Penguin
07-10-2015, 01:18 PM
Tiny Kiki had her first trip to the vet today and do to me being overly protective; I would love a second opinion or thoughts on what's going on.
Be ready for a long post:
The last week or two, her behavior suddenly almost reversed. She went from:
coming out to see what was happening if I was cooking, just walking by or if she heard my voice
being out often during the day
being excited, climb the bars as high as she could go and chewing on them to get my attention
happily walking onto my hand to be picked up
come running as if her life depended on it whenever I changed her food
To:
hiding all day and rarely even peaking out before all light is off and I have gone to bed (I might want to mention that I live in a one-room apartment)
I never really see her eat or drink, I do however see her food bowl being buried in substrate and I can see that some food is gone in the morning
she rarely want any of her favourite treats, the only thing she will take is mealworms and occasionally a pea flake (she used to go crazy about pea flakes and sunflower seeds)
refusing to step onto my hand unless I have a mealworm on it - she has, however, been walking out of the door on the front of the cage and onto my hand (yesterday) as she used to, so I guess I can cross out the idea of her being scared of me?
she seems to run less in her wheel
This is one of the things that worries me the most, yesterday I saw her curled up in a ball and grooming her belly for a good 1½ minute. I picked her up to have a look at it and she had a thin line on the exact middle of her bottom half of her belly, where some fur was missing and it was an irritated red colour. I touched it and she squeaked to tell me that it hurt. I had a look around an hour later and the red colour was gone and you have to look carefully to see that the fur is missing.
Now the point of this whole post is: I took her to the vet to get it checked, told him about how she had suddenly changed and the accident she had had with her house a bit ago where she got her leg stuck. He examined her and said it could be that she was feeling a bit of pain. So after a fight and my tiny fluffball making horrible sounds that I had no clue a hamster could make she got an injection with some painkillers.
Seeing as I'm going to leave the country for 2 weeks I left her at my mum and sister's place. I will admit that she seemed back to her old self when I put her into her cage (around an hour later) with all of her stuff, and she happily walked around and checked that everything was as it used to be. BUT, I am not sure if she was that energetic due to the relief of being out of the carrier and 'home' in her cage, or if the painkillers helped her.
I have been searching the internet about her sudden behaviour/personality change and also tried to find anything that would link her over-grooming of her belly and that together - but it seems impossible to find any clues on either and especially those 2 things together.
Does anyone have any clue what might be going on in the tiny head of hers? Stress? allergy? nothing at all?
Be ready for a long post:
The last week or two, her behavior suddenly almost reversed. She went from:
coming out to see what was happening if I was cooking, just walking by or if she heard my voice
being out often during the day
being excited, climb the bars as high as she could go and chewing on them to get my attention
happily walking onto my hand to be picked up
come running as if her life depended on it whenever I changed her food
To:
hiding all day and rarely even peaking out before all light is off and I have gone to bed (I might want to mention that I live in a one-room apartment)
I never really see her eat or drink, I do however see her food bowl being buried in substrate and I can see that some food is gone in the morning
she rarely want any of her favourite treats, the only thing she will take is mealworms and occasionally a pea flake (she used to go crazy about pea flakes and sunflower seeds)
refusing to step onto my hand unless I have a mealworm on it - she has, however, been walking out of the door on the front of the cage and onto my hand (yesterday) as she used to, so I guess I can cross out the idea of her being scared of me?
she seems to run less in her wheel
This is one of the things that worries me the most, yesterday I saw her curled up in a ball and grooming her belly for a good 1½ minute. I picked her up to have a look at it and she had a thin line on the exact middle of her bottom half of her belly, where some fur was missing and it was an irritated red colour. I touched it and she squeaked to tell me that it hurt. I had a look around an hour later and the red colour was gone and you have to look carefully to see that the fur is missing.
Now the point of this whole post is: I took her to the vet to get it checked, told him about how she had suddenly changed and the accident she had had with her house a bit ago where she got her leg stuck. He examined her and said it could be that she was feeling a bit of pain. So after a fight and my tiny fluffball making horrible sounds that I had no clue a hamster could make she got an injection with some painkillers.
Seeing as I'm going to leave the country for 2 weeks I left her at my mum and sister's place. I will admit that she seemed back to her old self when I put her into her cage (around an hour later) with all of her stuff, and she happily walked around and checked that everything was as it used to be. BUT, I am not sure if she was that energetic due to the relief of being out of the carrier and 'home' in her cage, or if the painkillers helped her.
I have been searching the internet about her sudden behaviour/personality change and also tried to find anything that would link her over-grooming of her belly and that together - but it seems impossible to find any clues on either and especially those 2 things together.
Does anyone have any clue what might be going on in the tiny head of hers? Stress? allergy? nothing at all?