Today was a very sad day indeed. Today was the day I said goodbye to you, my new friend. And it’s so depressing to have to write another tribute after the passing of our poor Maggie. I wish I had a picture of you to put up here…
I remember the first time I saw you in the fall of 2002… A class hamster for us…how wonderful. I asked my father, a teacher of the class you belonged to, and he told me that your name was Hamtaro. At first I thought he was joking around, since he knew how much I loved the TV show, but it had turned out that your name really had become Hamtaro due to popular demand. Though for some reason, there were some children who insisted on calling you Ron Kanoski… hmm….
You had been owned by a family, but they didn’t tell us what they had called you, so we welcomed you to
your new home as “Hamtaro”.
Well, you made my job a lot more fun. The kids loved it when at about 4:00 every afternoon, I would take you out of your cage and give others the opportunity to pet you… and I loved it too. You didn’t seem to mind them too much… Every once in awhile, you would take a nip at somebody’s fingers, and I’d bonk you on the head a bit, just like my friend taught me to. After all, we didn’t want kids going home with hamster-bites all over their fingers…
Sometimes I had so much homework that I didn’t have time to work after school. When I finally finished, pretty much everyone had left already, except for maybe one or two kids. So I would take you out and have a little fun with you. Remember sometimes when I would sit with my legs straight so you could walk across them? Or whenever I wore jackets with big double-pockets in the front, I’d let you crawl in those. And, of course, I always loved putting you on my head, cupping my hands behind my back, then letting you crawl down my neck and back, and catching you with my cupped hands. Sometimes your paws would get caught up in the tangles of my shirt. You were always a lot of fun to me after a hard day at school and work.
Well, yesterday was when I discovered your maimed condition. I immediately panicked and told my dad, and we assumed that you had fried over the weekend because someone had turned the air conditioning off. After a day at our house, though, we saw that you had some lumps on your neck. For some reason, your neck was always tilted to the side, and you couldn’t keep it straight with the rest of your body. It was probably because
one of the lumps was so large.
We couldn’t stand it—seeing you suffer like that. You couldn’t drink water on your own, so we had to spoon it into your mouth (which isn’t very easy when you compare the size of a teaspoon to the size of a hamster’s mouth). And whenever you tried to eat, you couldn’t hold your food, because the big lump kept one of your paws out of reach from your mouth. We couldn’t feed you either. So today, Mom called the vet and asked about having you put down, but the hamster doctor wasn’t in today, so they recommended another vet. And this vet was obviously very kind, because she offered to do it for free. We said goodbye and dropped you off. I wanted to go back and be with you during your last few moments on earth, but I didn’t want to drag my mother along and make her watch…she was upset enough already.
Well, Hamtaro, you lived a long, healthy life, even if only the last part of it was with me. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow when I walk into class and a child asks me “Did you bring Hamtaro back yet?”
Now you are home with God…and Maggie (http://www.in-memory-of-pets.com/personaltribute.asp?ID=32669), so we know you aren’t in that terrible pain any longer. One day, I’ll see you again.
Farewell,
| Hamtaro |
| 22, July 2003 |
| The Class |