Hamchan, my lovely aging dwarf hamster, is no longer with us because Casey killed her. Just kidding. No, actually he kind of did. But I kind of did as well and at the same time, it was an accident and she was pretty frail to begin with.
Last thursday was a mammoth day of wringing hands and intense dicussions about our future in Japan. After reaching a decision, Casey and I were peacefully sitting on the cot in the western room watching Japanese TV. Hamchan was being nippy and after a dinner of cabbage and sesame seeds, crawled into a sock that I fashioned into a sort of sleeping bag for her. With the added insulation of a dish towel folded below and over her, she was warm and very pleased. After an hour, I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. I lifted the towel, Hamchan was sleeping soundly with her little paws folded under her chin. She looked exhausted, content, prim and sort of pious. I didn't want to wake her up just yet knowing it was difficult for her to stay warm and asked Casey to put her back in her cage before he left the western room. He agreed and I went to bed.
The next day, I was having lunch at home and chatting with my grandmother in Seattle. When she asked about my "little rodent" and I noticed Hamchan's cage was open. I lifted up the dish towel on the cot and was greeted by hamster droppings. Frantic, I turned the apartment upside down searching for her while maintaining a conversation with my grandmother. She loves animals more than I do and is the sort of person who builds bunk beds with heating pads for the 3 stray cats in her back yard. I couldn't find Hamchan anywhere, and barely made it back to school before the 5th period bell rang. Casey helped look for her when he came home and we still had no success. Fortunately, Andy the maverick of all trades was coming over that night and if anyone would find a missing hamster in a Japanese apartment, it would be him. Once he came, he asked the obvious question "Well, have you looked in any of your shoes by the front door yet?" and seconds later I heard him yelp. I ran over, picked up Casey's shoe, tilted it toward the heel and her tiny curled up body slid down suddenly like a dried leaf. No life. No movement. Completely frozen.
I ran into the bedroom to look up prayers from St. Francis of Assisi while Casey prepared her for burial. At some point I decided that I needed to see her again to say goodbye and tell her what a good little friend she was to me. I lifted the lid and took apart Casey's meticulous packing and I am so glad I did because one of her legs briefly stirred. The tiniest and meekest of kicks. Hallelujah! I cupped her in my hands and breathed over her body, seconds later I felt her stir. I ran to the nearest space heater and massaged her stomach. She felt like an ice cube, I flipped her over and started massaging her little chest which yielded a little more movement.
This is when things got really strange: Andy's mother holds a PhD and was a leading researcher of the cirrcadian rhythms of hamsters. You can't make things like that up. He actually has memories of a child playing with the syrian hamsters in his mother's lab. So Andy called his mother and learned that when Hamchan crawled into Casey's shoe to stay warm, she went into a state of "torpor." A sort of bad hibernation that only really healthy hamsters can recover from. Apparently, this was not the first time she had gone into torpor, but her first at our apartment. It was so cold and dark in our apartment that she literally freezed. Andy's mother also warned that the fact that she was twitching was not a good sign. After what seemed like hours of heaving and sporadics gasps on her part, prayers and massaging on mine, she tightened her body, winced, and stretched out violently before collapsing and dying in my hands. I was in tears. I felt incredibly irresponsible for leaving her on the cot. Granted, her fur was patchy, her legs were rickety and her health was failing. She was old, and I am just glad she didn't die in Casey's shoe. And this just cemented my feelings about living in this apartment for another year. Yes, for slackers like us, not ever having to put the milk or leftovers away is convenient, our entire kitchen is now a fridge. And it is sort of funny that Casey thinks there is a fire everytime I boil water for tea, but if your home is so cold that your hamster literally freezes to death, then it is probably a good thing that this is our last winter in Sendai.
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