Paul

Not even a week since Muzzy left, and now his da, Paul, is gone.

Paul, I must tell you, is the reason we have so many hammies. Well, Mike and his big, soft heart is the real reason, but Paul is the one who clambered to the top of the pile (literally, a pile) of opals, asking for a ride home. Such unusual colour, we thought.

And then we drove home and left them all there at the SPCA.

Yes, really.

That was, I think, a Tuesday. Maybe a Monday. I wasn't sure if this adoption was right. Were we reeling on the rebound from Evelyn's death? (We'd actually already adopted two little boys a few days before, and we still had two old boys at home, but four hammies? That seemed too few. And no girls? Oh no, we couldn't be without girls, could we?)

They told us that Paul was a girl. That the entire fish tank was girls. I counted around six. Wow, that plus four at home equaled ten. I'd been thinking more like six or seven tops. Maybe eight.

But, you know, ten is nothing, especially if we were only having three hamitats total. Supposedly these little ladies had been living together for five months and all got along easily. They certainly looked calm. And that little blackish one, wasn't she just the dickens?

We came back on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving (2010). I counted again. Oh, there were eight little hammies smushed in there. Oh... well... what's two more? (And then there was Clark, but he's another story. A story I'm sure I'll be telling too soon here.)

I really do mean smushed. The piles were always 5-6 high. After we got them home and got them into a jumbo hamitat, they still slept like they had no room at all:

I blame our hammies on Mike, and on Paul for being the adorable gateway, but also on Paul for impregnating Alys so that a couple of weeks later, seven more hammies arrived. PAUL!

However, I could also blame myself. If I'd not hesitated, if we'd taken them home when Mike wanted and not almost a week later, we would've seen sooner that Paul was in fact a boy, and that most of the other smushed hammies were boys. Most. I'd only been looking at Paul for a short while in the living room when I noticed a certain "bumpiness" to his rear end... and the way he kept chasing Alys, in that special way. Oh dear.

Of course, it all worked out in the end. Our lives were richer (if more cluttered) for all of these other new friends, and although I had to start taking an Allegra every day (I seem to have overloaded a furry sensitivity circuit and am now more allergic to all pets, not just hams), Mike became the chief hamitat scrubber, so I just had to enjoy my very own petting zoo.

(Paul's odd colours didn't last long or photograph well, although Muzzy inherited them. Instead, Paul quickly became a snowham, eventually turning almost completely white except for his head.)

At first Paul (at first known as Pøl) seemed to be an object of fascination for the younger set of opals from the fish tank. I wondered (and still wonder) if he was their father, maybe a brother to the older pair of opals in the tank. We'll never know. But then tensions erupted, as they do, and in the end he (and a few of the others) lived peacefully as a solitary hamster.

I don't know what to tell the world about Paul. He was agreeable. He liked having his saucer and wheel and big, big sand bath, but he only used them in rare phases. He liked sleeping in his plastic bed. He also liked sleeping behind the clubhouse. He was a moseying kind of ham, not very ambitious once he'd escaped the SPCA and, er, wedded Alys. A restful fellow.

Two days ago, he was in a very slightly spry mood. I'd been giving him a lot of tofu in addition to seeds; I thought he could use some soft vittles. He was an old boy who didn't get around much these days, so I noticed during one of these special feedings that he was up and about just a teense more than usual.

This morning, he was frustrated. His limbs were working, but his back seemed to be locked up. I was able to pick him up and examine him without issue (but also without answers). He kept trying to move normally, his little paws running against my hand as he tried to locomote. He didn't seem to be in pain, just really unhappy with the circumstances.

I was tired (I'm sleeping Aussie hours these days) but stayed up, checking on him every five to ten minutes until I saw that he was asleep. Sometimes hamsters have strokes. Sometimes they recover a little. Sometimes a lot. Usually not at this age, but as long as he wasn't clearly in pain, I would wait and see.

I woke up about three hours later and checked him. He was all the way across the hamitat from where he'd been sleeping. I can't even imagine how long it took him to get there. Not only that, but he'd somehow pulled himself up and into the huge sand bath. And, even though he'd had such trouble before finding enough purchase to do more than move in circles, he'd pulled himself across half of the sand bath.

And then I like to think he felt pleased with himself for not having been thwarted and died smiling. Or maybe he just felt exhausted and decided to rest his eyes a minute.

We'll never know. It doesn't matter. I would wish for all of them to die in their sleep, old and content, but the odds are against that. Some will struggle at the end. Well, he's okay now.

This site will soon read like a hamster obituary blog: we have twelve very old (for Russian dwarves) critters - most from the same litter. They could all be gone this time next week. Or maybe some will be the very rare exceptions who hang on for Christmas.

What matters, I remind myself, is that they all lived well. They have all been happy. No one has wanted for attention, space, food, drink, veterinary care, saucers, wheels, chew toys, ultra-fine bathing sand, clean paper-based bedding, and Charmin's Ultra Soft toilet paper for nesting (and rolls for romping). And kisses. And snarfles. Lots of snarfles. They have been known and loved as individuals with their own preferences and personalities.

But I still miss each of them so much.