TRAGEDY STRIKES

Now, most people that know me are well aware of the fact that I am a notorious hypochondriac. I'm the sort of person that catches a glimpse of an article on a web page as I'm scrolling past and then spend the rest of the week insisting that I need to be checked for a MRSA. One of my bookmarks on my Chrome browser is WebMD, and I have the app installed on my phone. However, the other day as I was perusing the internet, a long chain of clicking led me to researching different species of hamsters. And, unfortunately, that led me to a site called PetMD. I had no idea how many horrible, horrible medical problems hamsters could have! Walter and Nigel both belong to the genus Phodopus, but Walter is definitely a P. roborovskii, whereas Nigel is a hybrid, most likely of P. sungorus and another species of Phodopus. According to my research, however, Phodopus or dwarf hamsters are prone to hamster diabetes. How do you treat diabetes in hamsters?! Tiny insulin injections?

After a lot more research, I realized that at the moment, Nigel was displaying no signs of diabetes, so he should be fine for now. However, my inquiry into hamster ailments led to quite a list of injuries and conditions common in hamsters. Some of them I was already aware of, like the fact that if hamsters aren't given the proper food and things to chew on, their teeth will grow super long and cause all sorts of issues. 

Hamsters are also prone to injuries from falls, since they don't have the greatest depth perception ever, and they tend to walk over the edge of tables, stairs, or cliffs. Like poor Walter in his hamster ball, they often have accidents around the house when they are allowed to roam unsupervised. Depending on how they fall, they can even break their tiny backs, for which there is no cure. 

Another really common problem with hamsters is tiny cardiac arrest. Hamsters are a lot like possums, in that when they are faced with a stressful situation, they die. Except for that hamsters don't really come back once the threat is gone. My father once told me of a couple of hamsters he had as a child that both died because the cat looked at them the wrong way one too many times. 

Now, hamsters don't really live terrifically long anyways. Depending on the breed, they can live anywhere from two to five years. I never expected Nigel to be a permanent fixture in my life, but I most certainly would not want him to die at the youthful hamster-age of 7 months. So I took it upon myself to check the boys for signs of injury or ailment. I checked Walter's teeth first, and surprisingly he was the MORE cooperative one. If you hold him by his teeny little scruff, he doesn't move. Nigel, however, HATES being turned upside down, and he struggles and throws a fit. As I was trying to get a look at his teeth, I caught a glimpse or something much. MUCH. Worse. 

Nigel has a tumor. Right on his little belly. 

Tumors are actually fairly common in hybrid breeds of hamsters. Now, about 96% of hamster tumors are not cancerous, but they are certainly an issue. His tumor made it hard for him to run, which in turn made him more at risk for developing diabetes due to lack of exercise. And then there was always the added risk that the tumor could start to grow or spread. For now, I just need to keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't grow or change. If anything changes, I will need to take him to the vet ASAP. 

Some more information about his condition:

What Nigel has is basically a form of hamster melanoma. It is on the outside of his body, growing right on his little scent gland, which looks like a little belly button. He would need surgery to have the tumor removed before it spread to any of his other organs or grew large enough to put him in mortal danger.

The only problem is, hamsters, as mentioned before, do not handle stress well, and surgery is incredibly stressful. Hamsters are known to die on the operating table before the first incision is even made. Nigel is tough though, he isn't often scared of anything. Still, I'm always a little worried that one of these days I am going to come home to find Nigel's tiny little corpse lying in his cage, never to enjoy another sunflower seed again. 

Furry Christmas and a Hamster New Year

Coming soon!

Friends of Nigel 2: Walter

It occurs to me that in all my writings, I neglected to mention that Nigel is not an only hamster. For some time now, Nigel has had a cage mate named Walter. Walter is an altogether different breed of hamster than Nigel, and in my opinion the STUPIDEST breed of hamster. Nigel is a Sunfire hamster, which is either a very majestic or a very hippie sounding name. Walter, however, is a Roborovski hamster, which sounds dignified but it's not. Robo hamsters are notorious for being super impossibly quick. Add to that the fact that young Walter (called Bandy, as his baby name) seems to suffer from some form of hamster-specific manic depressive disorder, and you are left with quite the handful. But not really because full grown Robos are teeny.

