Your Pet Loss Stories

by Jalaine
(St. Louis, Missouri)

I didn't even want a hamster ever again after my last one died in college. Having a pet that dies every couple of years was just too devastating.

But, my mother decided that my 2 ½ year old twins would enjoy a hamster, so she bought one to keep at her house. When my girls started crying because 'Patta Cake' couldn't live at our house, my mom went out and bought 'Mousie', a cute little White Russian Dwarf Hamster.

Mousie had cute in spades. I thought Mousie would be safe in the heavy 10 gallon glass aquarium that we bought to house him in. But I was wrong. When I came home from work shortly after we got him, his 'house' had been pushed half off the table where I had put it by one of my three cats.

So, I transferred Mousie to the spare bedroom where I could close the door shut. That became 'Mousie's Room.' Because I felt bad for Mousie being locked away in the spare bedroom, away from the day to day activities of the family, I purchased a small cage for my office and would sometimes take him to work.

After the new wore off, my girls did not play with Mousie very often. Feeling bad for the poor little creature, I would play with him after they went to bed while I watched a little television before bedtime.

Mousie became very tame and sweet. He would even come up from his downstairs dwelling to the tank topper I bought him when you called him. When he got an eye infection, even the vet we took him to remarked on how sweet natured Mousie was.

But Mousie was quite courageous too. When Fat Tony, our Persian cat, would get too close to his cage or bat at his cage, Mousie would fight back and try and launch his attack against Fat Tony through the bars of his cage.

I figured that Mousie would live for a couple of years, and then pass of old age like my other hamsters in the past. Such was not to be the case.

We enjoyed Mousie for almost 2 years. Then on Tuesday night, I was playing with him and I noticed a bump on his tummy. I was feeling it and trying to get a better look at it in the bathroom when he bit my finger. In a knee jerk reaction, I jerked my hand away and dropped him and he hit the tile floor pretty hard.

He had dropped to the ground before, but this time was different. You could hear the 'splat' and he was dazed. I picked him up immediately and he was peeing a lot and appeared to be hurt. He could walk, but something was not right. I took him back to my bedroom to keep an eye on him. He became sleepy and just wanted to rest. I put him in the small dog bed on my bed with a little hamster house for him to crawl into.

I kept checking on him until 3 in the morning to make sure he was still alive. I should have known, however, that he was not going to survive his injuries because he made no attempts to get out of the dog bed.

I finally put him to bed in his house at 3 in the morning and went to bed. Mousie was still alive and able to walk the next morning but very weak. He was too weak to drink from his water bottle so I cradled him in my hand and put the bottle to his lips and he drank.

I left for work late, hoping that he would be okay. I finally decided to see if the vet could help him. Maybe he was just in shock?

I called my mom and she agreed to take him. I went home, got his carrier ready for him and put him in it. He was worse than when I left in the morning and did not even bother to get up.

The Vet said that he probably sustained some type of spinal cord or brain injury and he died shortly after he got to the Vet's office around 1 in the afternoon.

I am just devastated because it was my poor judgment and reaction that contributed to his death. We were buds, and he was so cute and sweet. I'm going to miss you Mousie. All my love at Rainbow Bridge.

And as a heartbreaking postscript to this tragedy, I've since learned that what I thought was a possible tumor was actually his scent gland. Perfectly normal for a Russian Dwarf Hamster.