I Want To Know Your Hamster Stories

[rebekah03]

Hi!
I would really love a hamster, and am currently working towards getting one, but in the meantime I find myself looking online for other people's experiences with hamsters. When I become disheartened with my current lack of a furry friend, they remind me what I'm waiting for, as cheesy as that may sound
So, when did you first get a hamster? What where their personalities like? Favourites or nah?
Thank you!

[Pebbles82]

I am an older hamster owner The first Hamster I had wasn't actually mine - he moved in with me along with a boyfriend. Boyfriend's hamster. Until that time the hamster had been a much loved pet anyway but had a tendency to be a bit laddish. He had witnessed boys parties, had loads of freedom to do whatever he wanted and once jumped into a vat of punch (very wild parties he had) - which thankfully was empty apart from a few drops.

As such by the time he lived with me the hamster was pretty independent and beyond house training! (Hamsters are never really house trained - that was a joke).

He was used to free roaming - he a horrible little 3 tier rotostak of tiny round cake boxes stacked on topof each other with a lookout post on top - for his cage. With nothing in it but some bits of toilet paper for his nest on the base and a lettuce leaf usually. But the door was left open all the time and he came and went as he pleased.

We had a hamster proof living room (solid floors, he couldn't get under the doors) so he continued to free roam. Slept all day, got up about 6 or 7pm and was out and about all over the living room. I got very attached to him. But wished he would sit for a cuddle. If you picked him up to sit on you for a stroke he would have to be off again.

We didn't know about hamster safety issues and he would climb up the curtains and peep his head over the top. Thankfully he never fell.

I realised I loved this hamster when he started following me about (in hindsight I think he decided I was an escape route). I had a long dressing gown and would find myself weighted down at night and in the morning and look round to find he was sitting on the end of my dressing gown having a ride.

Once I didn't notice until I was out of the room and half way up the stairs. He had achieved his mission. Cheeky hamster.

At night we left the door open on his cage still but as soon as we went to bed he went back in his cage and ran in his wheel most of the night. He'd be asleep in the morning. I don't remember what he was fed apart from lettuce (which hamsters shouldn't live on!) I think he foraged a lot of crumbs and maybe my bf gave him some hamster mix as well.

One day he got stuck in his turret on top of his rotostak. His little head at the top of the tube and his body in the tube. We noticed he had a large lump on his neck under his chin and had got stuck in the tube. Freed him and he seemed fine and quite himself and very active. But we took him to the vet where they said he needed an operation to remove the lump - and sadly he never came home.

I cried for days. I had no idea you could love a little hamster like that.

Twenty years later I had a stepson who wanted a hamster - and we have had one every since. So in 2014 we got Charlie - a syrian hamster from the local pet shop. The cages in the pet shop looked a bit small and flimsy. I remembered the amazing rotostak cage and bought another one but it was bigger than our old one with a longer base unit. And a lot of external tubes. Wrong. Hamster care had been well researched and improved by then. We had a book and it recommended about 80cm by 50cm floor area. I cheated and added up the floor area of all 3 units and decided it was big enough.

Our hamster was not happy though - he chewed the few little bars there were, got cage rage. The bottom unit got full of condensation and stinky and he looked depressed and attacked your hand if you opened the lid. So we could only let him out of the second level unit and straight into a ball. Couldn't let him free roam as it was an old house with floorboards and holes all over the place - plus a clumsy child around. He then grew extremely large! And got stuck in one of the tubes.

That was it - I had already fallen in love with this little creature - head over heels - and went online to find out more about hamster cages. Came across a lot of information (and this site) and overnight ordered an 80 x 50cm cage (theSavic Mickey 2XL which is basically the same cage as the Hamster Heaven but narrow bar spacing). I wanted the narrow bar spacing as I was worried about mice in the old house as we did get them occasionally. The narrow mouse bar spacing was to keep any stray mouse out!

Next mistake was to move him straight into the new cage (a completely different environment- more space and ventilation) cold turkey. He completely freaked and sat and shook nervously for days. By then my partner had fallen for the hamster as well and we spent our evenings worrying about him. Put a blanket over the cage so he felt less exposed. He still sat and shook. Partner suggested maybe we should move him back to his old cage - but couldn't really as he didn't fit in the tubes.

