, is all.
So All Ends Well!!!!
And now I must rush off to work, as I am awfully late!!!
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Tink ok, after all?
So I heard back from some people on the HoneyHams group, and one guy had a good idea. He thought maybe Tink was marking her territory...he said that strategic peeing is one of the things they do when they are marking. I knew that they crawl really low when they are in unfamiliar places, in order to leave a scent -- but I've NEVER seen her do that in her cage. (At least not for as long as she seems to be doing it, which would be about a week, now. )
But he mentioned that she might do it more aggressively if she'd been near other animals...especially other hamsters. Which makes sense! Because she was right above the other hamsters at the pet shop. So this seems very probable, and makes me a bit less anxious. I just wrote him back to see how long his hamster keeps that up. If HIS hamster's done it for a whole week before, that'll make me much more easy.
Last night, I waited and watched her until I saw her suddenly seem to "snap out of it" -- I can't describe it any other way. All of a sudden, she started moving faster, and more nimbly, and seemed to suddenly be interested in checking out the cage, and scrabbling up at the sides, and then, most glorious of all, she got onto her wheel and started running!!! So I was able to go to bed, knowing she was feeling better. But this morning, she was back to the clumsy creeping around the cage.
Anyhow, I checked out her back legs, and her stomach, and all looks in good order. No broken bones or swellings of any sort, so I don't think she fell, or is having any mechanical problems with her legs. Doesn't seem like. I let her run around on the bathroom floor, too, to check and see if she could walk normally, and it seems that she can.
Man, she is cute when she's exploring! She looks like a large, furry, bug, almost...because she doesn't really walk, she scuttles! Or waddles, maybe. Her round, furry, little butt swings from side to side as she walks. Are most hamsters pidgeon-toed, I wonder? She seems to be. On her back legs, anyway. They point inward, which makes her gait kind of wobbly-like.
Sorry, the animator WILL take over at times. I would very much like to animate her funny little run! Been thinking about it. Might as well get some mileage out of all the watching and worrying I do, right?
Off to take a nap. Tink is curled up, sleeping, in her little house, and it always makes me feel very sleepy...
But he mentioned that she might do it more aggressively if she'd been near other animals...especially other hamsters. Which makes sense! Because she was right above the other hamsters at the pet shop. So this seems very probable, and makes me a bit less anxious. I just wrote him back to see how long his hamster keeps that up. If HIS hamster's done it for a whole week before, that'll make me much more easy.
Last night, I waited and watched her until I saw her suddenly seem to "snap out of it" -- I can't describe it any other way. All of a sudden, she started moving faster, and more nimbly, and seemed to suddenly be interested in checking out the cage, and scrabbling up at the sides, and then, most glorious of all, she got onto her wheel and started running!!! So I was able to go to bed, knowing she was feeling better. But this morning, she was back to the clumsy creeping around the cage.
Anyhow, I checked out her back legs, and her stomach, and all looks in good order. No broken bones or swellings of any sort, so I don't think she fell, or is having any mechanical problems with her legs. Doesn't seem like. I let her run around on the bathroom floor, too, to check and see if she could walk normally, and it seems that she can.
Man, she is cute when she's exploring! She looks like a large, furry, bug, almost...because she doesn't really walk, she scuttles! Or waddles, maybe. Her round, furry, little butt swings from side to side as she walks. Are most hamsters pidgeon-toed, I wonder? She seems to be. On her back legs, anyway. They point inward, which makes her gait kind of wobbly-like.
Sorry, the animator WILL take over at times. I would very much like to animate her funny little run! Been thinking about it. Might as well get some mileage out of all the watching and worrying I do, right?
Off to take a nap. Tink is curled up, sleeping, in her little house, and it always makes me feel very sleepy...
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Uh-oh...Tink stumbling around her cage...
Oh dear, I think something is wrong with her, though I can't really point to anything specific, except she seems excessively clumsy all of a sudden.
Well, and she seems to be keeping very low to the ground, too -- like she doesn't have the strength to get over the little humps of bedding, or pull herself up to her normal crouch for eating. Instead she's laying very flat, and only nibbling at things which are right on the ground. And earlier, she was just sitting in a puddle of pee, in her ball. Usually she rolls herself away from her puddles.
