Fur Babies

Hi there,

I don’t have kids, but I have fur-kids! That’s Sage and Bit-bit in the photo above.

Sage

Sage is a purebred Papillon. Papillons are well known for their butterfly ears. She is a tri-colour. She weighs all of about 8 lbs, and is a real character. She came from a little town called Deroche BC. where she lived with her 20 or so brothers and sisters. She has been in our family since September of 2016. She is pretty stubborn, and does not like to walk in the rain. If we go outside and it’s raining she just looks up at me as if to say “I don’t think so!”

Sage is a bit of a barker. I am working on trying to break her of this habit, but it has been a challenge so far. I have done two levels of dog training sessions and am working with clicker training. But it’s slow going. I hate to write it off as a breed thing, because dogs are really so trainable. So food driven, and papillons are super smart dogs, so very adept at learning and problem solving.

Angus

Angus is Greg’s cat (they were a package deal) but he knows that I am his stepmom. He is 11 as of November 2016, so he’s getting much calmer in his elder years. Sage loves him to bits, and he simply puts up with her. His kitty life consists of sleeping, bathing eating, and sleeping. Note to self: Come back as a cat in next life. Angus is the only kitty that I know who hates milk, just turns his nose up at it. Angus doesn’t really like anything besides his kibble. Except pineapple tops, blueberries, corn and strawberries. Silly kitty.

Timbit

Timbit is our rescue hamster. We found him at the pet store with this sign: I know $49.99 is an expensive hamster! But, that included his cage and all of the accouterments. And he was pretty cute, and in need of a home.

Greg felt that we needed to rescue him, or some rough little kid might buy him and drop him on the floor. So, Timbit (Bit-Bit) came home to live with us. Of course he wasn’t living with us for more than a few weeks before I decided to build him a bigger better pet habitat. I will post that one soon. It’s timbit’s townhouse. Doesn’t every hamster need a four story townhouse, with a semi-detached out building? I think so.

 

Sadly, little Timbit passed away on June 30, 2017. We put him in a little box with some of his favourite treats and took him into the forest and buried him in a nice spot. Rest in peace little hamster.

Gizmo

I can’t say enough about little Gizzy. She was the best hamster EVER! She was a little white dwarf hamster and I loved her so much. We went to the mall one day, and Greg decided we should stop in at the pet store, this is never a good idea!! When he saw all of the little hamsters, he decided to get one. I believe his words were “I’m getting one, you can pick which one” I did NOT want a small furry rodent living in my home.

Well, it took all of about 10 minutes for me to fall head over heals in love with her. She was so darn cute. It took a little while for her to warm up to us. But once she did, she loved being picked up and held. She was handled a lot, so she came to love being picked up. At the time she was the only critter living in the condo, so she was allowed to free range around the place. We played “the couch game” with her. Where we would let her run on our leather sofa. She would run right up to the edge and then stop and look at you, as if to say “You’re gong to catch me right?” and then she would side over the edge into our waiting hands.

She was so gentle and even the vets were surprised by how gentle she was, she didn’t bite. In fact she loved to lick food off of your fingers. Her favourites were: Chocolate Milk (I know you are not supposed to feed chocolate to hamsters, but technically I don’t think milk counts) peanut butter and yogurt.She would let out a little scream when you startled her.

Unfortunately she had some health issues. She developed a little growth on her back. It started out looking like a tiny seed.  I went to 3 different vets, and tried many different things, but it just kept growing. I ended up getting a biopsy done to determine what it was. When the vets were putting her under to do the biopsy, she took off, and when they grabbed her, they broke her tiny little leg! I cannot tell you how horrible I felt. So little Gizzy came home with a teeny little blue cast (And no, the vets never charged me for the biopsy either.) Turned out that the back issue was a papilloma virus. Not cancerous, but it never went away. She used to like me to rub it off of her back. While I was rubbing it, she would be scratching my hand with her little good foot.

She didn’t spend all of her time bemoaning the fact that she had a cast on her leg, she just got on with the business of being a hamster. Sometimes we can learn a lot from our pets.

We only had Giz for 22 months. I still miss her, she was so adorable and made me smile every day. Dwarf hamsters only live for about 2 – 2.5 years. Gizzy was very photogenic, and I’m pretty sure in the world of hammies she would be a hammy supermodel.

 

Rest in peace my tiny little white mouse