Cinnamon

Cinnamon looks so cute there peeping out. Love the photo of him peering out from the tube too. They are all beautiful. It’s lovely he lets you stroke him whilst he’s pottering around his enclosure and seeing him wiggle into his nest, it looks super cosy for the winter months.
 
Hi, everyone! I'm sorry I've been MIA for about a week or more. Being a teacher and in a leadership role and working up through the 22nd was killing me with the holiday busyness.

Update on the fuzzbutt: It is his favorite hide when he is in the playpen. I think because it is bigger than some of the other little hides that we have had in there. I've also learned that his preferences to be in the pop-up playpen with me sitting in there with him or nearby, because if he is out of the playpen the space feels too big and he ends up just finding a place to hide in the room. When I sit with him he explores a little bit more, which is ironic, since he often waits until we are asleep to come out to play in his enclosure.

Here is a fun short that I put together yesterday to laugh about how difficult it is to actually get a good photo or video clip of a hamster with props... but it is actually a lot of cute video of Cinnamon.

 
It's a lovely video :) Cinnamon seems to have such an adorable, gentle nature :) I particularly liked the bit where he shot off in the other direction though ha ha! So he can be speedy if he wants then.
 
clacombe said:
Meet Cinnamon! Our first hope was to get another hamster through our local ethical breeder, but we had a hard time getting ahold of her for the past two days, and then the Chicago area Craigs List site wasn't working to search for adoptions... so whether it was pure coincidence or serendipity (and yes, a little impatience on our part), we did end up at a local pet store to find our latest baby (next time I'm sure we'll have the patience for our local breeder or the adoption sites). I haven't seen them feature long-haired Syrians before, and if they hadn't been we would have waited, as we were looking for a hamster that at least reminded us of Wally.

But Cinnamon stood out to C.C. right away (just based on looks, as he was sleeping). He is fairly small and slim (I haven't had the chance to weigh him yet). He sat calmly in our hands when he was sleepy, but when he woke up in his new cage on his own tonight he was much zippier. He is still getting to know us, but definitely less shy than Wally. He was happy to poke around and play on his wheel even with us present when he woke up at 8PM. We'll have to see what his personality is like and what his sleep schedule is like in the next several days. He went back to sleep (or at least underground) around 9PM.
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Sometimes things are just meant to be he is adorable
 
So...earlier this week we had a massive, 3-hour scare. Cinnamon managed to escape our free roam room, and we had no idea where he went.

I left him in the free roam room and stopped up the door gap (we have these at the bottom due to tearing out carpeting when we moved in), but my best guess is that the blanket I used wasn't stuffed in tightly enough, and he decided to squeeze through. He was only alone for a handful of minutes while I cleaned out his inner toilet and replaced it along with adding some bedding to his enclosure. Given where we eventually found him and how long he was gone, he must have had perfect timing to not have me see him.

I went back to get him after the clean up and couldn't find him. Of course, we tore the room apart about 3 times over the course of the next few hours, which confirmed that other than the door, there was indeed nowhere to escape in that room- no wall gaps, no holes in the little furniture that was in there that he could have crawled into. We've used that room as a free roam room for months, and usually he gravitates to a few places, but we looked through every inch multiple times to make sure.

Our stairs are not carpeted and are bit high, so it seemed unlikely that he'd gone downstairs without being noticed. We closed all the upstairs room doors, stopped the gaps with blankets, and proceeded to search each room. I added small bowls of food to each room to track if he ate from one and then we could identify what room he might be in.

Of course, we were going crazy doing really solid searches of the whole upstairs, calling to him softly, and finding or hearing nothing. We took a brief dinner break at 8PM (much later than we were supposed to eat) and then returned to the hunt. Finally, at about 9:30PM, my husband was racking his brain trying to think like Cinnamon- what is the teeniest, tiniest corner I could wedge myself into? He went into my daughter's bedroom (this is where Cinnamon's cage is and is adjacent to the room he escaped from, but is also filled with stuffed animals I'd dug through to make sure he wasn't with them), and then he went into the small closet (which is pretty packed). He got down on the floor and shined his phone light under a small white shelf (presumabley for shoes?) that hover just a few inches above the floor on one side. Cinnamon had wedged himself into the farthest corner and was not reacting (other than an open eye staring judgmentally back).