I wonder -- should I take her to the vet? Or would that be as useless as it has been in the past?
I tested her pee just this afternoon, and her glucose reads off the chart, as usual, but her ketones are normal (which is different --usually her ketones are really high, too). She isn't on pedialyte or anything -- just fennugreek and greens and her homemade seed mix. Poops are normal, too. I fed her some warmed, diluted chicken broth -- just to make sure she was getting some liquid and nutrition in her -- but other than that, I can't think what else to do.
Very worried....
Well, and she seems to be keeping very low to the ground, too -- like she doesn't have the strength to get over the little humps of bedding, or pull herself up to her normal crouch for eating. Instead she's laying very flat, and only nibbling at things which are right on the ground. And earlier, she was just sitting in a puddle of pee, in her ball. Usually she rolls herself away from her puddles.
I wonder -- should I take her to the vet? Or would that be as useless as it has been in the past?
I tested her pee just this afternoon, and her glucose reads off the chart, as usual, but her ketones are normal (which is different --usually her ketones are really high, too). She isn't on pedialyte or anything -- just fennugreek and greens and her homemade seed mix. Poops are normal, too. I fed her some warmed, diluted chicken broth -- just to make sure she was getting some liquid and nutrition in her -- but other than that, I can't think what else to do.
Very worried....
Thursday, December 29, 2005
New bedding. Back to East Coast. Missing Tink!
Funny, I could have sworn I wrote some entries which are now missing...Strange...Anyway.
I miss my little one. I'm back on the east coast for the holidays, and she's at a pet shop in South Pasadena, near my apartment. I hope she's doing ok. I left her with some extra fennugreek tea, and packets of tofu for each day, but what if the pet shop people forget, or just don't bother??? I got the impression that they were amused that she's diabetic and has a special diet. What if they don't take it seriously?
Also, they put her cage up on a high shelf, above the other for-sale dwarf hamsters. What if they forget her up there?
This is my new favorite picture of Tink. You can see that she is sleeping in a big nest of shredded toilet paper. Before, she didn't make much use of toilet-paper, but since I changed her bedding to Aspen pellets, she's been carefully making up this nest, and spending a lot of time in it. Been wondering if she dislikes walking on the new bedding? Because it's almost like she's "papered" the surface over with tissue. It's possible that it's actually irritating her -- was just reading about some problems with Aspen and dwarf hamsters on the HoneyHams group. So I may switch again. Probably back to Carefresh (what I started with!).
Sigh! Well, it's just a few more days. I wish they had a webcam, like the place where Clara is boarding her dog. But see, most boarding places are for dogs and cats (which is why Tink is at a pet shop, not a boarding place) and anyway, most people don't think hamsters are worth much bother. Cruel, stinky world!
Ah, how I miss her!!! And worry about her! When I picked her up, she seemed so very lightweight and fragile. She was being so sweet, before Christmas; she would lick my fingers and hand when I held her. Don't know what that's about, but it is such a sweet little habit! (Other, less pleasant, interpretations: my hand might taste like food, or if I HAD washed it, maybe she likes the taste of soap, or maybe she needs more salt, or maybe she's gone really stupid and thinks that my hand is an extension of her fur...?)
Well, worrying won't do me any good, so it's off to bed with me....
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Late-night snacking...
Can't sleep...I think I had too much caffeine or something. Plus the steroid medication, probably. And I'm soooooo exhausted! But can't sleep.So I made myself, and Tink (since she was up), a delicious turkey, avocado, and brie sandwich! Tink's is minus the bread, of course--she's an Atkins girl....
Maybe a full stomach will make me sleepy. And turkey is supposed to be sleep-inducing, right? If only I had some warm milk. Alas...
Tink appears to be settling in to her new arrangements just fine. She started sleeping up against the glass again, so maybe it's not too cold in here? While laying in bed, wide awake, I had all these ideas for how to rearrange/improve her living space.I was thinking it would be cool if I had a bowl made of a rock...then I could put her potty litter in there, and empty it easily, but it would be more natural-like, instead of the current Gladware container I'm using. I guess it wouldn't be as sanitary as plastic...but...but...it might help wear her little nails down to be climbing around a more natural habitat.
