Furry Favorites

I got a new cell phone in the mail today, so I'm clearing pictures off of my old phone. Here are a bunch of my favorites of pets past and present...

My hammie, R.B. "Arby" Hayes

HistoryDiva's guinea pig, Neville (her old picture ID)

Ralph and Booger watching me eat (picture ID for the parents)

Bum Ralph (picture ID for Dad's cell)

Booger, the contortionist dog (picture ID for Sarah)

Layla and her beloved squeaky ball (picture ID for Mary)

Garfield as a baby hammie

Hammie Antics

He looks like Arby, but has the acrobatic ability of Garfield...

The "thunk" at the end just makes me laugh!

Hammie News

My foster-hamster, Trevor, died this past summer of old age.

My fuzzy punk, Garfield, joined him in the hamster burial plot in the backyard the weekend before Thanksgiving. He was one of the youngest hamsters I've lost--he would have been two in March.

I will try to find pictures to upload when I get a computer at home that connects to the internet...

Friday Funny

For LibraryDiva--
Maybe Carl should have asked Garfield to deliver your couch?

Noms from Grandma

My mother likes to buy treats for her grand-hammies from time to time. One of my favorites to give them is the big stick-o-hammie food that will last them a week.

Trevor says, "nom nom nom" (notice that the treat is almost bigger than he is).

Garfield says, "If I showed you where I hid my nom stick, then I would have to kill you."

Second Workout

I finally motivated myself to do one of my Pilates videos around 9:30 last night. Since Garfield was already awake and running around his cage, I decided to block off the stairs and let him run around in his ball so he would get a workout, too. Thirty minutes later, I turned off the TV and went looking for the yellow hamster ball.

He must have hit something hard enough to pop the top off of his ball. After much scurrying around on hands and knees, I located him hiding under my bed.

I am not above bribing him with his favorite treat, oatmeal.

Gotcha! He (obviously) wasn't too happy about being captured.

A Humble Gathering

When I first left teaching, I became the leader of the Young Adult group at my local parish. A year ago, I decided to switch to a church closer to my new home. I started to miss the community at my old church, and have recently started going back there for Mass and renewing my old friendships. To this end, I offered my home for the "Humble Hearts" young adult group Christmas party.


My friend B is a foster mother. The crab puppet was just one of the many fun toys we used to entertain her girls.

Garfield: "You have a party, and all I get is a crust of bread? For shame! I'm going back up to bed!"

Hammie Hurdles

Garfield has gotten into the Olympic spirit! His chosen sport is the hurdles. Being nocturnal, he wakes up around 9:00 pm and starts gnawing on the bars of his cage. Since this annoys me (and I quickly run out of things within arm's reach to throw at his cage to make him stop for a few seconds), I usually let him run around in his ball while I watch TV, knit, play on the computer, etc.


Garfield lives in the playroom, which is upstairs. I don't like closing the door because it cuts off circulation, making the room hot and stuffy. So that Garfield doesn't make a sprint towards the staircase, I have found many things to use as door blocks, or in his eyes, hurdles. At first, I used my bean bag chair, but I would trip over it going in and out of the room because it was so bulky. Then I discovered that my rolled-up yoga mat is the perfect length to fit in the doorway.



Undeterred, Garfield continues to try to conquer this hurdle despite the fact that he has some trouble getting over the small bump up from the linoleum to the carpet when he rolls himself into the bathroom. In the meantime, I have discovered other great blocks to use in the doorway. I have been trying to teach myself to play the piano for over a year, so I have a battery-powered keyboard in the playroom (which is probably a big part of the reason that I practice so infrequently). It's been more useful as a hammie hurdle lately.


And since the Harry Potter paperbacks came in so useful when I was measuring Molly Weasley's First Scarf, I brought them out again to use in the doorway. Watch as Garfield tries to conquer his newest hurdles... maybe he'll get it by the time the Olympics are (maybe) in Madrid in 2016!

Hide & Seek

"She'll never find me here with all of her yarn!"

"No fair! You peeked!"

Mission Complete!

My favorite father, aka Coach Ceiling Fan, was sweet enough to come over yesterday and help me complete my first project. It took a lot longer than expected--we'll just say that the contractor who built my house obviously didn't take the time to consider that real people were going to be living in the house he built, and that caused a few difficulties and a run to the local Home Depot for spacers and longer screws.

But we got the fan up (I say "we" because I was too short to get the actual ceiling fan guts up into the bracket, so Dad did the heavy lifting, playing with wires that were out of my reach, etc.) It is much nicer than the one it replaced, and I am now a pro at assembling and installing fan blades.

Speaking of the one it replaced, Garfield seems happy to have the old fan upstairs in the playroom. Dad mounted this one on the ceiling for me as well (with a trip to Wally for the appropriate screws--thank you Mr. Slacker Contractor for the light fixture that was held up by one rusty screw), and I cleaned and attached the fan blades all by myself!

"Wow! I just know that is going to make my room so much cooler!"

