The tragedy of Cutie

Okay, so a couple of months ago, Mom and I woke up the week before little one's birthday, and thought "What are we going to get Avi for her birthday?"

After a while deliberating, we realized that she had been wanting a hamster (or some other equally furry critter) for about a year.  And we had kept telling her no, since we had the move coming up.  Well, we had just gotten to Japan, so the move was over.  And coincidentally one of the first stores we explored happened to also have a pet section.  Perfect.

So her birthday rolls around, and we let her open the hamster house, and food, and shavings, and whatever else.  So that weekend, Daddy and Avi are off to Makeman to buy a hamster.  Welcome home, Cutie McFluffy.  And there in, the story begins its tragic downward spiral.  It's all fun and games, and every child in our 70 family building is crowded around the cage non-stop.  It's awesome.  It's amazing.  In fact, I'm pretty sure in a poll of public opinion, Cutie can cure cancer.  We were trying our best to let him acclimate, and not really letting him be handled or taken out of the cage that week, to avoid being squished.

At the end of the week, it is time to clean the cage, and change the litter.  Alicia and Avi reach into the cage to gently scoop him up, while the litter is changed.  That’s about the time I get a frantic text, from Alicia asking if hamsters can carry rabies.  After assuring her that they can't (Hey, shut up.  Like you married folks don’t tell little white lies to stay married!), I had her send me a picture of the bite, and ensure that it was actually bleeding (which in my logic would imply a lesser chance of "incoming" infection) and told her to wash it thoroughly with soap and water, and to stop foaming at the mouth until I got home.

Notice to prospective hamster parents, from Alicia:

Hamsters will NOT sniff your hand sweetly and cautiously like a dog, to get friendly.  They will instead, wiggle their whiskers, luring you slowly closer, and then viciously attack, usually lunging straight for the jugular.  In the wild, they have been known to leap to the neck level of grown men.  

When I got home, everything was back as it should be.  Except that no one wanted to play with the hamster, and Alicia had taken to calling him "Killer".  This went on for a few weeks, until things settled down, everyone kind of forgot about the "attack".  But the nickname stuck.  So now, Cutie/Killer would get taken out for his jaunts in the ball, and that still had the attraction value, but anything else was rare.

Meanwhile, Alicia and I were the only ones who would now clean the cage, as even Avi was a little reluctant to touch him.  One night at bedtime, Alicia secretly confided in me that she was secretly hoping he'd die, because she was the one doing all the work, plus he stunk.  This was also about the time that Cutie had to be moved out of the girl's room because he was keeping them awake.  He was notoriously nocturnal, but he had taken to the bad habit of gnawing on the bars of his cage, stripping the cheap Chinese cage paint off the bars.  She seemed concerned that it might not be healthy.  I just told her to relax, and pointed out that he was probably just sharpening his "fangs" for the next attack.

This was evidently the code word for "Fine, I will be the one to change the cage litter out".  Because that’s what happened for a while.  Gotta love being married to someone you love to antagonize.  Anyway, fast forward to this morning…..

We wake up, and are making breakfast.  I hear one of the girls exclaim "Awww look, he got so tired eating he fell asleep in his food bowl"

Alicia promptly pulls me to the bedroom, with a worried look on her face.  "I think Killer died".  

"I doubt it, he's probably just asleep.  He's fooled us before."

"No.  He hasn't moved since last night"

At this point, I gave her a look, and was questioning what she might have finally gone and done….. but I realized she didn’t have it in her.

So we go in, and I drop a drop of water on his nose, to see if it wakes him up, and then we call Avi over, to explain what happened.

She cried for a couple of minutes, curled up on Momma's lap.  Then jumps up and walks to her room.  

Alicia has somewhere to be, but while she's gone, I find a small cardboard box, and hand it to Avi, and explain that she should decorate it, so we can use it for Cutie/Killer's funeral.  It is at this point that I realized that not only is she very much MY daughter, but she also is our "little boy" at times.

As she is coloring and putting glitter on said box, she explains to her sister that it's "Cutie's Death Box".  Daddy goes in the other room to keep from laughing.  Avi keeps coloring and applying glitter.

Once she is done, we go to put Cutie/Killer in the box, and Avi yells to Alicia "Hey mom, now you can come pet him.  He can’t bite you.  He's dead!"  This led to a floor wide petting party/wake of said dead hamster.  Somehow, no matter how stiff a rigor mortised hamster gets, they are still fluffy and soft.  This was quickly followed up by a floor wide hand washing party.  At which point Avi comes back from the bathroom, and asks if now he might turn into a Zombie Hamster, because "That would be kinda cool."

Both of us had to leave the room at that one, and that was the moment that inspired this blog.  But I guess we shouldn’t have to worry too much about how she is handling things.  Her sense of humor has kicked in for that.

So this afternoon, after a discussion on the merits of burial at sea vs burial in the earth (Whew! I didn’t want to have to buy a shovel just for this), it was official.  So Avi and Daddy walked down towards the ocean at the back of base.  Unfortunately, the fence sits just shy of the water by about 45ft due to the tide (SHIT!).  I make a comment that we'll have to go somewhere else, when I get a "Duh!" look from Avi.  I stop for a second, and look back.  "We can still get him there, Dad."

"Baby, we can’t climb the fence.  We'll go somewhere else"

"You can’t throw that far?"

"Are you sure we should do that honey?"

"Cutie won’t care.  He's dead!"

It took one good "are you sure look" before there I was, standing next to my daughter, flinging a glitter covered box with a dead hamster in it, over a 12 ft concertina wire topped fence.  As we walked home from the beach, she stopped skipping long enough to say:

"Dad, it seems like yesterday that we were bringing Cutie home.  Just you and I."

I was choking back a laugh, trying to count the time between then and now, before she added:

"Because it was just a couple weeks, I think."

To quote Kenny Chesney…… That’s when I lost it!

In memory of Cutie "Killer" McFluffy Kotara 

March 17, 2013 - July 15, 2013

(Don’t judge us!)