h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When we were bringing her home from the pet shop she ate through the little cardboard box theyd put her in like a chainsaw! So my son wanted to call her texas chainsaw hamster..like the move title, but cooler She was actually really gentle natured.

Their front teeth grow to a ridiculous length. Bit like Janet Street Porter

She was still incredibly pretty for a hamster though theres a pic of her in my journal trying to eat a whole biscuit i'd put down for a sec

I lost my fave pooch, a west highland terrier called Bonnie. She had a lousy start in life, was rescued by the RSPCA after being kicked and stabbed by yobs. She then went to my god-daughters family but when they moved to Wales they could'nt stop Bonnie digging her way out and playing with the sheep next door! I offerred to take her in on the basis that having 2 cats if they all got on fine. Bonnie had'nt got a nasty streak in her. The cats loved her, they all slept in the same basket at times. She has been with me to Scotland on long hikes and climbs, currently a pic of her in msn sitting proudly at a Cairn, 2300feet up a mountain. She was 13 and a half when she passed away. That was new years day this year. She had a heart attack on the saturday and passed away at 1am on the monday. I stayed up all that time with her and yes I when she went. i could'nt bring myself to bury her, my brother came over and dealt with that. I had loads of messages of support here on h2 when I posted the news in a journal.
sadly as a result of my being up for over 72 hours and missing my heart meds as well I was ill shortly afterwards and ended up in hospital in the cardiac unit!!
I miss her to this day, she used to mother the cats, if one was off colour, she would keep the other away. She would sleep on the bed with the cats, good job it's a king size even though I'm only a little chap!
I could go on and on here, better call it quits now.
Good luck with the article serephina, shall look forward to reading it.

Oh, I'll look tomorrow. I love hamsters. You can feel their little skeletons under their soft skin. And they love to be stroked

Very theraputic. But most animals are

I'm going to be getting at least two hamsters soon (yay) I already have 3 gerbils and 2 s (they have stopped bothering the gerbils now, and what do they care? they're in an aquarium with a heavy mesh lid over them ) Hope I get a couple of breeders

Well if you want a rattie too we have a right obnoxious little cowbag you can try

Now who you talking about

My parents have always had dogs for as long as I can remember. When our last dog, a beautiful rough collie died my mum was absolutely devastated and vowed never to have another dog again. So far she has kept to her word but I can see she really misses having a wee companion. What really helps her is that we had cremated and buried her ashes in a pot under a lilac tree with a wee name plate on it so my mum has somewhere to go and remember. When they moved house, the tree came with them. The folk buying the new house tried to claim that the tree was in the agreement and get them to leave it behind but soon changed their mind when they found out what was in the pot.

My cat died of a stroke recently. It was a little hard to take because it seemed so sudden, he was pretty healthy aside from an eye infection hed just shifted, then suddenly he wasnt. Hed had a stroke and the vet has said he'd either pull through and we'd see an improvement or he wouldnt. And he looked like he might, but he didnt. I miss him terribly because I've been through alot with that cat, he had a great personality - always seemed amused by my antics, but never judged me. Never clawed or bit anyone either, perfectly sweet and docile. Its funny because even my friend who I was staying with found it a little hard to believe, and he was never particularly fond of cats. Probably because he didnt have that snobbish attitude alot of people associate with cats, he just wanted to be with people all the time.

Definitely the best advice is to let yourself be sad about it, dont let people tell you its only a pet. Like people have said, its a member of your family. My cat Max was more loyal to me then alot of my real friends.

Jack, hope you feel better soon.

In a way, it's good that he didn't suffer or have a painful death. He would probably have had as good memories of you as you do of him.

Speaking of hamsters, one of my friends had a hamster that could get out of those little plastic run around ball things. Unfortunately they also had a cat, and one day they heard a squeaking and found that the cat was halfway through swallowing the hamster . They freed the hamster and thought it was OK, but it died the next day . Couldn't really blame the cat, as it was one of those that liked bringing birds and mice in - and it was just doing what came naturally to it.

<> (Jack)

Yeah, people who say that just don't have a clue, do they? Also the ones who, if you refer to your pet as a member of your family, think you're some kind of weirdo who believes animals are actually human, or worse, you're using them as a child substitute (a common jibe used towards/against childless 'women-of-a-certain-age' - usually who live with cats ). Stuff and nonsense.

My two 'boys' (now 11 and 13) are definitely getting up there in age. And I know it will be total hell for me and Nog when they die. Nog didn't have much of a chance to get to know Lua well before she died but he is so totally in love with the boys, and they totally adore him. They really are a part of our little family. How could it be otherwise?

az

Agreed, Az, they *are* members of your family, how could they not be? They share your home, you feed them, love them - some of them sit on your bed and sleep although hopefully not my gerbils ) The loss is just a great when they die because you were so attached them. People who scorn when a beloved pet dies are the animals, not the pet itself!