Molly Weasley's First Scarf

HistoryDiva has a good friend who taught herself to knit (not me--two former co-workers are responsible for my fiber corruption). This friend's first project was a scarf in the colors of Gryffindor, which she gifted to HistoryDiva upon its completion. You know how they say that it's the thought that counts? Well, the running joke was that this particular scarf must have been Molly Weasley's first attempt at knitting. I took pictures using my paperback volumes of Harry Potter to demonstrate the scale for the proportions of this garment. It was approximately a foot and a half in width and just a bit longer than four feet in length.

At some point in time, I volunteered myself to reclaim this yarn and knit it into a functional scarf for HistoryDiva. Since I had nothing better to do tonight, I decided that it was finally time to get going on this project instead of allowing it to continue collecting dust in my craft closet. I don't own a ball winder, so my chosen method (the poor girl method) of rolling yarn is to literally roll it--onto toilet paper rolls. Garfield didn't seem too thrilled about this.

"Mama, aren't you saving those tubes for me?"

Garfield will just have to live without a toilet paper tube chew toy in his cage until I can get this project onto needles. In the meantime, I have run out of tubes to unravel the last two stripes, and I'm feeling a little bit like Rumplestilskin with all of these rolls of yarn laying around my playroom...

Death Wish?

Chapter 1
Saturday night, I arrived home from a day at my parents' house after 10:00 p.m. I unpacked all of the wonderful free food my mother had bestowed upon me, and then headed upstairs to crash for the night. I decided to check on Garfield before I slipped into bed, and it took me a moment to realize he wasn't hiding anywhere in his cage. Then I saw one of the halves of the new circular orange tube lying on the carpet beside the cage. The darn thing must not have been locked together properly. So, I immediately got down on hands and knees and peered around the corner of every piece of furniture in the room. I found small pieces of evidence that a hammie had been in some of the corners, but no hammie. I even checked inside the closets and climbed on top of the dryer in the laundry room to see behind the machines. It's a mixed blessing that he wasn't hiding in the latter location since I would have had no idea how to coax him out from behind the massive washer and dryer!

After a similar inspection of my bedroom, bathroom, and closet, I was perplexed. Then I remembered the dust bunnies that I had seen in my kitchen earlier while putting food away... I hadn't been able to figure out where they had come from, but know I realized that Garfield had braved the staircase! I really wanted to go to bed already, but I trudged downstairs and repeated the process in the foyer, kitchen, half bath, and living room. Of course, the last place I checked, the dining room, was where I caught a glimpse of a fuzzball, curled up in the far corner, almost as if he were waiting for me to find him. The fun wasn't over quite yet because first I had to catch him. He made sure I had to chase him around a bit before I finally managed to keep him in my grasp. He was unceremoniously dumped in his cage, the tube was replaced with a blank plug so he couldn't get out, and I finally got to go to bed!

Chapter 2
Sunday, I rearanged the tube configuration on the cage, now with rubber bands securing the parts. I thought the problem was solved. The next morning around 5:00 am, I was proven wrong. I woke up to the sounds of "hammie under the bed," a sound which I am acquainted with through previous hammies' fugitive tendencies. Half-asleep, I stumbled down the hall to check the hammie cage--sure enough, I saw that he had found another exit. The rectangular sleeping loft had a rubber band around it, but Garfield was able to push the lid up and slide it to the side, thereby greating a large enough escape hatch for his small, furry body. I groaned knowing I was in for a game of "force the hammie out from under the bed" which is not the least bit amusing at 5 o'clock in the morning. When I did manage to snag the little fuzzball, he kept wiggling out of my hands since he was fully awake, and I was definitely not! Suddenly inspired by my slippers next to the bed, I made another grab for Garfield, ploped him into one of the slippers, and held my hand down over the end so he couldn't get out. A minute later, he was once again being uncerimoniously dumped back into his cage, and I was fastening a second rubber band around his sleeping loft.



Chapter 3
The rest of the week passed uneventfully. It seems that I have managed to come up with an escape-proof setup for the cage *knock on wood*, but Garfield isn't too thrilled about it. Last night, I was talking to my father on the phone. I decided to let the hammie wander around the room a bit while I was chatting. As soon as Garfield was on the carpet, he made a beeline for my ankle and decided to take a bite. Yet again, he was uncerimoniously dumped into his cage, and I had to go find some antiseptic because the little bugger drew blood!
Epilogue
Tonight, I sat down to play my favorite Nintendo game (Dr. Mario, in case you were wondering) only to discover that in one of his adventures outside of his home, Garfield had chewed off one of the buttons on the game controller. I was *not* amused!

Home Rennovations

Garfield's cage when I got home from work yesterday.

Little did he know that his home was about to undergo some serious rennovations...

Hey, Mama! What's in the box?

Oooh! Look at all of the fun stuff that came out of that little box!

How do you keep a hamster busy?
Put him in a round tube and tell him there is a treat in the corner.



Mama, if you're done messing with my cage, I'm going to get a drink of water and take a nap.

Another Introduction

Switching to the other half of my blog title, I would like to introduce you to my Easter hammie, James Garfield. My family has a tradition of naming our hammies after U.S. Presidents, and you will probably be introduced to former family fuzzies in later posts. For now, I will let you "awwww!" over one of the first pictures I took of my newest roommate.

I am aware that the hamster blog has already been done by HamsterTracker, but who is going to complain about a few more pictures of cute furry rodents online?