MY POOR Shreddie-muncher on Saturday got cancelled, so here's another cutie. I don't know if I'm going to have any "chins" in the near future. They're a bit big and the cage they need (which must be chew-proof, not just a rabbit-hutch) is enormous and very expensive too. Also they're social animals, so I'd need at least two. Having kept social hammies in groups, the group interaction entertainment is too much to miss. Also I think it's cruel to keep furry animals in solitary confinement. If you're going to make a South American Mars Rabbit who naturally sleeps most of the daytimes and spends evenings hoppetting and pinging about the stern crags of the High Andes reside in a metal dog-carrier-looking cage, the very least you can do is make the cage as spacious as possible, with toys like exercise wheels, which all rodents love (so much so that some species of hammy will neglect their babies in order to trundle away) and buy your pets company. 
In London, baby chinchillas are about £25 each and the 4ft x 3ft x 3ft cage would be about £100. Which is quite a lot of money. And not very practical when it's technically "no pets" and my robbies used to hide from the landlord by day in an aquarium stashed in a closet! At night they rambled in a furry pingpong balls donkey derby, all three scurrying on the wheel at once. Poor Baby Itchy, who was smallest and lightest couldn't always fit on and frequently ended up hanging on the side for dear life as her tubby Sister Spherical thundered obliviously onwards, on that big wheel in the dark.Roborovski hamsters are extremely flighty by nature and startle easily, which doesn't really make them good pets for children, who of course will want to pick them up. Of my three, Itchy was the only one I managed to hand-tame, and even she was prone to unexpected panic, when she would bunny-hop on the floor. And sometimes escape this way. And go missing for three or four days at a time. Which had me absolutely fraught.
I couldn't believe it when she died. I actually cried. Then Bashful went. Spherical lived a further three months alone with all the seeds to herself, then she trundled on to that big wheel in the sky...
Small rodents like that have a typical life-span of only two months in the wild and mine lived just over two years. So I think they had a decent innings...
I'm still zigzagging about whether/when/how to get new ones. Robos aren't the easiest of pets to source. Lots of shops told me they wouldn't sell them because they're "too small, too fast and not suitable for children".
But if you think of them as furry tropical fish ~ it something you watch in the tank and don't expect to take out. Their antics were exceedingly amusing. They were my sole furry ray of light in some of the darkest months of my life, when I was in that crackhouse with Matran the Rat Man and prostitute girlfriend Laundretta. Nasty times!
I'm off to the dentist later this morning, hoping for an extraction. If he does yank the bad tooth, this will be my fourth, if an impacted wisdom tooth is counted as well. My first extraction was pretty much an emergency. A tooth that had always twinged and annoyed me and I knew wasn't right but no dentist ever did anything for it, though they must have seen its rotten profile on x-ray exploded in a fairground crash on "dodgems". The top fell out. When he kindly pulled the base, what was left looked like a china toilet fitting full of rotten apple pulp. It was nasty. Then another dentist noticed the gap left by this and thought it would be cool to even out both sides. So he pulled a perfectly healthy tooth. It is this that has left me of a cynical view of dentists, who up till recently. got paid per filling/etc.
(Now they're paid by patient, no matter how much work is required, making someone like me economically unviable). Anyway the NEXT dentist said whoever did that second extraction ought to be shot. Then I had constant wisdom tooth pains. I bit down deliberately on the gum, even though it hurt, thinking I was doing good. Until my next dentist showed me an x-ray of said tooth, still completely under the gum, shunting all the rest sideways... this, apparently, is what "impacted" means.To treat it, he had to cut open my gum in a Y-shape, use a drill to destroy some of the top of the tooth, leaving space to grip and yank it out. Then he pulled really hard. I actually like extractions far more than fillings. Of course my mouth is frozen to liquid methane type temperatures so it's not as if I feel it. But fillings I detest. Anyway he pulled it out and all was fine. Until I tried to eat... and thought I would never eat again! For months I had a cavern there at the back. Ten years later it's nicely healed. And now this wobbler, that, so the internet tells me, either needs a root canal job, or pulling out and replacing with a falsie (which is my preferred option). Theoretically both treatments are free on the NHS...
I'm not quivering inwardly. I'm not in panic. But I'm not exactly looking forward to any of this and this teeth-talk's putting me off. So I'd better go. I'll let y'all know how I got on.
Have a nice day everyone!