I find it very annoying, as well, when people assume that those of us who consider pets to be part of the family are either convinced they are "people", or using them as surrogate children. While I haven't felt that certain pets I've had (fish and mice, in particular) were "family", perhaps because they don't exhibit the same kind of "personality" as other pets, my cats were family.

I've lost a few pets during my lifetime. A couple of them died while I was far too young to really become attached, or to understand what death was, or to really feel an emotional loss. When I was 14, my beloved Smokey, who was six years old at the time, developed a blockage in his urethra. He was taken to the vet for a routine catheterization procedure which should have taken only moments. I guess he was squirming a bit, and the vet lost patience, and anaethetized him with ether. He went into repsiratory arrest and never regained consciousness.

I was really devastated. I still miss that little guy every day. He was beautiful, he was loyal, he was always affectionate toward me.

And that stupid vet charged my dad $80 for the procedure and an additional $30 to retrieve his body. My dad brought him with when he picked me up from school- the only time I ever saw my dad cry- and we buried him in the back yard, wrapped in his favorite towel.

I have another special kitty now, and love him to bits, but I still miss Smokey like crazy.

It was terrible when my dog snowy died, she was my brothers dog and I started to take care of her when he died.

*blinks* I'm begining to think I'm bad luck

Oh blimey, I've got this to come.
My 14 year old moth eaten spaniel was diagnosed with cancer last week. He has so many operations over the last few year to have lumps removed, hes had three aural haematomas,something that begins with Tric...- ingrowing hair,an unknown alergy, enlarged heart, weak blader and now posibly Cushings disease, I really thought he would make it to Z in the doggy dictionary of ilnesess, he sure seems to be working his way through it!
He is still daft tho, he plays up when people visit, rolls on his back and huffs and puffs. His coat is shiny and he isnt grey round the chops, he doesnt look 14.
I think its too much to hope he will go quietly in his sleep, hes too awkward, we'll have to have the vet out, I dont want him put down at the surgery, he hates it there.
I need to find out cremation costs, I cant bury him in the garden.
When I lost my last dog, also to cancer but very suddenly, I was devastated, he was my best friend. We have lost rats and hamsters since, and although upseting, loosing a dog was different, I suppose it becase you have them for such a long time.

That's so sad, madbeachcomber.

When my cat Lua was diagnosed with having breast cancer she was close to 14 years old. And as she was such a cranky cat and hated being picked up I only discovered the lump by accident - by then it was so big that the surgery options suggested (removing all eight breasts and all her lymph glands) seemed so drastic and probably useless as it was very likely the cancer had already spread elsewhere. So my very difficult decision was to just choose to let nature take its course and spoil my girl constantly for the time she had left.

She lived another six months after that, and was quite okay, eating well and being as cranky as ever. Then one day I noticed she was having difficulty breathing - she kind of had to hold herself up on her front paws to get a good deep breath in. And that was it - I just couldn't watch her suffer any more than that so I called my vet who said she'd come over the next morning.

I was so happy that Lua's last memories weren't of being carted off to the vet's - something that always terrified her. Instead I gave her one of her favourite breakfasts - little strips of shaved ham that I handfed to her piece by piece. Then Maria the vet came and gave her a massive sedative - Lua slowly lost consciousness while I held her in my arms, kissing her head and telling her how much I loved her. And then Maria gave her the final injection.

Yeah, it was heartbreaking, but I think it was as peaceful and painfree a death as anyone could hope for.

az

i lost my first hamster -cuddles- to a kidney disease. i was young and, of course, devastated. i got twin russian dwarf hamsters next, and they both died (at different times) because my mothers drug addicted freinds threw them out of our multi storey flat. (we were on level seven).
id been given two more russian dwarfs after that incident. they had a fight, one killed the other, and the surviving hamster died a few weeks later out of lonliness. after that i thought it was probably better *not* to keep hamsters any more. i am coping with a berievment just now, but thats on a much larger scale

My wife and I have lost five hamsters in the last year, and we find, as a point of interest (or not), that a big problem is how the other hamsters cope with the loss. If you have more than one pet (as Freya, for one, has mentioned) they can find the loss very hard to deal with. For this reason (as well as for ourselves) we often find that the void of loosing one hamster is well filled with another. They do have the down side of living for no more than four or five years, of course, but then everyone's mortal. Also, since we have no back garden to bury ours in (they go to a pet cemetary) we have a 'funeral' of sorts (we live by the sea, so we throw a flower off the pier) so that we have said goodbye to them. It kind of forces you to accept that they're dead, which is important.