"BABY" ITCHY IS SICK. Short of a miracle, she's dying. Itchy is my tiniest roborovski hamster. The illustration top left is not a picture of her, but it's nearest I could find online.

I did a hamster-count yesterday because their tank was full of cut-out tea-boxes and other things in such crazy array they had a chocolate fingers box bridge over their wheel, a multistorey turreted castle-type thing, all cut open with little windows and doors. Because this brought the level of their home so high an enterprising roborovski could possibly clamber out the top, I have been extra careful, putting big books over the highest part, keeping them shut up in a cupboard (where they appreciate the dark anyhow) during the day... etc. I did a hamster-count yesterday and only two! I was convinced one had escaped.

The sadder truth emerged later that night, slumped exhausted under the water bottle. Fur unkempt, eyes shut. The backbone is protruding because she has lost weight. I've seen this happen before and there's little a vet could do. This means she is dying.

Today she sat in my hands, but there was nothing I could do to make her eat. Not even chopped up broccoli leaves, not even flour (which wild mice love ~ I once lost an entire pack in under a week in my scruffy old house where Evilstein was landlord...). She hobbles around but has very little energy. Bashful and Spherical tread all over her, oblivious. Their bright-eyed enthusiasm makes Itchy seem all the sicker...

I had to leave her bundled in a cardboard tube surrounded by hammyscones, seeds and vegetables to go to an antidrugs meeting, so I'm hoping she didn't go while I was out.

How perky-eared and pingy she used to be!...





TOTO: AFRICA
I don't know why, but this comes to my head...