Quote:
Originally Posted by Serendipity7000
That sounds good. Although be careful with the cat! Hamsters can feel quite stressed with cat around and cats can pull cages down when you're not looking. It's their instinct to seek prey. And hamsters are prey animals.
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Agree with this 100% - it's just not remotely safe to allow cats or any other predatory pet like that(including dogs & ferrets for example) to be in the same room as prey animals like hamsters!
Even if you don't see obvious signs of stress, that is something inherent to their very nature, and it impacts
both animals involved whether predator or prey(although it's arguably worse for prey animals and can even be potentially lethal).
No matter how sweet, indifferent, etc a cat or other predator seems, you can't remove their biological nature. I know from personal experience just how quickly and easily an incredibly sweet cat can turn utterly vicious with prey, and it's not pleasant to say the least.
As far as hamsters being viewed as children's pets in the US, that definitely seems to be the case in my experience. They're unfortunately not really taken seriously from what I've found, and we seem to be particularly awful about mass producing "cages" that are glorified toys for example!