I’ve had a weird couple of months. First I had to euthanise my male chinchilla, Magic, in July because he was suffering from root elongation and then I thought I had to euthanise my female chinchilla, Gypsy, in August for the same thing. Except she only had an abscess at the back of her mouth, which was brilliant news! And then she died after the surgery to remove it. Yeah. I wasn’t even at home when everything went down, I was off visiting my family in Hampshire. So I ran out of chinchillas and came home to a pet-free house, which was far too awful for me to put into words. I was (and am) still so upset about Magic that I couldn’t even blog about it anywhere for weeks. So this is me blogging it.
After some consideration, my boyfriend and I decided to get a small rodent (less commitment: chinchillas live 15-20 years and I just can’t do that again so soon) and eventually settled on a hamster. We were initially thinking of a big Syrian hamster, but I’ve had two of those before, and wanted something a bit different.
Meet Penny, the Chinese hamster.
We’ve only had her for four days and she is already getting quite brave. I’m very pleased with her progress! Penny is just a lovely, tiny creature who I’m looking forward to getting to know. 