~turtlesoup15

Wow, I haven't submitted a journal in almost a year. Haha.

I'm happy to announce that my husband and I now have THREE HAPPY hamsters. We started with just Kiba, who we love so much...that it's a little crazy cuz she's so small. After about 5 months of living alone we thought Kiba was getting bored with life...sleeping all but maybe about 2-3 hours a day (it seemed) and just getting up for food, water, and exercise. Then back to sleep. So we thought we'd get her a friend.

Enter Nala. Kiba had murder on the mind pretty quick. She was really nervous at first and noticeably made the decision that she needed to kill Nala immediately. So pretty quickly we decided these two were not going to be together. Nala did have a cage mate at the store though...so I went back to get her the next day.

Enter Vixi. We assumed Nala and Vixi recognized each other when I put them both in their brand new cage. They looked at each other a moment but didn't approach each other. It didn't seem they were snubbing each other, just more interested in exploring the new home. They were fine together until Vixi started getting really territorial about the running wheels. She would run in one, jump out, and run in the other...back and forth. If Nala tried to use one she'd tackle her.

We weren't overly concerned because it seemed like sibling rivalry and determining who would be dominant...but then Vixi got more aggressive and the hissing started. We recognized it immediately because Kiba had done the same thing to our sweet little Nala. It was sad to watch because Nala is so nice and non-confrontational with a "can't we all get along" attitude. The other two big personalities saw it as weakness I suppose.

Anyway, so they had to be separated. Nala lives in the playpen now. She has her own Nala Cave modeled after Kiba's beloved cave that pretty much convinced her to move out of her house. Since the separation Nala has been very active and clearly at ease. It's nice to see her thriving and feeling secure for the first time in our home. Vixi was down for a couple of days. My husband thought she was just sad about not being able to go into the playpen anymore, but I honestly think that she got a kick out of bullying Nala, and not being able to do that anymore made her kind of lonely and bored. I read about a study today done on rats that had to do with male rats considering a chance to be aggressive towards another rat a reward because of the raised dopamine levels or something. Just reconfirms my suspicions.

Anyway, I don't claim to be a hamster expert by any means, but I consider robos to be very logical and level-headed creatures. So in response to Vixi's sadness, I came up with a theory on helping her buck up and get over her loss. I told my husband that if I were to leave him (yeah right ) if everything had my scent on it, it would be much harder to forget me and move on. Maybe Vixi could start to get over things faster too if I purged everything in the house of Nala...so I immediately cleaned her home. When she went back in she inspected everything and started running in her wheel. We saw a change immediately. Her eyes were wider and she was being more active. So we're pretty sure we finally got our insanely moody little girls all to a place where they can just be content.

And another fun little thing we did with 'em was put them all in their clear plastic balls and let them run around the kitchen floor together. They seemed completely fine to see and be near each other with the protection of their plastic bubbles and on neutral ground. Nala loves her plastic ball and was zooming around playing bumper balls. The other two were just trying to avoid getting hit.

Yes, I'm the crazy hamster lady now. I find my little girls extremely amusing. And there's not a whole lot else going on...I mean...I live in Nebraska. There's as much out here to do as it sounds like. Luckily I have my awesome husband who is also foreign to these deadened lands...to keep me sane!