Several people who saw the 2011 Seasonal Musing asked whether Mark and I really had 12 hamsters, and when I said yes, one person asked if I had any photos of them. So it is because of those people that I am introducing our fuzzy pals. Oh, and in case the title of this posting makes you worried that their all dirty, it’s not true–hamsters are in fact quite clean little buddies. But their cages do get dirty and once a week or so, we clean them all out.
This, then, is Little Buddha. He’s our oldest hamster and named because he looks like a little buddha sometimes. Not here necessarily, but sometimes.
Little Buddha all stretched out looks fuzzy all over, like this.
- Little Buddha in the exercise area while his cage is being cleaned.
This is Flip. She was named because if we try to pet her before she’s fully awake, she flips over in defense.
Scrinch was named because she scrinches up her face all funny when we lift up the lid of her cage and peer inside. She has a bad hair day every day.
- Scrinch cleaning her face.
The rest of our hamsters are all panda hamsters. You might remember Snuggles, a hamster Mark brought home last summer and who, three days after being in our home had eight babies? Snuggles died over the summer but her babies are all doing well. This is Blackie. He’s mostly black but has a little white on his chest and the cutest pink feet.
This is Caramel. She’s at least partially caramel colored so you’ll just have to ignore the white part.
This is Runty. She was the runt of the litter.
Two of the panda hamsters live in the same cage. In fact, they sleep in their exercise wheel together and sometimes run on the wheel at the same time. This is Patches.
- Patches patching out on the table.
Patches’ pal is Ribbon.
Patches and Ribbon look pretty similar and while I’m not sure if they’re boys or girls I can tell you that they are the same sex and that’s all that really matters when hamsters are paired up. We also have three hamsters that share a cage and I’m pretty sure they’re of the same sex but not necessarily the same sex as Patches and Ribbon. And because we don’t remember which cage has boys and which one girls, we clean one cage at a time. This shows Spot, Saddle and Daisy.
Spot has a spot on his or her back.
Daisy doesn’t have a pronounced spot on his or her back.
This is Saddle. He or she has sort of a very bleached-saddle color and has a saddle of white around her middle sort of like a saddle, and, okay, she’s not that different than Caramel but we were running out of inspiration.
So there you have it. Our dozen hamsters. And believe me, keeping them all straight isn’t easy. I mean, look at this picture. It could be any one of five of the black and white guys. So I just call them all Little Cutie. It’s not like any of them answer to their names anyway.
being an animal lover myself, I appreciate these pictures and the good care you obviously take of your hamsters! when our children were younger we had guinea pigs–lots of guinea pigs and one morning I went into the kitchen to discover a newly born one being chased around the kitchen by our cat! (small enough to escape through the bars) what a rude awakening for a newbie!