A Day in the Life of Pouki-Helmoutte

I normally clean Pouki-Helmoutte's cage at night, since hamsters are nocturnal animals, but this week it just wasn't possible, so I had to do it during her sleep hours. I thought, no big deal, I'll just move her in the summer residence (small cage), she'll continue to sleep and when I put her back into the big cage, she'll have to rebuild a small nest and continue sleeping... boy was I wrong!

I HAD to throw her nest out, because she wakes up during the day, and used to drag herself to her food, with one eye open, munch a bit and drag herself back to her nest. Lately she discovered that it was way more convenient to store food IN her nest during the night, so when she wakes up for a midday snack, she has it all there. While I don't have a problem with her doing that with dry food, it gets kinda gross when she does it with fresh food (veggies fruit and cheese) but forgets the food somewhere in there.

So off I started with the cleaning...



While I thought Pouki-Baby was quietly dosing off again in her summer residence, little did I know she was wreaking havoc on the other side of the room.




She then realised what I was doing...



"What the... Hey, let me outta here!"





"I said, LET ME OUT!!"

At the same time, in another top secret location, I was cleaning the bottom part of her cage, and quite happy with my work.



Everything had to be squeeky clean.





I was quite satisfied, until I heard a little voice...




"Hey! Down here! There you are. How dare you clean my room!? BAD HAMSTERMAMA!!"




"Ok, ok, I said I'm sorry, can I come out now? Pretty please?"




"Step 1: Pretend to have regrets and apologize. Step 2: Keep quiet. Step 3: ... Step 4: Escape!"


This is what her clean cage looked like: perfect! (I give her 24 hours before it looks just like it did before...)



By that time, she was really pissed off at me.



"I said, I'm not talking to you!"

But then I was able to convince her to give her clean cage a try, even if she was in a cranky mood.



"So clean...but...



...dude, where's my nest?!"



"Excuse me while I comfort myself with food... I am SO going to bring this all back up in therapy in a couple of years, you know that, right?"


Ah, the ups and downs of being a hamstermama...