Habitrail Madness

This is Butter, named for her light-colored coat. Aside from her name, there is nothing buttery and nice about her. This little critter is the bigger of the two hamsters and uses her size to the maximum advantage. She always find chances to fall splat on top of poor Gravy, step on her like she's a particularly fluffy mat, steals and pees/poos on Gravy's food, and pushes her around like people in Young and Dangerous.

Obnoxiously vocal, Butter screeches whenever we try picking her up. However this is getting better and her greed has overcome her caution. Now she associates the presense of giant human hands to free distribution of sunflower seeds.

Everybody say HI to my favorite darling Gravy. Gravy is quite petite compared to Butter and is a big scaredy-cat. She takes even longer to warm up to us and is somewhat overly cautious. She does take a good photo however. But that's probably because she sits still and is constantly 'stoning' from naps.

Why's she my fave? That's because she's being bullied! Poor thing! THat's the cue for more TLC for the lil' fella! .... Sighhhh....I always have a soft spot for the runt of the litter. And for some reason, she has this 'duuuh' look on her face most of the time. Could be the pink nose on that black face giving her a clownish expression.

Because of the websites warning us of impending fights that's bond to happen if you cage 2 Syrians together, we decided to expand the cage. Hopefully by adding more nooks and crannies to it, they will have more individual privacy or something.... but then again, someone said "More territory, more wars" T_T

Went to IKANO and splurged on the value pack that came with a set of Habitrail tunnels and a very nice box with very nice illustrations of recommended designs. We also got a Habitrail Outpost hoping that the two rodents will cease to snuggle together during naps and get their own individual areas. Snuggles that lead to deathmatches....>_>

The back of the Value-Pack Box


The contents of the Value-Pack


Hubby hard at work


Built and designed with future extension in mind. ;D


Front View. Badass, huh

Before we knew it, Butter was up and about, eagerly snooping around for new territory to advance her reign of doom. She found the new tunnels. We added some sunflower seeds on the top to encourage her to loiter in the tunnels more. Maybe by this way, she'll choose to permanently live there... T_T

WHEEE!!!


Wowee!! It doesn't ends!!!


Reaching the end of the rainbow and no pot of gold




Gravy, however..needs some persuasion


That's the furthest she went... the Outpost, which was decided among them to be the shit corner T_T

Yesterday night, they fought for the hamster wheel. It got so bad til they're racing neck to neck with each other. But due to Gravy's smaller size, she's not as strong as Butter. Eventually she'll end up tripping from not being able to keep up with the speed. Once I saw her tiny feet caught between the small holes on the wheel and poor Gravy was yanked around in circles and Butter kept running faster faster. What a frigging nightmare. Habitrail turned torture chamber....

I think I'll have to go shopping again and get them another exercise extension. I'm going to make Pets World/Pets Wonderland rich.

HAMMMIEESS

After months of toiling with the choices and grueling over the costs of keeping certain pets, I was at my wits end and was prepared to accept the fact that I cannot afford a meowmeow yet. So I just went back Ipoh the other day with the hubby and I stumbled upon my old Rock n Roll Hamster Ballz!

Memories of my old darling Daisy just came gushing back, and what joyful memories those are! Daisy was my first hamster which died of some sort of tumor on the neck. Before she died, she got painfully thin and a hard growth grew from her throat. I think it is my fault. Either I overfed her with lots of MSG stuff, or I neglected her too often and cleaned the cage too little. But heck she lived almost 3 years I think, and even outlived the dwarf hamsters, Biboo and Bobii.

So, the next day when we're back in KL, KK took me hamster hunting in IKANO. I can't believe the price of cages and hamsters nowadays. Exorbitant! I remember buying Daisy for about RM8 and the cost of simple wire cages with plastic base was just about RM15-25. What the heck now they're selling wire cages for RM40-50! Inflation-nya..

But wanting nothing less than perfect for our first pet, we scouted out the smaller petshops around Damansara and managed to find the cheapest Syrian hamsters for RM15 each. We got two, one black-white and one sandy-white, and both are females. (Later I read females stink more than males when they're on heat =__= ...) For the cage, we found the cheapest Habitrail Safari for RM66. And like they say...the rest is history. :D


Here's how the cage looks like... after much survey we figured this is the most secure and suitable cage. I actually had an old Habitrail Safari cage identical to this one but I threw it away in fits of esctasy when I moved and got Cookie the MinPin. This teaches me that I should not obsessive-compulsively throw things... T_T

Upon reaching home, we brainstormed for names for our new furballs. Like typical Chinese, we want our hamsters to have a good name which will be a blessing upon them. After mulling over hard to decide choices, we settled for Butter and Gravy. May our little Butter and Gravy have long disease-free lives and many happy moments with us. ;__;

By 7.30pm, Butter and Gravy were joyfully frolicking around the hamster cage and stuffing their faces (literally) with a variety of hamster delicacies we did not forget to purchase from the petshop. However, it bears to mention that the water bottle we bought leaked. Therefore, this is a lesson to not buy something which is too cheap. I seem to remember dimly in the past of having the same thing happening to me before. hmmmmm... =__=

Christmas 2006 was joyful and memorable. Photos of furheads later!