And I was thinking about how the Dwarf Hamster book--I think?--says how it's a nice habit to bring little things home from the outside world, to put in your hamster's cage. Like leaves, and rocks, and sticks and stuff. I think the author was saying that since you can't take your hamster to the outside world, you should take the world to your hamster. Sort of. And then in the Jane Habitat Pages the guy(?) shows how he puts rocks into his hamster's cage...and a little tile that he can cool in the refridgerator for hot days (does it get that hot in Sweden????), and a sand box for recreational digging. It all looked so luxurious and interesting.
So I started thinking. The "habitat" stuff at Petco is sooo expensive. I guess it's all sanitary and aesthetically pleasing, and all, but I have a problem with PAYING for rocks and bits of wood. Hmmm. Maybe I could go to the desert to get some cool, light-weight rocks...or to the beach for driftwood, maybe....oooh, maybe petrified wood....
But what's this about bringing the world to Tink? If we didn't keep hamsters as pets, they would have the whole world to roam! I have this terrible guilt complex about it. I know she's just as likely to get eaten by an owl as have a full and productive free life, but I can't help wondering sometimes if it's bad that humans are keeping these little guys as pets? Dogs and cats have historically chosen to live with humans. But these little guys would probably prefer living without us. After all, they're mostly solitary and not particularly social even amongst themselves. And nocturnal. Natural hermits, I suppose. And they love love love to run...for miles. So being cooped up in a cage, with day-living creatures, who surround them with brightly-colored plastic things....is that a good life? Maybe better than being eaten, true...but what about compared to the excitement and drama of everyday existence in the wild?
Of course, once they're born into captivity, I suppose they don't have much of a choice anyway. If I hadn't gotten Tink, someone else would have. I don't know what to think...
It seems like they are just wired to hustle around and do their day-to-day things, and maybe it makes no difference to them where or when or how they do them. They don't seem to have emotions like we have...except for maybe irritation. Though...take that back...I think I read somewhere how scientists were doing studies on hamsters for depression...because when you separate two mates (I think it was the Campbell's species), they found the male would get very "depressed". As in sluggish, and apathetic, and no appetite. But maybe that doesn't mean that they have emotions....is depression just a state, then, and not an emotion? Hmm.
Sigh. I wish I could sleep....
Thursday, December 01, 2005
New Picture: It's colder in the new apartment
Gas guy's coming on Saturday, yay!!!I think that's why Tink's made a whole bunch of little nests instead of squashing up against the glass of the aquarium, since she's been here. Different behavior always makes me wonder....
But she looks pretty cosy, doesn't she? I suppose it could be because it's brighter in the new place...maybe she's trying to block out the light, more than stay warm. As usual, dunno, dunno....
Good friends, good food...old sickness, new month, new place
It's been a while, hasn't it?There was the Thanksgiving holiday, of course--when I got to spend fabulous quality time with Clara! And Tink spent fabulous quality time in Chansoo's closet! I think that that somehow had a really good effect on her--she slimmed down and seems ten times calmer than before--despite the fact that she did, in fact, bite him once over the holiday. (Oh, and she DOES like turkey! Not as much as chicken, though.)
Strangely, her ketone/glucose readings remain essentially the same. So, the Glipizide is having no measurable effect. I'm almost out of the crushed tabs anyhow, so I need to talk to the vet about trying a different formulation--even if I have to pay a little more, and find a place that sells animal medicine.
Oh, and I moved to a new apartment. (This picture is from the old one. Don't have any from the new place yet.)
And I've been really really sick. Been trying not to face the facts, which is why I haven't mentioned it till now. But, unfortunately for me, and Tink, and the future of this blog--it's looking like I may be deathly allergic to hamsters. Will know next week when I take the hamster-allergy test. Something weird has been happening to me, since last May. I've developed a chronic sort of cough, with asthma, and my whole head and chest seem to be constantly filling up with fluid/gunk. Got it under control after two severely ill months this summer, once I graduated (yay!) and could focus on my health, and getting to the doctor regularly. The doctor put me on this medicated inhaler, the Advair diskus. Then I was back to breathing normally for two months. When the diskus ran out, the doctor said to see what happened then--if the cough and congestion came back, then it was likely to be an allergy of some sort. And it did, alas...four weeks later, I was back to asthma and coughing. And since there's nothing else new in my living environment this year, except my poor diabetic hamster, it's looking awfully suspicious, isn't it? Unless it happens to be the bedding, or something like that, which I could actually control.
