RIP Ada

Two days ago our dwarf hamster Ada, feeling faint, took to her bed. We found her dead in her little wooden house this morning. Her illness struck barely two weeks after her sister, from whom she was long estranged, died of cancer. Although we had moved Grace to a separate cage in August, when their tense relationship overboiled into violence, some intangible link between sisters must endure. Ada did not live long after the death of the only one she had ever loved, or hated.

Ada was an aristocrat, fond of leisure and luxury. Unlike her wholesome sister, she disdained vegetables, choosing only the richest delicacies from her food bowl. She napped for hours each afternoon, and if we interrupted her daily rest with a constitutional in the hamster ball, she resumed napping inside it. Despite her dissolute lifestyle Ada kept her trim figure, which she dressed in pale fur and topped off with a neat white spot on the back of her head.

The quick loss of Grace and Ada leaves our home with a vacant air, which we hope soon to remedy by a visit to PetSmart.

The sparse white snowflakes
Rest on a hamster’s black grave
The city trashcan