I had some wonderful help and advice on here and understood it could take a good 2 weeks for him to settle into his new cage and I hadn't moved his old bedding across so it was a massive culture shock.

We stuck it out. He shook a bit less but was scared to come out of his house. Then on day 10 suddenly he was a different hamster - he loved his cage! He was almost smiling. His body language was completely different and he had a whale of a time in his cage. He used to run very fast on his (now large wheel - I did think the other one must be too small as he was huge in it and running very bent which didn't look comfortable - and found my instincts were right). So he would run very very fast and then jump out on the mass of substrate and just kind of chill and relax there and look all happy. Then he'd do it again and again.

So when Charlie died about a year ago, we had a big hamster shaped hole in our hearts and now have two more. Newt another Syrian - a lovely boy who is a pedigree from Souffle on here. And Nugget who is a roborovski hamster and now has the Savic Mickey2XL that Charlie used to live in.

Charlie was a completely different hamster to "my" first one. Large, lazy and a bit neurotic and very picky. But we tamed him (again with a lot of help on here) and he was lovely and snuggly and liked being stroked behind his ears and would even go to sleep on my lap under a blanket - depending whattime of night it was. He was a bit of a home bod and didn't like coming out of his cage much so we tempted him out every night. Once out he enjoyed himself and would also sit between us on the sofa.

Newt, our current syrian is a different personality again -much more active but very placid and adorable - also very funny. He is an avid digger and eats like a hoover - never seen a hamster hoover up so much food so fast.

Nugget the robo isn't hand tamed - I just didn't get the time and he is so little and fast and nervy. I have conversations with him but he is a "look don't touch" hamster really. I adopted him from an unwanted litter locally. He has never liked hands. Robos are notorious for being hard to hold and tame but I didn't really try hard enough - had a very busy year. Newt was already tame when he got him and soon got used to being handled by any of us.

[Natasha95]

I had 3 hamsters growing up, but since I was a kid, I didn't really interact with them much, and my mom was the one who took care of them. Unfortunately, that was in the 90's and early 2000's when hamster care was definitely not what it is now, so those hamsters didn't live very long and weren't very tamed. The first hamster I got was when I was 4, and I remember him being pretty scary. The next one I got when I was in kindergarten, and he was actually very sweet. He was an escape artist, but my mom also took him out of his cage a lot and let him run around her bed. The next one I got when I was 9, and she wasn't very friendly. Of course, now I understand that aggressive hamsters are just untamed and uncomfortable.

My first hamster as an adult was Hamtaro. I spent 2 months researching hamster care before I got him, so I felt really prepared. There aren't any hamster breeders around me, so I got him from Petco a few days after I graduated from college. I knew I wanted to name him Hamtaro (from that old anime they used to show on Cartoon Network), so I was looking for a golden Syrian. They didn't have any on display, but the employee who helped me out brought me to the back and told me he might not be very friendly. It turns out she was thinking of the aggressive female hamster in the tank next to him because when she picked him up, he didn't try to bite her and just sat in her hand calmly. She told me he was 10 weeks old. I wish I'd asked her why he was in the back because I think hamster kept in the back room usually have a story to them, but at the time I just figured he was moved back there to make room for the younger hamsters.

Anyway, I too him home, and he settled in pretty easily. He's never bitten me or anyone else (except once on accident when I was hand feeding him mealworms and he got over excited). He's always been pretty laid back, but he really likes to explore and doesn't enjoy being held for more than a few seconds, even now that he's older and slowing down. He's almost 2 years old (doing the math from the day I got him, I assume his birthday is in the middle of March), and he has his good and bad days in terms of energy and frailty, but his personality hasn't changed.

He's also taught me a lot about trust and respect. Even though he doesn't bite, it took me a while to trust that he wouldn't start biting me, so I had to learn to trust him. And on the other side of that, it took him about 6 months to be comfortable sitting in my hands and learn that I wasn't going to eat or drop him. As for respect, I've learned that hamsters aren't like dogs who love human interaction and aim to please; they're very headstrong and independent. I have to respect the fact that he only wants to come out of his cage on nights that he wants to, and he can only be coaxed out if he lets himself. And there are times when he's free roaming that he'll completely ignore me and want nothing to do with me, but that just makes the nights that he jumps into my lap that much more special.