Sigh. I don't want to give her up, but if that's what's making me so so very ill, I guess I have to. Clara already offered to take her in to her home, so at least she'll stay in the family, and I'll get to visit her every couple of months. Hopefully.
But it's all very sad. I hope Tink doesn't know, or guess. She must know something is up, since I haven't held her or played with her very much since I got back. I've been avoiding her, I guess. I'm just afraid of going back to being really really ill. I can't stand it. Life is so extra miserable when you can't breathe properly!
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....
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Glipizide!
I'm feeding Tink Glipizide now! It's an oral medicine for controlling high blood sugar. I'm not entirely sure how it works, or even what it is--is it some kind of insulin? Anyway, I started it on the 27th of October...so it's been about 5 or 6 days now, but I haven't done it regularly enough. Maybe fed it to her 3 times in the last 5-6 days, because Clara came down for Halloween, and I've been very busy. Will try to do better this week! I gave her some tonight, so there you go, I've already begun.
The vet said to call her with a local pharmacy's number, and she would call the prescription in. I gave her Target's number, because they carry Glipizide. The only problem is that they only carry it in tablet form. ( I think the ideal format for hamsters is in flavored drops. Banana is preferred, apparently. I know that's what people from the HoneyHams group generally feed their diabetic hamsters. But maybe the drops are ONLY for pets, I don't know.)
The human form seems to be tablets. And boy are they a pain to feed to a hamster! First off, they're extended release tablets, so you're really not supposed to crush them, or even cut them. Too bad....I have to. There is absolutely no way to get Tink to eat a crumb of a tablet. And even if I got it past her (quite) formidable teeth, there's no guarantee that she's actually eating it, rather than pouching it. So I'm crushing the tablets anyway (they don't crush EASILY, of course), and mixing the bits with some chicken broth and feeding it to her with a dropper. So far so good--she's drinking the broth without complaint, and ingesting some of the Glipizide, I hope!!!
[Note: I know she might be pouching the broth, too, but I'm hoping not. I've only caught her doing that once, and it's been a while since that one time I saw her do it. She was fighting pretty fiercely against drinking that time--I think pouching was her last resort against the Merciless Mama who was trying to force nutrition down her throat.]
Of course, the other problem is there is no way to control the dosing, doing it this way. Especially since I think that crushing the tabs ruins the whole ER effect of them. But it WAS pretty inexpensive, and fairly convenient to get it from Target, and treating a diabetic hamster is hardly an exact science, no matter how you go about it, is it? Am I just rationalizing?
Anyway, I can't tell if it's making any difference or not! She seems about the same. She hasn't given me a good piddle puddle yet, so I haven't been able to test her pee. Soon....soon....
The vet said to call her with a local pharmacy's number, and she would call the prescription in. I gave her Target's number, because they carry Glipizide. The only problem is that they only carry it in tablet form. ( I think the ideal format for hamsters is in flavored drops. Banana is preferred, apparently. I know that's what people from the HoneyHams group generally feed their diabetic hamsters. But maybe the drops are ONLY for pets, I don't know.)
The human form seems to be tablets. And boy are they a pain to feed to a hamster! First off, they're extended release tablets, so you're really not supposed to crush them, or even cut them. Too bad....I have to. There is absolutely no way to get Tink to eat a crumb of a tablet. And even if I got it past her (quite) formidable teeth, there's no guarantee that she's actually eating it, rather than pouching it. So I'm crushing the tablets anyway (they don't crush EASILY, of course), and mixing the bits with some chicken broth and feeding it to her with a dropper. So far so good--she's drinking the broth without complaint, and ingesting some of the Glipizide, I hope!!!
