Cueball (and her babies)

Gotcha Date: August 20, 2005

This is Cueball (and her litter). I adopted her, along with two of her brothers, Eee! and Fizzbin, from the Cranston Animal Shelter, because they were about to be euthanized. It had been in the news recently about some organ transplant recipients who had died as a result of a virus carried by rodents, and since they were on immunosuppressant drugs for the organ tranplants, they got sick from the virus and died. As a result, people started dumping hamsters and other rodents at shelters, believing they would give them deadly diseases. In reality, it was the immunosuppressant drugs that caused the problem.

I was supposed to be adopting 5 Siberian dwarf hamsters from the same litter, but the day before I went to get them, there was a "jail break" and two of the little ones were still on the loose. The resident cat at the shelter actually helped the staff find some of the others, by sitting next to an unused drain that had trapped them and meowing continually until someone came to check and see why, and found the hamsters stuck in there. So instead, I came home with Cueball and her two brothers, a Campbell's dwarf that I named Ouch and a very soft and mushy Syrian teddy bear hamster named Brownie.

Unfortunately, I took a little too long to sex Cueball and her brothers Eee! and Fizzbin so Cueball had a litter of 8 very tiny babies. I'll be sure to sex and separate the babies well before they're mature enough to make yet more babies.


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