The Hamster Diaries 2

The girlfriend comes over the night before. There is a lot to do on Saturday and she does not want to risk missing the any hamster related activity.

First we have to buy the cage. This has also been heavily researched - the girlfriend, I should explain, has a lot of time on her hands to do these things. She has plumped for a Perfecto Vivarium, which is a split level glass tank designed especially for small rodents. The advantages of a glass tank over a cage are that it is quieter and more secluded for the hamster, and that the little bastards cannot kick the sawdust over the floor, the disadvantages are that this particular type of tank is both expensive and has been designed in such a way as to make it nearly impossible to clean without double-jointed wrists. Nevertheless, the thought of my hamsters having this Porsche of the rodent world to runabout in is beguiling, and I set my heart on one. There is a shop in Sheperton that sells them.

Or it sometimes does. When we get there they inform us they don't stock them but can order them in if we want. We get back in the car and race off to the nearest other pet-shop we know to try there, but that is more of a garden centre with a corner for pets and the selection is even worse. It does have the advantage of having actual animals in it though. We look at the guinea pigs and love birds and hamsters. The hamsters, those that are awake, look back like they can smell a prospective owner and are desperate to be picked. We race back to the original store and, annoyed, I shell out twenty quid for a bog standard cage. Reasoning that it will be useful place to put them when the tank is being cleaned, and useful if I ever need to separate them.

Dwarf hamsters, I know from my extensive research, are normally very happy living together but will sometimes start fighting, in which case they will need to be separated. I am not so worried about this. I want two because I will not be home during the day and don't want them to get bored and I am more worried about them being miss-sexed and ending up with a dozen of the things. My brother once had a pair of male rats that, after two years of living happily together, suddenly formed a relationship more stereotypical of prison inmates - if you know what I mean. I find such behaviour easier to believe of rats than hamsters; rats' testicles hang out from all to see, advertising that their owners' prime purpose in life is to make more rats, hamsters, little stub-tailed balls of fluff, look no more capable of a lewd thought than Pooh Bear.

Cage decided on, a great deal of attention is given to the choice of accessories and bedding. We plump for a single story rustic wooden house, a delightful ceramic food bowl nicer than the very nice egg cup I bought my niece for her first birthday and a fraction of the cost, and a transparent red wheel that looks more like an iMac accessory than a pet toy. The girlfriend enjoys this more than most peoples' girlfriends enjoy shopping for shoes but by the time we have fought our way home through the growing Saturday afternoon traffic it is getting late. We set up the cage ready for its occupants and rush straight back out again, the earlier plan of getting a pub lunch on the way to Woking now looking shaky but still just about possible.

Halfway through Staines we realise we have forgotten the brand new hamster carry case (sort of a mini plastic pot with air-holes and handles, kind of like Robocop's handbag).

An alternative plan is formed. We buy ourselves lunch in the supermarket and rush back to the house, by the time we get there there is no time to eat and so we grab the mini-cage-pet-transporter-thing and race back off to Woking.

The address of the hamster breeder is 'Dingly Dell.' Honestly! I couldn't make that up.

The doorbell is answered by a man who takes one look at us, says 'hamsters, right?' and without waiting for an answer shouts upstairs 'Tasha!' and leaves us standing outside.

'Oh God!' I whisper to the girlfriend, 'it's a kid.' My anxiety at being a grown man buying hamsters flooding back. We wait a few minutes and, fortunately for my self esteem, it is a fully grown woman who comes down and lets us in.

The hamsters come in a choice of colours, normal (sort of grey with a dark grey stripe), and argento, (cream with a light brown stripe). Never having a great deal of aesthetic sense I have not made a decision about which I want. Tasha, after leaving us waiting in her kitchen with only a tiny but very enthusiastic dog for company, comes down with one of each squirming around in a cardboard box. She picks them up and lets us hold them.

The hamster is five weeks old and has no weight at all, in fact it feels like little more than and empty fur pouch four size too big for the skeleton inside. It seems to propel itself forward without any noticeable foot action and, combined with its propensity to push itself through the gaps in my fingers, is somewhat likeable to holding unset jelly, if unset jelly was warm, furry, and had a little snuffly nose and whiskers.

I am smitten. I knew it was going to be small but its sheer tininess is a shock. I love it to bits.

Unable to pick a colour I ask if we can have one of each, we can, I ask if we can have these ones, we might as well. She gives us some information sheets and a birth certificate (which immediately has the girlfriend planning a birthday party for a years time - with tiny paper hats for the hamsters), money changes hands and soon we are driving home, the girlfriend clutching the plastic pet transporter, listening intently to the scrabbling coming from within.