Because I've had him for so long, I've really learned to understand him and his body language, and he's learned to understand me. There was one night a couple months ago when my boyfriend was over, and Hamtaro was running around, and he fell asleep behind my desk, so I had to wake him up to put him back in his cage, but I couldn't reach him, so I had to tap on the side of the desk to wake him up, and put my hands out and called to him, and he came right over and sat in my hands, and my boyfriend was so amazed by that.

My next hamster was Penelope (Penny). In keeping with the "Hamtaro" theme, Penelope is the baby hamster on the show. She was actually more of an impulse buy. I was at the store buying Hamtaro some food and bedding, and I had been thinking about getting a Djungarian for a while, so I went to look at them. (Of course, at the time I didn't know that all Djungarians and Campbells in North America are actually hybrids, even though the stores label them otherwise, so I was only looking for the Djungarian label.) Penny was on display, but she was priced half off. The girl who was showing me the hamsters said that she'd been there for about a year and that no one wanted her because of her red eyes. That, of course, made me want her even more! She was also the only one who didn't try to bite the girl or start screaming at her when she put her hand in the tank. I still had Hamtaro's old bin cage, that was 360 sq. in. because that was the minimum when I got him, but he'd grown out of it, so I figured I'd get Penny and could put her in there for now. My boyfriend was actually the one who bought her, but she lives with me, so we say she belongs to both of us.

Penny is in many ways the complete opposite of Hamtaro. She's so much more reactive and anxious than he is. She's more of a biter. But she's also friendlier and more interactive. Taming her was different because it was more about getting her to stop biting than to sit still in my hands.

The night I brought her home, she seemed very friendly and excited, and she would willingly climb into my hands. But then I left her alone for a few days to settle in, and she developed some cage aggression. She would let my boyfriend pet her, but she would bite me if I put my hand in her cage. Then she eventually got comfortable with me and started hissing at him. I ended up buying her a much bigger cage (540 sq. in., like Hamtaro's), and that helped a lot. But it also made her less social because now she had a lot more places to hide and would rarely come up to the surface. Over time, though, she got a lot more social. Now, she's comfortable with pretty much anyone. Unlike Hamtaro who freezes up and hides around anyone who's not me (or my cousin for some reason), she comes right up to ppl and climbs on them. She does still nip, but it's more of a curiosity thing now, and not aggressive like it used to be. Funny story: when I was taming her, she used to bite a lot, and one time, she bit my palm and started pulling on it and wouldn't let go. It took a lot of willpower not to react and drop her, but I stayed very still and instead let out an "Ow!" which seemed to startle her, and she just let go and looked up at me and sat there, and she never bit me like that again.

Also, I went back to the pet store a few days after I got Penny to see if I could get a better estimate on her age, and the girl I asked (who was a different person than the one who sold her to us) said she was probably there for about 8 months, and that no one wanted her because she used to hide under her wheel so no one could see her. I thought it was weird that they gave me 2 completely different stories, but regardless, she was half priced for some reason and older than the other hamsters there. But I wonder if she was really THAT old because she's sinced darkened a lot and gotten slightly bigger. Her eyes are light brown now instead of bright red, and her super light, beige fur on her back has gotten a little darker too.

And that's my hamster journey. I've had Hamtaro since May 2017 and Penny since October 2018. You can follow them both on Instagram at hamtaro_adventures !

[rebekah03]

Serendipity7000, thank you for that story, exactly what I was asking for. I love how your first hamster all those years ago had made such an impression and was a bit of a free roamer! Charlie, Newt and Nugget sound like such characters! Thank you again!

[rebekah03]

Natasha95, Thank you for that response, I love how Hamtaro knew what you wanted him to do when you tapped on the desk. Some people say that hamsters are just unintelligent rodents, but I love to hear things like this that prove that statement wrong! And poor penny, nobody wanting her because of her eyes! At least she has such a good home now, though! Thank you again for responding!