I’m always looking for ways to help pets and wildlife (partly because there are so many in need, partly cos hanging out with them feeds my soul), and a couple of months ago (pre-lockdown) I found myself at the centre of a hamster rescue mission. Settle in for a heartwarming adventure with special guest appearances from non-rodents… and cute photos, of course, because I’m an animal photographer.
I’m in a hamster rescue group on Facebook. Yes, there is such a thing. We often see adverts for hamsters on Gumtree, Shpock etc and we always worry about where they’ll end up. They can be used for bait, as snake food, or simply left bored in an unsuitable cage, forgotten by a small child who is asleep long before their hamster gets up to play. So we do our best to find ways of saving them.
A couple of months ago one of the team spotted an advert for a Syrian hamster that was clearly being kept in horrible conditions. The poor wee thing was really unwell and hadn’t seen a vet, so Emma rescued her, got her to the vet and started urgent treatment.
We knew the Syrian’s owner was also advertising two dwarf hamsters so I decided to buy them to make sure they were safe, then find them happy homes because having one cat and one hamster here was enough!
The owner agreed to sell them to me. She said she wanted them to go to “a loving home” but didn’t ask anything about me or how I’d care for them, just knew I was going to pay the full asking price. She wanted me to wait until the next day to collect them so she could clean their cages. I guess they were living in a similar state to the Syrian.
We met at a high rise block of flats in the south side of Glasgow. She had the two cages with her, both too small, both practically empty. I found out she had housed two hamsters together, they'd bred, she'd then separated the babies by colour because she thought that indicated their gender (reader, this is not how to sex hamsters!) and she soon had 30 hamsters. I’m hoping her actions were down to sheer incompetence rather than an attempt to breed badly for profit, but can’t be sure.
I asked if these were the last two hamsters and she said she also had the original female (although she wasn't completely sure it was her because “several looked the same”). I couldn’t bear to leave any animals in her care so I offered to take that hamster too. She looked amazed and relieved. I’d spotted she also had a budgie for sale so I said I'd take him too if she wanted. She quickly said yes and it was fine that I couldn't/wouldn’t give her any more money for the additional animals. The fact she was willing to give up all of her pets so quickly reassured me that getting them out of her home was the right thing to do.
So she fetched a really grubby, smelly bird cage and the remaining hamster cage (small, practically bare, no exercise wheel, rubbish food and the tiny stressed hammy was chewing the top bars), and we filled my car with animals. A lot of the following photos are iPhone snaps - I hope that is obvious!
Only one animal had a name - Squeakers. Ages were vague. Genders unknown.
It was pretty wet and windy so the numerous treks from my car to my flat were a delight and I’ve no idea how the bird cage survived the journey. But I got everyone inside, shut them in my kitchen (safe from my curious cat) and started the next part of the mission… after completing a photography edit for Scottish Opera because my life is ridiculous like that.
Leah runs the rescue network and came round to check the hamsters. I’d never met her before but she generously went out to buy bedding, wheels etc while I took two of the hamsters to the vet. They were all in fairly good health but two of them were a bit underweight and one needed a pedicure. One hamster weighed more than the other two put together. He’s the largest dwarf hamster we’d ever seen so I named him Bruiser. I don’t think my vet was entirely surprised that I turned up with random animals and I’m grateful he was able to see them at such short notice.
With that done, we swapped and revamped cages with food, warmth, wheels and enrichment. If you had a hamster when you were a kid, you’d be amazed by the changes in hamster care these days. There are strict guidelines for cage sizes (unfortunately not enforced by pet shops so don’t let them fool you - that’s a blog for another day), wheels and exercising.
Thanks to the numerous animal networks I’m part of, a very kind stranger named Angela brought me a bird cage and four of us shut ourselves in my small hall, trying to coax the poor, depressed budgie from one cage to the next. It took a while but he got there and the transformation was amazing. I don't know budgies at all but he was visibly happier when he started playing with toys and shimmying along decent perches. He loved it. We were all quite emotional by this point.
Minutes later, a friend’s sister turned up to adopt him and saved me from a crash course in how to keep budgies. Suzanne has kept birds before and I trusted she knew what she was doing. He's now named 'Wee Chookie' and a few weeks later he moved into a very fancy big cage with two new bird friends! He’s happy and safe.
It was chaos but wonderful chaos. I had so many strangers in my flat, helping animals, and it brought happiness to us all.
And so I was left with three hamsters in my kitchen. Two of them (Squeakers and Bruiser) were pretty friendly, one of them (I named her Bailey) was very nervous. I wish I could’ve kept them all but I had enough on my plate. They all posed excellently for my camera though.
After a few days of caring for them, space became available at Mandy’s Furbabies Fife, a hamster rescue. Another pantomime ensued as I used my Tetris skills to bundle cages, travel cases and hamsters into my car, then chauffeured my precious cargo to Kirkcaldy. Mandy has around thirty hamsters and gerbils in her spare room and does an incredible job taking care of them, finding them great homes and, when necessary, keeping some as pets if they’re too unwell to be rehomed. She has an Amazon Wish List if you’d like to help her creatures.
I did a wee photoshoot of some of her residents while I was there. During normal life, I take photographs for animal organisations and charities across Scotland and the UK, for press, social media and marketing materials. It’s especially hard to get decent phone photos of speedy, nocturnal beings so I knew that professional animal photos could help them find forever homes.
Then I went home, immediately feeling their loss but also slightly relieved to get my home back to normal. The hamsters were safe and well and in excellent care.
The End.
Except it wasn’t the end, was it?
Sigh.
As soon as I left Kirkcaldy I felt that I’d made a terrible mistake. I had done what I thought was the right thing. I’d rescued the hamsters purely to get them to safety. I fostered them so they could find excellent new homes.
A few days later I messaged Mandy and the deal was done.
I went back for Squeakers. OF COURSE I DID.
I threw the sensible pros and cons list out the window and adopted her. The hamster rescue team had apparently put bets on this happening.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the wee soul I’d first seen hanging by her teeth from the top of a cold, empty cage. She often responded to my voice and woke up for a wee nosey when I went into the kitchen. It transpired that she hadn’t been settling well at the rescue centre, reacting to the cries from baby hamsters in the same room, maternal urges borne from birthing umpteen litters. She could also easily be overlooked because of her age.
And so I became a single mother of three. A failed foster. That was not what I planned when I set out on this adventure.
Squeakers (also known as Pipsqueak or Squeak or ‘Ouch! My finger is not food!’) now lives in a massive cage, loves to burrow in deep bedding (she sleeps in underground tunnels that she’s terribly proud of) and inhales seeds like a Dyson. She’s sometimes feisty, but she jumps into my hand for tiny cuddles and exploration, and brings joy every day. I believe she’s nearly 2 years old but she’s incredibly bright and active, and she’ll have a safe, happy life here.
That’s not quite the end either. Sadly, since I started preparing this post, my Syrian hamster Rupert The Bear passed away suddenly. He was a quiet, gentle soul who rarely showed his face before 11pm but it’s incredible how different my home is without him. So it’s just, me, Roxy and Squeakers in lockdown. Hamster rescues are impossible right now due to social distancing rules but when it’s safe to do so, I suspect a future mission will change my family dynamic again.
PS Please be assured that Squeakers is perfectly safe from Roxy! She’s in a very expensive cat-proofed cage.