help

[hampsterbear]

i just bought a teddy bear hampster. it is a girl it keeps jumping and tryingto get out can anyone help me.?

[Karen]

Make sure she has a good home, places to hide, and that you have a secure top on her home! What kind of home does she have?

[BandiTank]

Well I had a female hamster that ended up escaping and she "ran away". I highly recomend that you DO NOT use a plastic cage. They will chew right through it. With my gerbils and hamsters and guinea pigs and rats I have found that glass tanks work best. I also know that females (as with all rodents) are much or active and more prone to chew than the males.

[thelmalu99]

Hi Steve,
What kind of cage is she in?
I agree with Banditank, the glass fishtanks work best. You can get a lid for it that is made of thick wire mesh and it clips securely on to the top of the tank. Make sure you always keep the lid securely fastened, because even though they can't climb up the glass sides, sometimes they manage to get on top of the exercise wheel without falling off. Don't ask me how they do it, but they're like little super-heroes...they can do anything!
The best toy for them: those cardboard tubes at the end of toilet paper rolls. They love to hide in there and gnaw on the edges. You may also want to consider getting her a companion.

[ June 29, 2001: Message edited by: thelmalu99 ]

[AdoreMyDogs]

I would like to also recomend a glass fish tank with a tight fitting screen that fits to that aquarium securely. And I also usually recomend getting companions for all animals as ThelmaLu recomended, but hamsters are extrememly terratorial and they will fight continuously, eventually killing one another...don't get a companion. They are one of the few exceptions to the rule that animals like companions. Hamsters are solitary and a companion would end up either stressing the hamsters so badly that they walked around their cage like it was layered in glass, or they would fight and kill one another. Those little critters sure can put up a fight!

[animalover]

I am need of emergency help!!! My father is moving to Arizona due to financial problems and can no longer take care of his beautiful loving and caring cat (domestic longhair, already nuetered). If anyone you know wants a beautiful loving and caring cat please e-mail me immediately at [email protected]. I need a response by saturday morning because my father is leaving saturday evening. The really bad news is that if we can not find a home for Pantera (the cat) we will have to put him to sleep.

[Logan]

Steve,
I have decided that hamster live to escape! I have had several and they all seemed to find a way out of their cages, especially those with the little "treehouses", plastic ones. One girl, Phoebe, just chewed and chewed and finally escaped. She also found a way to the top of a plastic lid of an aquarium and chewed a whole in it. She also chewed through three layers of duct tape that we put over that hole!

I decided to invest in the aquariums, with the screen tops. No more tubes. Just make sure they have a good, accessible wheel, and other things to chew and climb on. And if you choose an aquarium, make sure you have adequate ventilation in the room in the summer time. It gets quite hot in there. I just keep the ceiling fan running "their" room, and also, since I work from home, my air conditioning is always running in the hot months.

Since we had an accident last week while I was on vacation, I thought I would mention to you that you should put the cage in an area that is not accessible to dogs or cats. My Golden Retrievers turned over one of the cages in my absence, and the petsitter found our little Evelyn, in the mouth of one of them. Unfortunately, we lost her. Her replacement (unnamed right now), came home today. I will be MUCH more careful with cage placement, especially when I am not at home and the dogs and cats are inside.

Good luck with your new pet. We enjoy them so much. But like I said, they seem to live to escape. So make sure you take him out for adequate play time, and maybe even let him run around in a safe area in one of those exercise balls. They love it!

Logan



[ July 04, 2001: Message edited by: Logan ]

[Logan]

Animallover,
First of all, I am sorry for your dilemma. It is a sad thing to hear.

Secondly, you need to go to the Cat Rescue topic, and post your message there. Also, you should read a lot of the previous posts there, because there are good messages that will point you to a rescue organization in your area. That's what you need the most right now. I'm not much help as I am on the east coast, and seem to keep every rescue that I come across.

Do some homework quickly! Don't let this cat be put down. It would be more humane to give him a chance at the humane society than what your father is suggesting.

LOgan

[thelmalu99]

Hi again, Steve
Please don't think I was trying to misinform you on the companion thing. I just looked this up and apparently they do recommend that you cage them separately, as AdoreMyDogs said. The websites I looked at all said that Teddy Bear hamsters are extremely aggressive towards each other and should be caged separately.

Having said that, however, I would also like to say that I was going by my own experiences when I recommended that you get a companion for your hamster. I had several hamsters when I was younger, and I always kept them two in a cage, sometimes three. I am trying to remember how many exactly I had, and I guess I had at least ten over the years. Anyway, my point is that I had never heard that you couldn't keep them together and I certainly never had a problem with the hamsters that I did keep together. I guess I was just lucky.

I'm not by any means trying to convince you that you should get her a companion. I'm just letting you know that I wasn't trying to misinform you. Sorry.

[Logan]

Thelmalu, forget about it!!! You just never know. The girl at the petstore, where I bought Olivia, our newest, this week, did confirm that they can not mix litters, even when the hamsters are small. But you should know, that in side by side aquariums, Phoebe saw Olivia and all of the sudden got energetic again, after 5 days of being quiet...

Logan

[AdoreMyDogs]

Thelmalu, just about every animal I can think of loves a companion, like I said, but not many people know about hamsters and their aggressivness towards other hamsters. I was not trying to "make you wrong" but just simply advising against a companion. I hope you did not take offense to it. It's just that I have saved many hamsters from certain death by buying them from a multiple hamster display cage in pet stores, and they are always covered in scabs and open wounds. Yes you were lucky indeed! Maybe they loved you so much that they just decided to get along

[thelmalu99]

AdoreMyDogs,
I absolutely didn't take offense, and I apologize if it sounded that way. LOL, I was just genuinely surprised to hear that, as my experiences with hamsters were nothing like that. Go figure!