what i learned from my hamsters..

most of you probably know that about 2 months ago, i bought myself 2 hamsters. this is not my first hamster experience though... 2 years back i had a pair of dwarf hamsters. However, this time round, i bought syrian hamsters (different breed)

okay, just a brief history, i named my dwarf hamsters matthius and sebastian. matthius was the fat, cute and lazy one; sebastian, his brother was the leaner, active and less friendly one. i had to put matthius to sleep because he had a painful cancer, and sebastian, subsequent to the death of his brother, fell into some sort of hamster depression and eventually died of his loneliness and old age.

for a while, a couple of years actually, i did not want to have hamsters anymore. because, i was myself very much affected by matthius's death, particularly because he was my favourite. and it really sucked to see sebastian go nuts after losing matthius too.

but i guess, after a while... my brothers missed having hamsters too. so i decided that i was ready to again have a pair of boy hamsters. only this time i bought syrian hamsters.

my new hamsters are fattie and thinnie. not the most original names. haha. basically because nobody had any good hamster names and so we just named the fatter one fattie and the less fat one thinnie (he's not thin!! they are both fat and spoilt =p)

so anyway, for the first month or so, until recently, fattie and thinnie, they were really the best of friends. fattie and thinnie cuddled up in their little log house together and fall asleep on top of one another. fattie and thinnie ate together, ran on their exercise wheel together. it was all very very lovey dovey and brotherly.

however, about 2 nights ago, my sister woke me up at about 5am. she couldn't sleep so she she went to watch the hamsters play (they are nocturnal creatures). to her horror, she realised that fattie and thinnie were fighting with one another. she woke me up, and we sat there observing them for a while. it seemed that thinnie was the bullier, and fattie was being bullied. thinnie would chase fattie round and round the cage and nip at him. fattie would squeak! and then he would pretend to die. HAHA. yeah damn cute. he like suddenly froze, lay damn still and low, as though he died. and then thinnie will go away... then fattie will slowly wake up, and crawl towards the play wheel to exercise, thinnie will realise he did not really die.. and then the whole chase and play dead game starts all over again.

it was funny but i know fattie was not happy. and i know it wasn't fair to him to live in fear all the time, having to play dead and being nipped. sigh. and so i went online to google for a solution to the fights.

to my dismay, the pet-websites all carried the warning that syrian hamsters are meant to live in solitude and upon adulthood (8 weeks or so) must be separated from their siblings or else territorial hamster fights will become violent and one hamster will get killed.

i was really upset. because i knew then i had to make the decision to separate the both of them :( i was really sad that they have to live apart now, i was worried that they will be so lonely and miserable, sad because they can't be best friends anymore... it took me a while to finally break them up. after observing that the bullying was not going to stop.

so yeah, i felt sorry for them. for i perceived it would be awful to live alone...

however, to my surprise. it's been 2 days since the separation. and i can tell that both hamsters are really happier with the new arrangement. for the first day fattie just slept and slept and slept. probably out of exhaustion from losing sleep over being attacked. today he's awake and playful. i fed them both grapes and brocolli for breakfast. and they were happy munching in between naps... thinnie looks happier too! he has become friendlier with his "space". i took him out just now and he happily let me sayang him and massage his belly. not grumpy and unfriendly like before.

so i guess yeah, it was a good decision to give them the solitude they were biologically designed for. silly me for wanting to force a "togetherness" that i perceived will bring them happiness. not at all.

so the moral of the story is, peggy, not everyone wants what you perceive to be the norm.

syrians are not dwarfs. and we all have our unique variables of happiness, however, bizzare, however uncommon, we all deserve what makes us happy :)