Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
Hamster Hospice: Caring for God’s Tiny Creatures

Hamster Hospice: Caring for God’s Tiny Creatures

Last updated on: October 27, 2015 at 6:34 pm by Caroline Langston

Hamster Hospice: Caring for God’s Tiny Creatures 2015-10-27T18:34:06-07:00 Caroline Langston

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

For my son, Alex

In the final months before our hamster died, I would lie in bed late at night, wondering if he was still alive. In the quiet of the house, after my husband had left for work at 3:00 a.m. and my children were asleep in their beds, I would strain my ears to hear if there was any sound of movement from his cage.

Lying there in the dark, I would find myself holding my breath, straining to listen to whether—just one more time—I might hear the sound of him running on his wheel. But for the last several months that Fluff was alive, there was no sound from the cage at all, aside from the slow occasional rasp of his claws on the cage’s bedding as he painfully turned and the bubble of the water tank as he sucked a few pitiful drops down.

Hamsters, you remember, are nocturnal creatures. When Captain Von Flufficus arrived in our family in August 2013—the result of our nine-year-old’s persistent begging, I, for one, did not want to own a rodent—that was our family’s instantly rueful realization, as we all lay in our beds on our small second floor, unable to sleep, while he ran on the wheel all night long.

But it’s funny what you can get used to. After sooner than you think, I wondered what all the thousands of people who Google the phrase “quiet hamster wheel” were making a fuss about. Fluff’s nightly circumambulations, the wheel’s rapid susurrations, became a comfort, a marker of our existence. They were even more meaningful when we figured out that whenever one of us would make a nighttime bathroom trip, he would instantly freeze on the wheel and stare with his black bead eyes, ever alert and vigilant. (My husband does a fantastic and hilarious impression of him doing this.)

He’s doing God’s work, said my husband the sound engineer approvingly, the one who was also out on the road in the middle of the night, out with the produce deliverymen and the big ole McLane trucks restocking the 7-Elevens.

And of course there were all the pitfalls that happen when two urban children have a first-time pet: the time I walked into the kitchen to find that Anna Maria had stuffed the hamster into a plastic Cinderella carriage and I had to open the door and unfold him out of it, praying that he would still be breathing.

To say nothing of the quotidian failures of children who have been told, but relentlessly try to shirk, their duties in taking care of said pet: How many weeks did I yell at my son that it was time to clean out the damned cage, that we could smell it all over the upstairs?

Plus, there was just the general humor inherent in having another ridiculous animal in the house: Because he was a Syrian Teddy Bear hamster, we called him “the Antiochian hamster” as a nod to the Syrian home of our Orthodox church’s Patriarchate in Damascus.

One time he combed the paper bedding on the floor of his cage into a pile that reached almost to the top of it, as though he were building a Tower of Babel, and then promptly burrowed himself into the bottom to sleep all day. He had the kind of expression that seemed to say that he did not take any shit. And as he got older and his thick honey-colored hair started to recede, it became apparent, and endlessly amusing, that he had a pair of really giant testicles.

But the hair continued to recede, and what there was left of it turned white. “Sweetie, his hair is turning gray,” my husband said to me, sadly, and that sent us into a flurry of worry about skin disorders and whether this was an illness or a normal part of aging.

Here’s the point where I step in to wonder why we were expending so much energy on a pet—a rodent, for that matter—when there are people out in this world who are far more in need of care and attention.

But my thinking now, though, is that God gave us Fluff to show us how to care for the least among us. That the beginning of being truly a Person for Life was in caring for the smallest of creatures, and that caring for those animal creatures could be a point on a natural continuum of caring for tiny, quite possibly inconvenient and nonstandard humans.

In those final months, his fur receded so much that you could see the vertebrae sticking above his skin, and I would run my fingertip along that backbone as I held him in a cradle against my chest, the one time of the day before bed when we took him out of the cage to say hello to him.

He could no longer even crawl up into the wheel, and crept across the floor for his drops of water. “Mom, all he does anymore is sleep,” my son complained.

“We’re a hamster hospice now,” my husband said. It won’t be long.

Then, one summer day, we packed Fluff up in his cage, put him in the car, and left at last for our family vacation, snaking up I-95 through New York City and beyond, headed for the Massachusetts coast. We did not know it was the last day of his life as the car broke above the hill and the blue sweep of the Atlantic rose up above us. When we stopped for the night we fed him, watered him, and tucked him into bed.

In the morning, my son found him lying on his back, his claws finally stilled. Animals may not have souls, we are taught, but we still buried Fluff with prayers and a splash of holy water, and a grave marked with a flowering leaf. It was the right thing to do: He’d brought us closer to God.

A native of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Caroline Langston is a convert to the Eastern Orthodox Church. She is a widely published writer and essayist, a winner of the Pushcart Prize, and a commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered.

Previous Post

October 22, 2015

Blessed Are the Tentmakers

Next Post

October 26, 2015 A Good Fight: Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many days was Jesus tempted in the wilderness?

Select your answer to see how you score.

40 days 50 days 60 days 30 days