Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here today to tell you how a hamster can be like a cancer patient… (Wait, what?)
Yes, you read that correctly! 🙂
You probably did a double or triple take when you read the title of this article. BUT THIS IS NO JOKE. For all you skeptics out there, I have a story to share with you today.
Once upon a time, many years ago… Just kidding. I’m not THAT stereotypical. You don’t survive cancer and become a “stereotypical” person. Alright sorry, back to the hamster story.
I had a hamster when I was younger, two years before I was diagnosed with leukemia. This little critter persevered through some ungodly things. Before we get to that, I must present you with some backstory:
More specifically, I wanted a lizard. Why? It was the closest thing to a dragon. Obviously.
I begged my mom for a lizard for years. The need to have one consumed me. I felt my life would be complete if I had a lizard as a pet (I was a child; these were simpler times). It took a long time to whittle her down, but she gave in and promised to get me one.
So naturally, that Christmas, I ended up with a hamster. Hamsters were supposed to be more interactive, cleaner, and a lot less expensive than other pets. I was disappointed for all of five minutes until I picked the little creature up and became immediately and irreversibly attached to it. I bestowed him with the name of Charlie.
Ok… There was ONE time I nearly killed him, but I swear I had the best of intentions!
See, I thought It would be fun for Charlie to swim, so I filled up a sink full of water and placed him in. To nine-year-old me, it looked like he was having a great time swimming around. In reality, he was actually just trying not to drown. My mom stumbled into the bathroom to find me happily observing my drowning hampster. Thankfully, she intervened, so Charlie’s life (and a life-time of guilt on my end) were spared!
Other than that one unfortunate incident, my pet ownership skills were superb.
Charlie was treated like royalty for an entire year after his swimming excursion. He had fresh food, water, and treats every day, a soft-cotton bed, a three-story cage to roam freely, and daily expeditions around our house from within his hamster ball.
But even I could not prevent the series of unfortunate events that were to befall him. *Que dramatic music*.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when Charlie poked his eye out on one of the jagged pieces. I don’t know what kind of idiot thought that hamster cages should be lined with hazardous wood chips. The little creatures are darting around through a minefield of eye-poking obstacles!
After that, Charlie walked around with one eye permanently closed. The vet couldn’t do much, but his injury was not life-threatening. This event barely seemed to dissuade Charlie. But it was not to be the last of his trials.
In the human world, people make jokes about how old people lose their teeth. I imagine that Charlie must have reached that “elderly” mark in his hamster life because his teeth fell out. I repeat, both his teeth fell out. This did not bode well for a creature whose diet consists mostly of seeds with shells that needed to be broken.
Don’t ask me how or why! Just know that from that day forward, all of Charlie’s food had to be hand-prepared, ground up, and softened with water.
AND HE WAS AS JOLLY AND ENERGETIC AS EVER. Charlie gobbled down his meals of cringeworthy mush like they were a five-star meal. He was not deterred by his loss of one eye and both teeth.
But wait. There’s MORE.
You see… Charlie got one leg hopelessly tangled in a thread of that cotton bedding one dreadful night, and by the time I found out and freed him the next morning, it was too late. Too much circulation had been lost for too long. He lost the limb a few days later.
Yes, my friends. My senile, one-eyed, toothless hamster was now also three-legged. By all definitions, this hamster was crippled. By all reason, he should have died within a week.
But no. Oh no.
THIS HAMPSTER LIVED AN ENTIRE YEAR AFTER THAT.
He went on to eat his gourmet mashed up food, live in the most comfortable (cotton-and-woodchip-free environment), crawl up and down the ladders of his multi-level cage, run around in his hamster ball, and be in high spirits as ever.
I monitored him closely. It was like every movie scene ever where some 97-year-old lady is trying to climb a ladder or something and everyone panics and screams, “Grandma, NO!”
I thought Charlie would surely crash and burn, but he was a stubborn old thing.
He maintained his rebelliously active lifestyle for an entire year before he finally croaked.
Despite his immense medical challenges and physical limitations, Charlie held out. He was a trooper, and he made the most of his life.
If you are familiar with the cancer scene, you will know that cancer patients and survivors are put through the physical ringer.
But apparently hamsters can face similar trials.
Charlie had more grit than most people. He will eternally put most of us to shame. God rest his little hamster soul.
If anything taught me tenacity, it was that hamster.
I decided to attempt to live up to Charlie’s legacy by surviving cancer. But until my teeth start falling out (wouldn’t that be just my luck?) I think my hamster will always have me beat…
If anyone else has any crazy pet stories, feel free to share them below!!!
And for those of you who are wondering…
I did eventually get my lizard fix! 🙂
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I laughed so hard at this!!
I was laughing while writing it! haha
This was awesomely hilarious! You definitely know how to captivate a reader with humor, because the way it was written was so funny. So we had a black cat named Shadow for 13 years, and I think he had well over nine lives…He was an entirely outdoor cat. He survived a tumor on his toe and lived the last ten years or so with a missing toe on one foot. He got lost and would be gone days at a time, but then would somehow come back and be okay. He also survived the Waldo Canyon fire, when our whole… Read more »
Caleb, thank you for your compliments! I am hoping to write many more humourous stories down the road.
I also laughed a lot more than I should have at the “tumor on his toe” bit of your story. And yeah, it sounds like Shadow is definitely a survivor. Maybe he and Charlie are comparing notes in animal heaven.
Seriously, that hamster was just too stubborn to die. But he did give us a lot of good laughs. I love how well you told this story.