Wee Bandy came into my possession shortly after I moved back home. My sister had become so enamored with Nigel that she insisted I take her to the pet store to buy her a hamster of her own. Long story short, she never did pay me back for that hamster, so the repo men came and took him away. Now he shares a cage with Nigel, and I'm sure there are some days when Nigel tires of his antics...

I suspect, sometimes, that Bandy is imbued with supernatural abilities, including but not limited to: teleportation, superhamster speed, incredible levitation powers, and the ability to store more food in his face than the total volume of his entire body. 

Young Walter-called-Bandy is a troubled little furball. I don't know if he experienced some sort of traumatizing experience in his infancy, maybe his mom tried to eat him or something. I hear that happens. Either way, Bandy is one of the most retarded hamsters ever to scamper the earth. As far as rodential comparisons go, if Nigel is the white mice from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bandy would be more like Gus Gus from Cinderella. 

Even today, while I was actually IN THE PROCESS of writing about how stupid Walter is, he managed to get a running start, fall down the stairs, bonk his nose, and get his tail caught in the air holes of his hamster ball. 

Disclaimer: The following picture is not really Bandy. I don't have enough patience to take a picture of him, but all Robos look the same, so it works. Not all of them are quite as scruffy as Bandy, though.

Yeah.

Yes, I forgot about the drawing and no, you probably wouldn't get your cards in time for this Christmas if you so chose. And sorry for the lack of new material recently. It's been one of those... lives.

In case you wondered...

He has a future in British steel. 

My Favorite Things

Raindrops on roses etc. Whatever you say, Julie Andrews.
I will admit, however, that like regular mortals, I occasionally experience moments of weakness and allow myself to succumbing to (shudder) FEELINGS. As a higher-evolved being, though, I have come up with ways of coping with this feelings and effectively ridding my mind of the nuisance. My personal favorite method is distraction. Thinking of something hilarious when I'm feeling bad usually fixes it toot-sweet, problem solved. There is one very particular hilarious thought that I like to reflect on in just such instances. It is a memory from long ago, when I was quite a bit younger...
I am not certain how old I was or where it happened, but this story started with a road trip. I was travelling with my family and we were going around sight-seeing. One stop on our trip was an apparently very famous animal shelter or something. This place was huge. They had separate buildings for dogs, cats, birds, livestock, etc. Being a cat person myself, I was most excited about visiting the kitty house. A worker took us on a tour of all the buildings, explaining to us along the way about the programs they had in place and all the generous donations they had received. All my little ears picked up was "blah blah blah get to the kitties already..."
Finally we arrived at the long-anticipated cat house, and the lady showed us their expensive facilities, complete with rooms filled entirely with enormous cat-scratch jungle gyms. Every room was filled with cats of all ages roaming freely on their feline paradise. Our guide explained how there were separate rooms for the newborn kittens and elderly cats, and began talking about their charity work for "special needs" kitties.
As she spoke, I was fortunate enough to turn around and witness the most wonderful scene that has stayed forever in my memory and cheered me on many a rough day.
My younger sister stood listening to our guide and cooing about the unfortunate plight of the special cat, with her back to a file cabinet. On top of the file cabinet sat the most special cat I have ever seen.
Imagine the very cutest most adorable little kitten you could ever possibly conceive. That's what this kitty looked like, with a few key differences.

For one, the little critter suffered from hydrocephalus, a condition which is cause by having an excess of liquid in the cranium at birth, causing all sorts of defects. Humans have been known to have hydrocephalus, but it occurs quite commonly in house pets such as cats and small dogs. One of the more characteristic signs of this condition is an unusually large head.

This particular kitten suffered many other... issues... one of which was that one of his eyes was all squinty. I'm pretty sure that had something to do with his little brain, but it made him pretty lopsided. 

To add to that, he was all scrawny...

Plus he was all bow-legged and sat kind of crooked. 

Even his little tail was crooked. 

And then to top it all off, because this little kitty was kind of special, he wasn't really all that great at grooming himself, so his little fur was all sticky-uppy and mangy looking. Also, as the lady informed us, his condition made it so he didn't really have control of his facilities, so he had a habit of randomly widdling all over. Even his little teeth were all skeewompus and his tongue was hanging out one side of his mouth. 

Now, you may all be weeping silently to yourselves at the plight of this unfortunate creature, but hold your tears. You don't want to short out your keyboard. The funniest part is yet to come. Although as an awful person, just seeing this retarded kitten was enough to make me start giggling. What happened next is what burned this scene into my mind forever. 

