Sadly, my beautiful syrian hamster Cosmos died in June aged over 3 years old, not bad considering he almost died from a massive tumour at 16 months old. He died from a couple of strokes followed by a massive haemorrage. He died on the way to the vets, and I have never wished so much in my life that I could have ran faster. I have since took in another beautiful syrian from a rescue centre, a beautiful boy called buster who I love dearly, but I will never forget my Cosmos, it really did feel as though my heart had been ripped out for a while.

The furry family has also grown slightly since I was last in touch to include 3 netherland dwarf cross rabbits (one of which is blind in one eye due to an injury becoming ulcerated and never being treated by the "rescuer"). We have called them Hazel, Fern and Laurel. Hazel is the mother of the other two. We have also rescued two mice called Ziggy and Rufus, but have since had to split them up due to fighting, but are still going to keep both. And we have got a new friend for Chester; a Basenji x Whippet called Manni with a very sad past (another rescue). Also, I used to have 4 giant australian prickly stick insects who all died of old age. One of their eggs hatched yesterday and we now have the cutest little baby nymph. We have named him/her Willow after the last one to die from the last generation. I am also getting a group of 5 male gerbils from a rescue on Sunday. One of them only has 3 legs and they have come from really horrific conditions; basically a stupid woman in London who had 103 gerbils (mixed-sex) crammed into 4 tiny hamster cages. As they are all cream, I have decided to call them Biscuit, Brulee, Custard, Fudge and Popcorn.

Well that is enough from me, so ya again for now! Alex.