By Anonymous
I blame myself. I’d cleaned out the hamster’s cage and I hadn’t noticed that the catch was not fastened properly. When I saw the cage again about 4 hours later there was no hamster in it. The cage was on its side and bits had fallen out of it.
My cat is sitting by the window washing himself and licking his lips. He’s caught mice before. When he eats mice he leaves a bit behind. He is a clean eater. Only a tiny bit of blood or no blood.
This time there is nothing left behind. I wonder if the hamster escaped. Is he hiding somewhere? I think he’s been eaten.
It pisses me off because my daughter loved her hamster. She’s not come back home yet. She’s on a sleepover. How do I explain this to her?
It’s my fault. I feel really bad about this. I can’t blame my cat. Hamsters are rodents. Cats eat rodents. Maybe hamsters shouldn’t be in homes that have cats. I mean even when he was in his cage he might have been scared of my cat.
I wonder if I should buy another one and try and cover up the murder. That’s stupid. It won’t work.
Response: Thanks for sharing this family tragedy. There is no way you can do anything else other than tell your daughter the truth and allow her to get over it and then think about adopting another hamster.
Personally I think there is a question mark over whether people should keep cats and other pets which are the cat’s natural prey. Birds are another example. Do we know if birds become stressed in their cage when the cat is around? I’d have thought that they would be unless the two had been introduced at an early age and had become friends or at the cat did not see the bird as prey.
It is certainly possible for domestic cats to form friendly relationships with other species, large and small even when the they are a ‘prey item’. It must, however, take a lot of time and patience to achieve this state of affairs. I’d have thought that the best way to achieve it is for the two to be raise together. On the internet we can see cats surrounded by chicks because the cat is socialised to birds.
There have been some amazing cat interspecies relationships. See owl and cat for example. Good luck in getting over this mini-tragedy.
