The Terrible Thing That Happened

I bet you were just thinking "I wish someone would tell me a true story involving a little girl and her hamster". I'm going to do better than that, I'm going to tell you two.

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Caitlin, who happened to be my daughter. And still is. And will continue to be as long as she goes along with the arranged marriage I have planned for her. Caitlin had two pets: Barley the cat and Amber the hamster. (And Jem the snail, but she wasn't a real pet. She just sat in a matchbox for a couple of days and went all sort of crispy.)

Amber lived in a cage on top of Caitlin's wardrobe. It was a kid's wardrobe, so Amber's cage was about four feet off the ground. Amber was as happy as not-very-bright animals who have a vague feeling that the long corridor they run down all day might really be some kind of wheel thing can get. Sometimes when Barley the cat was locked in the kitchen Amber would be taken out of her cage and cuddled, which she didn't mind.

One night, Caitlin ran, sobbing, into her Mummy and Daddy's room. "Something Terrible has happened." she cried. Her Daddy went into her room. Amber's cage was not on top of the wardrobe, but lying upside down in Caitlin's toybox, sawdust and hamster-poo was scattered all over the floor. The cage door, thankfully, was still shut.

Now Barley the cat was nowhere to be seen, but circumstantial evidence suggests that he leapt at the cage and hung onto the wire, pulling it off the wardrobe and into the toybox. Barley, frightened by the racket, made a run for it and was probably out through the cat-flap and half-way across the garden before Caitlin even woke-up.

Amber seemed to be okay after the Terrible Thing, but after a day or two she started to develop personality problems. She started to try to bite Caitlin when she was allowed out of the cage, and it eventually got to the stage where it was like trying to cuddle a chainsaw (albeit a very small, fluffy and relatively quiet one.) In the end if anyone approached the cage, Amber would fling herself at the bars and try to bite through them, her eyes red with bloodlust. And Caitlin didn't want to play with Amber any more.

Tomorrow I will tell you about Lois and her hamster "Nibbles".