2001-08-06 - 11:35 p.m.

Sick Hammie

It appears that I am guilty of the sin of inattention.

Cinnie, the cinnamon-colored hamster that sits to the right side of my computer is sick, and apparently she has been that way for some time.

She is a very active, noisy critter, usually running in her wheel, banging her water bottle of chewing on the top of her cage. Often times when I go to bed I have to take away her water bottle to make sure she doesn't wake me up in the middle of the night banging it.

Recently though she has been much mellower, in fact is she has taken to lying around the cage looking quite exhausted.

I took that as a sign that the heat was getting to her, poor thing. Often times I'd feel like that myself.

However, today it dawned on me that she should not be acting like that in an air-conditioned apartment. Today it was poisonously hot, and yet there was all sorts of wild hamster activity in the library.

So I took a really close look at Cinnie and was horrified by what I saw: she was very, very thin and weak. Worst of all, the area back by her tail was all dark and wet.

There is a rodent disease called Wet Tail, and it is especially deadly to hamsters. What it mainly seems to be is diarrhea. The poor animal has very runny stools, gets totally dehydrated, and dies. Of the hamsters I have owned that have caught the disease, at best one in ten survive. Generally, a hamster with a wet tail is under a death sentence.

However, I have hopes that Cinnie can overcome this since she is so young and active. I'm giving her lots of food and water and doing my best to keep her comfortable. I should know whether or not she is going to survive it in a couple of days. In the meantime, I have my fingers crossed.