Other Kitty and the 12 Judges

So, we have a new cat. Well, an old cat --- she's about 4, or so the vet thinks, though she's about half the size of our dear Emma, who is one. So, a perpetual kitten, which is what most people only dream of. She's a stray that's been hanging around our building for several months, apparently a purebred of the "Ragdoll" breed. She's very cute, with Siamese markings. She still has her claws, but she doesn't use them to harm us or our stuff. She's gained some weight, but she was skin and bones. She's still dirty in some areas, and will probably need to have her belly shaved, but she's endured a few baths like a trooper. She sleeps on the bed with us, and has from day 1 (we are now at approximately day 15). We don't know if we'll keep her, but we're having fun fattening her up. Emma even seems to like her, at least as a potential play thing.

So that brought our family up to four, having acquired a second hamster (named Shamgar after the 2nd judge --- our first hamster is named Ollie for Othniel)during a day of boredom. Did you know that you're not supposed to keep hamsters together because they fight and sometimes kill and eat each other? We didn't have that experience exactly. The boys sometimes played together very well, with the occassional squabble, though we kept them in seperate cages just in case. We only allowed them to be alone together once... and afterwards, Ollie was acting kind of strange. We wondered if Shamgar hadn't played a rather inappropriate "game" with poor Ollie, but he recovered after a few minutes and we didn't think much more about it.

Until yesterday, when Paul went to remove Ollie from the cage and saw a sea of wiggly pink beneath "him"... whom we now know to be a HER. 10 babies + 2 parents, = the 12 judges.

You might call the babies half-breeds, as one parent was a teddy bear, and the other a regular hamster. I prefer to call them "double-breeded". Right now, we can all just call them "pink". I was grossed out at first until I saw one of them yawn, which was pretty cute. They are TINY and their eyes were still closed the last I saw any of them. We had to move the nest out of Ollie's loft because babies kept tumbling out of the plastic tube, and then Ollie had to come down and stuff them in her mouth to carry them back up... only to have them tumble down again. They're loftless and settled on the "main floor" now, and Ollie has been sleeping on top of them all day, so I don't know how many are still alive or how many she's eaten.

The real question is, DOES ANYONE WANT A HAMSTER?