Meet Ruby

Rocket our hamster died last week. He had stopped running on his wheel and had several large tumours that had become so big they were starting to impair his mobility. We decided the kindest thing to do was to put him to sleep. We’ll miss him. He was a cool dude.

It’s always really hard to make that decision as ideally you want your pets to die peacefully in their sleep at home but I felt he was beginning to suffer. It was March last year that the vet had initially wanted to put him to sleep so I’m very glad we didn’t do it then as he had almost a whole additional year. I’ve learnt a lot about hamster care since then and have also found an exotic animal vet for future visits which we may need because today we adopted Ruby.

Ruby is a white winter dwarf hamster, also known as a Siberian hamster (a real one, not the Fawlty Towers kind). White winter hamsters are so named because they change colour in winter, turning paler to better camouflage themselves in the snow from predators.

She was adopted from the SPCA near Dundee which is where we adopted Rocket so like Rocket we don’t know how old she is. The SPCA advice on hamsters has really developed and I was impressed by their knowledge and recommendations. We’ve learnt some new things and Ruby’s cage setup is now almost a work of art that Elizabeth and I enjoyed building this weekend.

One thing the SPCA recommended this time which they hadn’t previously is to remove all the levels in the cage. Hamsters are not climbers but burrowers. It’s better to have lots of deep bedding for them to build tunnels into rather than several different levels. They also said to avoid muesli and now recommend the Bunny Dwarf Hamster Dream Expert.

Here are some photos of our new cage setup.

And here’s the very pretty Ruby with her ruby red eyes.