Cassie

One of the first posts on this blog was the day we brought Cassie home.  She is a dwarf hamster, and if you've never had one, they are a delightful little creature.  Spend two weeks handling her in the beginning, being gentle and getting her used to you, and she's a devoted friend for her short life.

I've had "mice" for about fifteen years now.  It started when a girlfriend thought they were cute.  But they became the sound that made the bedroom seem less empty, the someone who came out when you tapped on their door.  And they have so much more personality than you would expect.  And yes, they are cute.

Cassie was a special little girl.  She didn't have a lot of quirks like some of the others.  She didn't get addicted to pepsi or chocolate morsels; she wasn't the one who immediately climbed up your sleeve.  She was just... sweet.  Despite the demands on my time and my careless disregard for spending time with her, she was always right there when I did come to see her.  Just like we'd never been apart or away.  Always gentle, never cross, always she acted as if I spent every day with her.

She was a sleep-talker.  A couple hours before she'd get active, she'd always bark in her sleep.  You wouldn't think a little guy like this could be so loud, but I've heard one bark from three rooms away when giving birth, so I know they have a voice when they so choose to use it.  Cassie's time was just before the dream ended.

Cassie passed today, at the ripe old age of 22 months.  The oldest survivor I had by a good 8 months.  As I took her out to bury her, I remembered when my first, Brutus, died.  I cried, my kids cried, their cousins cried.  And then we ran out and got Butt-Head (not his long-forgotten real name, just what he ended up being called).  Tears have become harder to come by as the years went on; not because of lack of nearness and dearness, but the jadedness that comes by being able to look at a calendar and know it was coming.

Cassie surprised in this instance, living so much longer than her predecessors.  And yet, the tears did not come.  I took her still little form out behind the shed and matter of factly buried her.  And then I came in and took a shower.  I thought about what I would be typing right now, and I thought about the last time I held her.  Four days or so ago- and for the first time in her life, she nipped me.  Not meaning to, but I know what it meant, I'd been there before.  "My body is sore, and tired.  I'm sorry.  But my time is almost here."  I rejected the thought as quick as I could, somehow hoping that continued denying her mortality would prevent her death.  But we both knew, as only someone who can look past the pretense in your soul can know.

I truly don't know that she will be the last.  I'll be asking my beer that on and off all night, I expect.  But for all the characters, all the tiny little personalities, hers would be a good way to go out.  Sorry, I just don't have a good way to end this.  I don't have the grim news voiceover tone saying, "Cassie Hamster, dead at 22."  But I have a beer.  Perhaps it will have an idea...

Some people's kids...

The idea for this post began about 1:05 this AM. It began with me waking up in the middle of the night to go #1 ( a not unusual occurrence). The trick, of course, is getting back to sleep. First of all, my getting up means Scrappy wakes up and notices a black cat wandering near the edge of our mini-woods out back. So he has to spend some time going rrrrrr...rrrrrr...rrrrrrr. Then comes that lovely bodily law that says that #1 + get comfortable= #2. (TMI, I know, but it goes with the story.) And of course, this leads to Scrappy actually barking at the intruder while I'm otherwise occupied and can't tell him to STFU. Return to bed, shut Scrappy up, get comfortable again. Seconds later Scrappy climbs all over me trying to decide on which side of me to climb under the covers at. And since he knows the cat is still out there, let's climb out the bottom and look out the windows and rrrrr... a few more times before repeating the process and going back to sleep. Now comes Cassie the dwarf hamster (henceforth referred to as "the mouse"). I changed her cage a few days ago, and for the first time in 14 months as resident mouse, she's decided to actually use her outside wheel as a wheel instead of a nest, which means periodic bouts of clattaclattaclatta-squeak squeak- clatttaclattaclatta.

And all this actually got me thinking about how she's probably one of the two or three longest-lived mouses I've had, and I've had mouses since about 15 years ago. So let me put this whole thing into perspective pictorially.

Welcome to the crow's nest, AKA my bedroom. The outer woodburning a gift from the multi-talented Laurie; the inner circle my design to replace the original clock face that assumed room temperature.

Here we see my hanging sports memorabilia, including the world famous KCA's 2010 World Championship shirt. Among the items on the wall is another Laurie creation, a cross with my favorite Bible verse on it, I Samuel 7:12- 12 Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the LORD has helped us."

The cross was from the house I grew up in. It hung for years over dad's chair and has suffered from the collateral damage of pillowfight wars in my young and wild days. You can see the framed copy of the Journal-Gazette's headline of Nixon's win in 1968, flanked with grade-school era pictures of my kids, KC and Shenan.

Here's that view out the bedroom window, AKA "Scrappy's TV". Deer and fox, bunny and coon, cat and dog, cop and kids have passed through this vista.

Okay, now let's look in on Cassie. I last showed her off when we got her in January 2010. She looked like this then.

So let's see how she's grown. First, her house.

A spacious two-room with a loft (usually used for bathroom) and easy (for a mouse) access to a semi-detached wheel; which, as I've said, was previously used for a nest).
From inside, that's her looking from her little blue house to her upstairs tube entrance.







Her and Scrappy's relationship is along the lines of "don't ask, don't tell".

When she's stubborn, I often coax her into her food bowl and give her a lift out. She doesn't nip at all, but prefers- when she's willing- to be picked up once she's climbed out. Not so much on being grabbed out of her sanctum.


Okay, that concludes our tour of the crow's nest, starring the elegant Miss Cassie.

BTW, I found it curious as I cleaned the post up, that the six and seven "r" rrrr's at the beginning of the story passed the spell-checker, but he boned the 5 "r" rrrr later on. Go figure.