Good Night Joy

8th June 2010

*sigh* Another roborovski went away.

On Friday, the 21st of May, I saw that Joy would not stop running around in circles (warning: I find this video rather disturbing & you may too). I couldn’t see the vet until the following Monday. Throughout the weekend, I know it was a struggle for Joy to get around in her cage, not being able to control her movements & everything. I had to make sure she was eating & drinking, I occasionally syringe-fed her with water because I could tell she was losing weight.

On Monday when I finally saw the vet, the vet explained that the tumor that was previously removed from Joy’s tummy most likely came back & it had spread to her brain, causing her to experience vertigo. At that point, the vet recommended putting her to sleep as Joy would eventually die from wasting her life away, not being able to eat & die a slow, painful death. I really wanted to give her a second chance, so the vet said that there’s another possibility as to why Joy was running in circles: a bacterial infection. There was no way to test whether Joy had cancer or a bacterial infection, because to test for that would require a blood sample & having blood drawn from such a small creature would be deadly. Joy was prescribed with Enrofloxacin (0.05 ml for twice a day) & the vet told me that I should see an improvement within a couple of days (no improvement means that her illness was definitely cancer).

Unfortunately, Joy passed away in her sleep on Tuesday, the very next day after the vet visit. I guess the cancer has progressed too far & the fact that she was getting older also didn’t help.

It’s really sad to see that most of my hamsters pass away because of cancer. Yes, I know that by purchasing some of my hamsters from the petstores, I have contributed to the inbreeding of hamsters because of consumer demand. I know better now & I don’t want to repeat my mistakes; seeing these hamsters in pain while in your care is not fun, nor it is fun for the hamsters to die this way.


Joy sleeping in the digging tower

Joy in her glory days, while still sharing a cage with her sisters & still fat

I started with 4 Roborovski hamsters, now I don’t have any more Robos :-( I’m very sure that it’ll be awhile before I bring home another Robo hamster.

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Posted in Hamster health, Rainbow bridge | Comments (2)

2 Responses to “Good Night Joy”

  1. Kieran Says:
    October 1st, 2010 at 7:37 pm

    If your roborovski was a white face there’s a good chance the spinning was the result of a genetic problem they sometimes suffer from.

    http://roborovskihamsters.webs.com/spinning.htm

    See this for details.

  2. tedra Says:
    December 14th, 2010 at 4:48 pm

    I want to thank you for this post, and the video. I had a cat that had exactly the same symptom many years ago, and I have always felt somewhat guilty for having her put to sleep because of it, even though it was clear to me that she was dying. Not too long before she’d gone blind, and the vet had said he suspected cancer; later he retracted the diagnosis, which I suspected at the time was because the cat seemed not to be in any pain, because he could do nothing about it, and because I was so upset by the diagnosis (and he was trying to make me feel better). But I’ve never been sure, and have therefore felt guilty over the decision. Anyway, so your posting what your vet said makes me feel that I did the right thing after all.

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