To the best hamster: Cheese

If you’ve ever looked at my biography on the West Word website, you’d know I have a teddy bear Syrian hamster named Cheese.

On Sunday the 27th of October at approximately 4:00 p.m., I found Cheese dead in his cage. The ground was cold and frozen and it was unbearably hard to bury him.

This is a sad event for many pet owners, with mixed feelings of guilt and sadness presenting themselves. Many will say they “didn’t do enough” or that they “should’ve done this instead,” when death is just something that happens when you least expect it.

Hamsters aren’t known to live very long – 1 to 3 years on average.  Your pet is, sadly and inevitably, going to pass away. This is something I’ve had to learn to accept over the past couple of days. 

I did everything I could for my hamster. He was spoiled and lived in a mansion, with anything he could’ve ever wanted being bought for him without a second thought. I felt like I could’ve cuddled him one last time or played with him one last time and that that would have saved him. This ultimately led me to feel worse about his passing. 

As pet owners, we have to know that we have to spend every moment with our pets and to cherish everything we can do with them. We can give them the best life they could possibly have and love them as much as we can and that’s enough.