Saturday 19th August 2000
Dak the Hamster reports on cage layout and the average hamster

I was passing by some other hamsters just the other day and my head was drawn to the type of accommodation they were living in - being one who’s only experienced the delights of Rotastak (with all their incompatibility problems), it always makes me inquisitive to see if there’s anything I’ve been missing in other hamsters’ compartments.

The rodent greeted me with a nose in the air and a faint squeak which I could hear above the rustle of paper which was emanating from the human owner sat somewhere in another room.

I looked around the compartment with a fair amount of bewilderment and wondered just how it was possible to keep this hamster occupied for more than thirty seconds. Though there was the necessary wheel in the corner - an object which many owners think is necessary simply for exercise but which is actually there to simulate hunting in our wild habitat - and the separate nest compartment which had been stuffed with some safe form of bedding, I couldn’t see much else to interest me.

One ramp, some wood shavings on the floor and a second level to walk on - and off - and on again - and off. Yeah, rippingly exciting, huh?

You see, when I get up from sleep - and I currently have four nests on the go and a further one under construction (until that great two-weekly event when all the bedding seems to disappear in the space of an hour or two) - yes, when I get up from sleep, I have choices. Lots of them.

Do I go out the compartment to my right, descend the ramp, another right, left and then across a man-made bridge suspended across a red plastic gorge to my food dish? - or do I first go down a different ramp, round a tunnel, into a pod and up one of two short tubes onto the higher level to reach it? Or should I exit right, continue straight, down a hole in the floor and through nest number three to emerge into a totally different pod, run through it to the end where a two foot tube will take me to that same food dish?

And which food dish should I actually head for? One of the two with dried food, the one with fresh fruit and veg or the one that has morsels from the master’s table? And I’ve always got to be on the alert for hidden treasures stashed away under piles of shavings cos they frequently appear there mysteriously overnight.

Choices - my life is full of choices. The poor wretch of a hamster in this cage seemed to have one or two but hardly had to use his brain to decide. I can imagine him sitting in his nest during the waking moments before full consciousness and contemplating:

‘Now, should I go to my food dish by using the ramp? Should I use the ramp and go to my food dish? Or should I, by going to the food dish, inadvertently choose to use the ramp?’

What sort of life has this hamster got, anyway? It always amazes me - and perhaps it’s because I’m allowed semi-wild conditions that I think this way - that owners could ever contemplate something less than extensive for their pets. They let cats out in the garden to wander free, dogs are given regular exercise on a daily basis - and we get a wheel! Like, that’s sufficient?

‘Happy is the hamster’ so the rodent proverb goes ‘who can spend all day exploring and has little time for repetitive activities’

I know that it doesn’t ring with the same kind of poetry as most human proverbs do, but translating from the hamster tongue isn’t always easy and the symmetry can’t always be maintained.

So, what’s my point?

Well, it’s an appeal, really.

Give a hamster space and he’ll live like a hamster - give him a small, square compartment and he’ll live like a pet, just an ordinary domesticated (can we ever be that?) pet.

Sure - a wheel, food and bedding is all we really need but expand the possibilities and you expand the range of activities. Multiply a hamster’s choices and you increase the range of behaviour.

My human friend - don’t settle for one or two bits of equipment for your pet. Give him more, build him an empire!

Dak the Hamster writes for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.



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