posted on October 16, 2003 @ 4:42 pm
i'm afraid oobi may be dying. the past week or so she's been making a strange noise that sounds like she's vomiting, only she's not. her vaginal/anal area has been wet for just as long, and that was the most notable sign solid snake had. snake was the other hamster i bought with oobi, and just a month or two after purchase she died. she was noticably thinner, with darkened fur beneath her eyes and a creamy vaginal/anal discharge. mom said snake could be left at home with her when it was time for me to return to austin so i wouldn't have to watch her go. i ended up having to buy a separate cage for snake because oobi would attack her; i'm assuming she didn't want to be around someone diseased and dying.
over the past month maybe i've noticed oobi's gotten darkened fur beneath her eyes, and then a couple of weeks ago she started this constant squeaking noise. now it's the aforementioned gagging noise. i never hear her running in her wheel anymore, and last night i noticed she was lying on her side and making that noise. i didn't fall asleep until she did, around 4:00 a.m.
seeing her on her side reminded me of my first hamster, sunny. technically she was the second; when the first one my parents bought for me died quickly after easter (when they bought her), they replaced her without telling me. i was nine then but still noticed she was losing weight. i would place her on my bedroom floor and try to help her walk; inevitably, when i removed my hand from her side she fell to that side. my parents took me away, in complete hysteria, to a shreveport captains baseball game. the distraction worked well until i raced to sunny when we came home and found she was dead and molded into the corner of her cage (where she always slept). we put her in a match box and burried her beneath a wooden cross next to my bottle in nana and papaw's back yard.
i cried for days after burying sunny, and i'm getting a little teary-eyed thinking about everything. a few weeks ago i told oobi she can never die, but given her current state i thought it was time we had a talk. i told her if she felt she was ready, she could go ahead and go. i told her it was always fun when she got out of her cage and we had to find her, that i really liked her spirit to continually try to ecape. i told her i loved her, babbled a bit more, then put her back into the top compartment of her cage. she's always stayed in the highest part of her cage; i think all hamsters like that. if she does die, i'm going to bury her on mt. bonnell since that's the highest spot in austin. (:
i've had her for over a year, so it's just really hard. i cried a lot last night, and my eyes are really burning right now. this is really annoying having to tell myself not to cry whilst working.