You will recall that earlier I mentioned that the kitten was sitting on top of a filing cabinet behind my sister. 

For some reason this little kitty got it into his mind that he really, really, REALLY wanted to touch my sister's hair. So he reached out with his twitchy little paw...

And thus was born the single most hilarious memory of my life. I don't know why the image of this retarded cat reaching for my sister's hair struck me as so painfully hilarious, but every time I think about it I laugh for hours. Of course, my sister always yells at me for being awful, because it broke her heart to think of that poor kitten and its retardedness, but I just like to think that handicapped kittens were put on this earth for the entertainment of us horrible people. 

It's Bandtasmic!

When I was young, I was a total loner weirdo. I mean, not disturbingly so, but I didn't have a ton of friends. I wasn't popular or anything and I was kind of nerdy. I parted my hair in the center and wore button down shirts with the top button done up. I was really shrimpy, too. Plus I had skipped a grade when I was in elementary school, so I was a year younger than everyone else to boot.

Then, when I was slightly less young, I started high school. As in every young child's life, the transition into high school was a life-changing event. I had to make some new friends, learn new things. Most fortunately for me, I ran into a couple more lost lonely waifs that were also searching for a new life. 

My first friend in high school was a lovely little ginger named Brittany. We had a few friends in common, and after a while we started hanging out more and more. 

These days, she's the bestest friend ever in the world. She is the sort of friend that calls me in the middle of the night when she thinks something might be bothering me. She is always there to support me no matter what, and she never misses an opportunity to make sure I know just how important I am to her. Years and years later, we're even closer than we were when we were kids. We're going to be the kind of friends that send each other Christmas presents when we're 80 years old. 

The other really amazing friend that I made early in my high school career was the beautiful, friendly, cheerful, brilliant and talented Lara. 

Over the years, Lara and I have become so close that I feel like I'm practically a part of her family. We can talk at any time about anything no matter how mundane. We've been through fun times and hard times together, and we've always managed to pull each other through no matter what. When we are older someday, our children's children will play together.

I love them both dearly dearly dearly. More than air. More than FOOD. And that is saying something, coming from me. Our sophomore year of college, our wee group of friends somehow evolved into a crime-fighting team of super heroes called the Bandtasmics. Four or so years later, and the Bandtasmics may no longer be figting crime, but that doesn't mean we're not still super, or not still a team even. We are basically inseparable souls.

Unfortunately, life being what it is, we all ended up going to different colleges in different cities hours apart. We rarely get to see each other these days but we do this month because it's CHRISTMAS AND THEY ARE BOTH GOING TO BE BACK HOME AND I CAN SEE THEM AND WE CAN BE TOGETHER AGAIN HOORAH! 

As a crazy guy we once saw in the mall said, the two of us are three times the charm. 

That is to say... 

there are three of us...

but...

apparently we each only count as two thirds of a person each.

And therefore add up to three.

The Great Double-Bar

I am a musician.

And as a musician, I too often wonder what happens to us when we die. Fortunately, I found those answers for myself and would like to share my learning with you. I basically have the whole Bible memorized, and I'm pretty sure there's a book in there somewhere between Nehemiah and Habukkuk called Eugene VanDoren's Beginners Guide to the Afterlife. Or something like that.

In the Book of Eugene, it states that all musicians must someday die, be it starvation from poorness or fatal spit inhalation. Even the greatest musicians must someday reach the great Fine. The big Double Bar of life (Hindus get a Repeat Sign).

On the journey to Musician Heaven, there are many stops along the way, for there are many sorts of musicians. If these musicians have been good their whole lives and played for charity banquets and practiced every day and never been late for rehearsal, they shall be rewarded for their faithfulness in the afterlife.

But all musicians will finally reach those Pearly Gates that are specially set aside for those who have devoted their lives to their instrument. 

The book of Eugene states that "every musician shall be rewarded in his own right in the life to come, yea, from the piccolo down to the contrabass tuba. For the woodwinds shall finally find the perfect reed..."

"...and behold, the brass shall receive their reward, and their ranges will increase tenfold."

"Even  the string players shall be blessed to gain new bows strung with the hair of unicorns, which shall never break and shall never fray, and needs no rosin, forever and ever."

"Yea, the percussionists shall be placed in the front of the ensemble, where all may see and marvel at their skills."

