In Memoriam
Mini Steve was the best hamster anyone could have ever asked for. He was a Chinese Dwarf Hamster, smaller than the palm of your hand. He was a grey-ish brown with a tiny tail he loved to wrap around your finger. His tiny nose was so cute with it’s tickling whiskers.
He didn’t start off as mine. My mother bought him from PetSmart for my nephew Stephen. We bought a really nice glow-in-the-dark cage for him, complete with a section where you could watch him burrow. When we brought him home, my nephew immediately named him Steve, after himself (as children are apt to do). We added the “Mini” to the name to prevent confusion. Stephen loved him and loved to watch him burrow into his bedding. We all loved to hold him, as he was very sweet and docile. In all of the time we had him, he never bit anyone, only nibbled, and then only if your hand smelled like food.
However, as young children do, Stephen got bored of him. Since I was the only one taking care of him, he came to me. I loved that little guy. My cat Murmur loved to watch him run around but never did more than sniff him. I had my boys.
When I got my female kitten, Junebug, she did a little more than sniff. She kept pawing at him and, at one point, even knocked the cage over. Still, we were a big, happy family.
Mini Steve stayed with me, even after I moved to Florida to be with my fiance. We tried to make a different cage to prevent Junebug from knocking it over, but it didn’t work as intended, so we went back to his old home.
I loved him so much. He always came to the door of the cage when I opened it. His favorite treat was sunflower seeds. He was the best.
One day, about a year after we had moved to Florida, I noticed Mini Steve was very lethargic. He wouldn’t eat or drink, no matter what I tried to give him. We began to look into 24-hour emergency vets but couldn’t find one that was nearby and specialized in small mammals. I ended up going to bed, planning on taking him to our local vet once they opened. However, I could barely sleep and kept crying, worried about my little boy. Finally, at around 6am and still dark out, I got up and got him from his cage. He was cold but breathing. In a desperate move, I put him on a heating pad set to low. Then the gasping began.
Once he started struggling to breathe, I knew it was near the end. I started yelling for my fiance, but right before he came out of the bedroom, Mini Steve took his last breath. My baby boy was gone.
After he passed, I trimmed some of his fur to remember him by. In my devastated state, I accidentally cut off some of his skin. I sobbed as I tried to put it back on. Not that it mattered, really, but it mattered to me.
After we got home from work, we went to my in-law’s house to bury him, as we were living in an apartment at the time and couldn’t bury him there. We tried to make the grave look nice. We put up his spare hamster wheel, which was one of his favorite things, and wrote his name on a terracotta plate. It’s still there, 4 years later. The wheel is almost completely gone and the weather took his name off of the plate, but we still visit him from time to time. No matter what, I will always remember my sweet little boy.
