What’s furry & has 4 legs? Our Pancake of Course!

Pancake is SaltyBug’s new hamster friend

That is not the start of this story, but it is where it continues…

You see one of my friends is leaving, so she gave us one of her hamsters. Small, furry, chubby cheeks, big black round eyes and little ears and a little stubby tale that when fiddled with makes her poop like a Pez dispenser. We named her Pancake. And she is adorable.

I posted a bit on Facebook about her and it seemed my world turned against me. There are ‘people’ who don’t respect the hamster as a fabulously entertaining Facebook friend. Friends decided to tease me and tell me Pancake wasn’t a real hamster. ‘It’s a gerbal’ cried one, another replied ‘there is probably a hamster gerbil support group on FB’…Then my Aunty said Pancake was the ‘mutant offspring of an illicit liaison between a potoroos and a fat tailed dunnart’…My sister just called her a ‘rodent’…

Pancake has a race car she rolls around in but she also has a ball and the other night the door came open and she did a runner to freedom. Problem was the dog was also inside so he started couch jumping as Pancake had a party under the couch and the kids went hysterical. I was in my study working and heard the commotion. I came out to save the world as usual because you know, that’s what mum’s are good at. SB was in the kitchen cooking and he isn’t so good at multitasking. Although in fairness he did come over eventually to move the couch with his manly strength, allowing me to scoop the creature up and carry her to safety.

Pancake has brought a lot of excitement, laughter and cutsie talking voices into the house. FB is begging me to make a pink tutu and ballet shoes to dress her in…the hamster, not the kid so life is a little bit hilarious at times in our family.

I even made up a hamster joke…

I haven’t had a hamster before so in the beginning it was a bit awkward. I cleaned out her cage when we first got her and I messed up the way her tubes went so she got a bit upset. I felt so guilty and wanted so badly for her to like me so I fed her lots of cheese. Pancake likes cheese so that was a win for me. When the kids were asleep I got her out of the cage and I put her in a Jake and The Neverland Pirates ship that the kids have and she loved it. I thought this was cool, that I could play with her as the kids slept and that was the moment I really fell for our new furry friend.

I am an animal lover from way back and now, so are my children. If it has fur and four legs, I want one. Even our feathered friends don’t escape my beating heart. It is my dream to have a menagerie of chickens, rabbits, cats, dogs and now…hamsters.

Life as an expat is transient so you don’t always get to take your pets along with you, we miss our beloved cat every day. Finding a creature suitable to love in your foreign home is a blessing and brings much needed happiness and joy into that world. Plus, as my friend who handed her over said ‘she should be dead in a year, before you leave so you won’t have to worry about finding her a new home’. Always practical, that friend of mine…