In the end, we succumbed. The girl didn't get a new brother, or a bunny, or another cat, but we are now a household of seven mammals: three people, two cats and two 2 Djungarian (Russian dwarf) hamsters. They are allegedly females, and so have been named Tilly and Tessie, short for Otillia and Anastasia.
Tilly is mostly white and bigger, weighing in at 1.16 ounces. Tessie is striped with grey, and weighs a mere 1.08 ounces1. Tilly is in charge, and the cats are beyond fascinated.
In preparation for the hamster homecoming, the girl made me a $300 Amazon list of things they would need, like food, litter, toys and a big glass cage. I, being cheap - or is that frugal? - found a $25 cage via a local Facebook group. It's one of those fancy habitat things - two connected cages, with tubes and look-out spots and resting platforms - and it brings back dim memories of wishing for such a cool swanky cage when I was little and our gerbils lived in a boring glass aquarium. I'm pleased as punch to be able to give my girl something I'd never had, and at a bargain price to boot.
I tried to take pictures of the little beasts, but they move too fast, and the cage is backlit, being as it's on a window sill. So I ended up with but one unfortunate photo:
Because I like to share, I sent that picture to my siblings. Within seconds, my sister wrote back: "Accidental dong!" Um, yup. Indeed. Yes.
Anyway, we like our hamsters, and the girl loves them and yesterday texted me this:
Hi mommy a big box came
today for you. Can i open
it? I think my hamster
chew toy is in there
Usually I play grammar queen, and write back and correct her punctuation and capitalization, but this slayed me, so I left it alone.
She's sweet. I think I'll keep her.
(It was a box of toner cartridges, by the way.)
1. Why yes, we brought the kitchen scale up to her bedroom, for the weighing. Scientific method. We'd been guessing at their weights over dinner. Daddy had guessed that they were around 4 ounces each. Don't worry, I wiped the scale down well afterwards.
4 comments:
Congratulations!
Just so you know, hamsters don't have depth perception, so high places are bad. So are aquariums with loose lids. Bad combo, which you have avoided. ;)
Weighing the hamsters with a kitchen scale: That is so something that would happen in my house. Congratulations on the new additions.
I love everything about this. Congratulations on your new family members! It sounds like they are in very good hands. I love those little habitrail cages too, but evidently gerbils chew through the plastic so they aren't good for gerbils. Hamsters though—it might be worth forgoing a tailed animal to be able to have one of those awesome cages!
Also, accidental dong. Dying.
I love the hamsters, your daughter's note, and your sister.
Insert obligatory joke about "Djungarians Unchained".
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