Sojourner Truth Armstrong Davis, Jennifer’s and my Chinese dwarf hamster, died last night. She had lived with a cancerous affliction of the womb, a malady common to her kind, for several months. We had expected her demise soon after the first signs—hamsters rush headlong through all activities, and life itself—but she endured for a season, bearing her disease with the same insouciance she displayed in all circumstances.

Soji joined our household a year and a half ago, leaving behind her infant siblings at PetCo to commence a solitary existence. Experience had informed us that sisterly companionship harbored risk, so Soji’s house was a hermitage from the day of her arrival. Her society consisted chiefly of two humans, who held her in the deepest affection. Whether our fondness was reciprocated in equal measure is a matter of speculation; yet she would settle contentedly into our hands, emitting her customary clicks and chirps, as if to signify approval.

The original Sojourner Truth was born a few towns distant from us, and in her sixtieth year commenced a tour of the nation, speaking against slavery. Sojourner the hamster was also an outspoken creature. Most afternoons she stationed herself within her modest wooden dwelling, and from this redoubt delivered an oratory of squeaks, clucks, and chirps loud enough to be heard from the adjoining room.

Unlike her namesake, Soji addressed an audience of none. No observer, however, would ever mistake her isolation for loneliness. She was happier than any hamster we had known before, for which the likeliest explanation was her assured seclusion. She was a connoisseur of aloneness. Assured that her territory was uncontested, and eternally unencumbered by any relative or rival, she spent her days in appreciation of her boundless solitude.

Images © A. Jesse Jiryu Davis