[Note: I know she might be pouching the broth, too, but I'm hoping not. I've only caught her doing that once, and it's been a while since that one time I saw her do it. She was fighting pretty fiercely against drinking that time--I think pouching was her last resort against the Merciless Mama who was trying to force nutrition down her throat.]
Of course, the other problem is there is no way to control the dosing, doing it this way. Especially since I think that crushing the tabs ruins the whole ER effect of them. But it WAS pretty inexpensive, and fairly convenient to get it from Target, and treating a diabetic hamster is hardly an exact science, no matter how you go about it, is it? Am I just rationalizing?
Anyway, I can't tell if it's making any difference or not! She seems about the same. She hasn't given me a good piddle puddle yet, so I haven't been able to test her pee. Soon....soon....
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Hamster dreaming...
Hullo...It's been a while, but I'm back to writing for good! Had to fix the fan in my computer.
So I've been wondering about these bizarre positions that Tink has been sleeping in. She seems to like sleeping squashed against the glass in one way or other. It looks incredibly uncomfortable, but there's no question about it--this is her new favorite way of sleeping. Maybe it's because she's turned her little house into her stash-storage place?
Maybe she's hot? I keep the apartment about 70 degrees Farenheit all year round. So it's not hot in here by human standards, though I have no idea what hamster standards would be.
The other thing--isn't it hard to breathe all squashed against the glass like that? And her sense of smell is really good, so why would she sqash her nose against the glass where she can't smell anything? It's the cutest thing...you can see her little teeth when she does it this way. But how come she doesn't fog up the glass? Does that mean that you can't use the old mirror trick to check if a hamster is breathing or not? And should her teeth be that yellow? And are her nails too long?
I also wonder if hamsters dream. Or fart. Or burp. They are so tiny...it would be hard to tell.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
The Crazy Hour
10-11 pm is the Crazy Hour at Pavilions. It's right before they close, and no one in their right mind would go shopping at that hour.
That's when I go shopping, see, so I know.
Once I saw a scruffy vagrant guy there who was pretty amused with himself. He only had a 40 oz. of beer to buy, and so he stood at the end of the checkout line, waving everyone else to go in front of him. "It's not like I'm in a rush or anything", he kept saying, with knowing winks. We all tee-heed and stared at our toes. I thought, 'Geez, this is when the crazies come out'. Then I looked at what I was buying: two romance novels, two gallons of ice cream (on sale!), ice-cream bars, a slice of cake, a bag of chocolates, and two leaves of lettuce. And those were for Tink. Hmm. Definitely when the crazies come out...
Yeah, the check-out people don't like those bags with one or two lettuce leaves in them, because they don't register on the scale, so then they don't know how to charge you. But what can you do? It's hard owning such a tiny hamster...if I bought a whole head of lettuce, all but two leaves of it would rot!
Now....at Ralph's, tonight, at 11 pm, it wasn't the Crazy Hour. I think it's because Ralph's is open 24 hours. Maybe their crazy hour is like at 2 or 3 am. I don't know. But I don't like it, I tell you! Because I don't fit in... It seems like 10-11 pm is like the Hip Hour at Ralph's. Everyone in line was young-ish like me, but unlike me, they seemed to be shopping responsibly. The cutesy couple behind me may have just gotten back from the gym; they were buying water and watermelon. The guy in front of me had two loaves of bread. I had four boxes of cake mix (on sale!), chocolate icing, a box of Halloween cookies, 3 lbs of dried milk (on sale!), a bag with 10 broccoli florets, and another with 10 cauliflower florets. The last two were for Tink.
Stupid Ralph's with their Hip Hour....
Anyhow, off to feed Tink. Have I mentioned that she's diabetic? I'm the one who should be diabetic....
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Pre-ramble
Tink is my dwarf hamster. See?I realize I have become a bit hamster-crazed (more on this later), and that this tends to alienate family and friends. You see, dwarf hamsters are not the most-studied of rodents. This is so frustrating to owners with inquiring minds!
Hence, the blog. It's an experiment in preserving the sanity of my friends and family. It's an outlet, where I get to talk as much and as long as I want about Tink, and post pictures, data, and musings. It's like talking to yourself, but more respectable. Hmm. It's a little like talking to Tink, actually....
