The Death of a Hamster

My hamster died today.  He was about 3 years and 1 month old.  We had him for 3 years and never named him- continual anticipation of his death, I guess.  The last hamster seemed to have caught the flu from me and died.  For the most part we called him “Dummy” or something to that effect.  We used to call him “big fat hamster” and my mom decided to call him “Fat Bastard” in this vein.

He was neither dumb (for a hamster) nor fat (especially not in the last few days).  He was very furry- long white hair with gray tips.  I’ve seen them called “teddy bear hamsters”, but he was a Syrian hamster, either way.  He was also the smartest hamster I’ve ever seen and very friendly.  The only person he’s ever even tried to bite was my best friend who stuck her finger in his cage after she’d eaten potato chips (duh).  Potato chips conveniently having been his favorite food.

At three he was coming along in age, running a little slow in his wheel (he ran in the wheel retardedly, sticking his head out the side every time there was an opening- and yes, he was smart, for a hamster), but still looking healthy, perky ears, clear eyes…  Late Thursday night/early Friday morning he laid down in an odd spot and stopped moving.  My husband thought that he was dead and shook his cage to be sure.  The hamster got up, though, barely.  My husband got me out of bed- I guess to see if I knew what was wrong.

It would seem that my hamster had a stroke.  He suddenly refused to use his back legs and kept falling over to his left.  He was shaking all over and breathing heavily.  We decided to put him in the bathroom where it’s dark because that calms him down.  I put some aloe on his paws because we had no idea that these were stroke symptoms and thought that he had broken something.  Every few hours after that I’d hand fed him and brought his water bottle to him.  He seemed to have been improving.  He didn’t refuse to eat and he was able to scoot around his cage.  While at first he would squeak constantly and then only when touched, he had stopped making noises.

This morning I cleaned him- with an ear dropper and some warm water- he hadn’t been able to do that and had somehow become very dirty in the day and a half since he’d fallen ill.  I dried him as well as I could and wrapped him in a towel to sit on my lap so he wouldn’t get cold before he dried.  He kept trying to stand up and finally managed to.  I put him on the desk on the towel and he was able to support his weight and move around some.  It seemed that he may be getting better.

After he was dry I put him back in his cage.  After a while he wouldn’t accept any food or water and then at around 3pm he started gasping for air.  He didn’t make a loud noise, but he opened his mouth wide with every breath.  His eyes got droopy and I knew he was going to die soon.  Instead of watching I left.  When I came back he was dead in that same position.  I guess it was probably for the best.

We buried him at the edge of the woods in front of the apartment.

Poor little hamster

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