But as with regular people, there are those musicians that were not so good in their lives. Perhaps they never practiced, or maybe they did unspeakable things like missing a concert or dropping their horn off a truck. Whatever the sin, these abominable musicians will be punished in the days to come in their own special musician hell. When their time comes, they take a different path. They will be forced to play for all eternity in the Devil's Ensemble.

The Ladies According to Society

In this world, there are approximately three and a half bazillion women.

These women can be sorted into many categories, but today I am going to create two groups of desirable women (according to Society): The pretty girls and the nice girls. There are girls that are pretty and there are girls that are nice, and there are girls that are any combination of the two.

Keep in mind that any generalizations made here are based on years of influential media and a teaspoon of cynicism.

THE PRETTY GIRLS

The girls that are pretty are really easy to pick out. They're the ones with the naturally perfect skin and the shiny hair. Boys follow them around and open doors for them, carry their books, and offer them their coats. These girls can be tall, short, white, Latina, thin, curvy, blonde, brunette, what have you, but there is something about them that sets them apart from the rest.

It seems to me that the person these girls love most in the world is their own selves. They make every effort to maintain their beauty, as it is apparently their only commodity. These girls will go on to bigger and better things, and their every move will be recorded by the tabloids as if it were actually meaningful news. 

Apparently, however, these extraordinarily beautiful girls end up in rehab or something, and when (or if) they get old, suddenly they aren't the hottest thing any more and they fade into the background. How unfortunate. 

THE NICE GIRLS

You all know the nice girls around school and at work and in your neighborhood. They are the ones that garden and do crafts and make cooing noises at babies when they pass. These are the sort of girls that offer to carry your books or open the door for you or lend you their jacket. They bake and cross-stitch and have sparkly houses. These girls can be pretty or they can be homely, they come in all shapes and sizes. 

The nice girls tend to pick out one man to be their True Love for the rest of their lives. They tell all their girlfriends about all the sweet things he does, they do their best to be the perfect girlfriend for him, and they doodle his name on their notebooks. Eventually these girls will end up married to their sweethearts, and live cheerfully ever after raising their family of perfect children. 

These girls grow up to be craft-making grandmothers and host huge family get-togethers on all the holidays. They have walls covered in pictures of their hundred grandchildren's accomplishments. When they eventually die of overpowering bliss, their funeral has to be televised because so many people are in attendance. 

And then...

There are girls...

THAT ARE ME.

I am not trafic-stoppingly pretty. Nor am I particularly nice. Where do I fall in the World of Women? Well, basically I fall where most people do. Into the REGULAR GIRLS category. These girls are. They just are. They have careers, they raise families, they join the military, they write cookbooks, they have cats, they play sports, they save the whales. Most people aren't super pretty or super nice. Really people are just a mix of the two. 

I mean, sure. I have ambitions.

But that doesn't mean the world is going to live up to my expectations all the time. It also means that I don't have to live up to the world's expectations all the time. Just because I say one thing and Society says, "Bah, I'm sure you will end up THIS way," doesn't mean that is the way it has to be. I make my own flipping destiny, thank you very much. No team of writers is going to determine my fate. Especially not if they're the writers from Lost. Or Desperate Housewives. 

And just because everyone else is doing it doesn't mean I have to. 

Friends of Nigel 1: Teddi

Nigel is not the only fluffy creature that lives in our house, not by a long shot. Before Nigel even came to live here, there were two cats, a dog, some fish, etc. First we will introduce the most senior animal resident of the household, Teddi.

We got Teddi when she was just a baby, and with Teddi, we got another kitty named Georgia. Georgia was kind of everyone's favorite because she was more sociable. Teddi has always been somewhat of an agoraphobe.

When Teddi was younger, she managed to get hit by a car. She was gone for days, but no one really noticed because she's really somewhat more of a throw pillow that eats than a pet. Also, that same week, Georgia had pulled a much more dramatic stunt and faked her death by stowing away on a trip to the dump and then running directly into the path of a bulldozer. She made it back home safe and sound after an epic journey, and only then did someone say, "Hey... where's Teddi?" Then one day she magically reappeared again, cheerful as usual. I noticed that she was limping so I checked for scratches and poked around to see if she had gotten beat up by another kitty or something, but there were no visible marks. Later the vet told us that her hip was shattered and she had to have a rod put in her leg. Ever since, she's sat sort of lopsided...

These days, Teddi is basically the most morose cat ever to walk the earth. She basically slouches around and looks pitiful...

We still like her though.