Parenting Advice From Joy Berry: The Hamster Trauma

We experienced quite a trauma involving Kaytee Button last week.

Kaytee is the Teddy Bear Hamster that I strongly encouraged my granddaughter not to get right before she left for a long summer vacation. I argued that it would be far more reasonable for her to wait until she returned home so that she would not be required to find someone to care for the animal while she was gone. I even went so far as to assert that I was unwilling to take on the responsibility of a hamster for three months—just in case she was counting on me to do so—which, as it turns out, she was.

But the heart wants what it wants, and once my granddaughter earned enough money to purchase the hamster and all of the trappings, she made a beeline to the pet store.

All went well until two days before my granddaughter was to leave New York. As hard as she tried, she was unable to find anyone to care for Kaytee Button during the entire summer. So—you guessed it—the responsibility defaulted to me. Sigh.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love animals. And who could not love a Teddy Bear Hamster—especially one as cute as Kaytee Button? It’s just that I didn’t need an additional responsibility at this time in my life.

That said, all was going well until my daughter swept into my apartment with a friend who had two nieces in tow. The girls were about 10 and 11. I was in the middle of cleaning my kitchen and was unaware of the two girls finding their way to the hamster cage in my bedroom. So before I knew what was happening, one girl had grabbed the hamster out of the cage while the other insisted that she be given a turn to hold the hamster too. Somehow during the back and forth, the hamster was dropped and in a primeval attempt at self-preservation, Kaytee fled to the kitchen where she found sanctuary behind the appliances.

When it became obvious that retrieving the hamster was going to become a complicated—even daunting—endeavor, my guests fled the house.

I got my super to help me move all of the appliances away from the wall—to no avail. The hamster could not be found, and there was not a single clue as to where she might have gone.

That night, I moved the living room recliner to the walkway leading into the kitchen and spent the night anxiously hoping that Kaytee would reappear. Unfortunately, she didn’t.

To say that I was devastated is an understatement. Even so, I had a day of back-to-back meetings that couldn’t be rescheduled, so I left the apartment in a total state of agitation.

When I returned, my assistant announced that throughout the day she had heard Kaytee scratching from inside the stove!

We pulled the stove away from the wall, and attempts were made to lure the hamster out with peanut butter and all kinds of other bait. But nothing worked. That’s when we realized that Kaytee was trapped in the stove and couldn’t get out.

The next step involved my assistant, her husband and me completely dismantling the stove. Of course this meant that I had to have the stove reassembled by a professional. (One simply can’t imagine how many hundreds of screws and parts go into making up a stove!)

Thankfully after a day and a half of pure trauma, Kaytee Button was safely back in her cage—but not without complications. The stress from all of the shaking and banging that it took to dismantle the stove resulted in Kaytee contracting Wet Tail, a common hamster malady that can be fatal if not treated properly.

So, in addition to paying to have my stove put back together, there was an expensive vet bill and medications to pay for as well.

So what’s the moral of this little tale? I can think of a lot of them. But the most important one is to help kids realize that an animal is a major commitment, one that must be thoroughly thought though before getting one as a pet. It is imperative that a pet owner has a backup pet-care plan in place before getting a pet. And hopefully that plan will not include an assumption like “No worries. Grandma can always take care of the hamster, because how hard can it be?”