I brought in food to try to lure him out, but it seemed to take a small noise of a broom and duster to sort of startle him out of a daze, and then he started coming toward me with curiosity. We think he may have scared himself as much as us- as he's never been a super curious hamster.

In any case, we put him back and gave him some treats- he wouldn't eat them when I first picked him up, but once he was back in his cage he got his appetite back. I felt relieved when he came out again a bit later and let us pet him and give him more treats (back to normal behavior!).

Since then, we've only taken him out into the playpen with us, and thankfully he's been his gentle, friendly self, and seems perfectly content with our short playpen sessions for now!
 
Sooner or later they do it! They get cheeky. It looks like he headed back to the familiar room where his cage was anyway - so if it happens again you'll know where to look. I'm sure he'd still be fine in the free roam again but you'll need to think of something solid to block the door gap maybe. Believe me I have a piece of wood across our door and trays across the stairs!
 
I am sorry to hear this happened as you must have all been so worried. That was a really good idea to check at the back of that closet. It sounds like you have all recovered from the scare now thankfully. :)
 
I also meant to add - sorry you had this scare. I know how awful it is! Especially when it goes on a long time and you just can't stop looking.
 
Maz said:
Sooner or later they do it! They get cheeky. It looks like he headed back to the familiar room where his cage was anyway - so if it happens again you'll know where to look. I'm sure he'd still be fine in the free roam again but you'll need to think of something solid to block the door gap maybe. Believe me I have a piece of wood across our door and trays across the stairs!
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Yes! I was thinking those things, too. Since we transport him from that room to the office, it was probably natural in his brain to head back there. I also thought about that about the free roam room. I just need to get a more secure plug for the door!
 
RainbowBrite said:
I am sorry to hear this happened as you must have all been so worried. That was a really good idea to check at the back of that closet. It sounds like you have all recovered from the scare now thankfully. :)
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Yes! We've recovered, but we were so traumatized in the moment. When we took our dinner break we were watching a show and I kept noticing that my husband was closing his eyes for a few minutes at a time due to stress- I think just imagining, "What if we don't find him?" I was thankful that we didn't have to try to sleep without locating him first.
 
Oh wow, felt like I was holding my breath just reading this. So pleased you found him, it must’ve been so stressful looking everywhere to locate him, you both did a great job. He was no doubt super pleased to see you too 😊
 
It's an awful feeling isn't it. The worst scare I had like that was entirely my own fault. Quite a shy Syrian who just used to have a play on the sofa. He never even attempted to jump off it he was so placid. I got into the habit of popping back and forth into the next room (kitchen) when he was on the sofa and keeping an eye on him as well. Then one night I was particularly tired, switched off the lights in the kitchen and went to bed. It wasn't till next morning I remembered - I'd left him on the sofa! I had forgotten to put him back in his cage.

Of course he wasn't on the sofa any more. Like you we turned the room upside down a few times and he was nowhere to be found. There was only that room and the kitchen he could have been. He was a quite hidey type of hamster as well so wouldn't have come if I called him. We had to go another whole night and I set a bucket trap in the kitchen. Within a few minutes of the light being turned out he was in the bucket trap!

So if you have an idea of which room they're in, setting a bucket trap nearly always works!
 
Maz said:
It's an awful feeling isn't it. The worst scare I had like that was entirely my own fault. Quite a shy Syrian who just used to have a play on the sofa. He never even attempted to jump off it he was so placid. I got into the habit of popping back and forth into the next room (kitchen) when he was on the sofa and keeping an eye on him as well. Then one night I was particularly tired, switched off the lights in the kitchen and went to bed. It wasn't till next morning I remembered - I'd left him on the sofa! I had forgotten to put him back in his cage.

Of course he wasn't on the sofa any more. Like you we turned the room upside down a few times and he was nowhere to be found. There was only that room and the kitchen he could have been. He was a quite hidey type of hamster as well so wouldn't have come if I called him. We had to go another whole night and I set a bucket trap in the kitchen. Within a few minutes of the light being turned out he was in the bucket trap!

So if you have an idea of which room they're in, setting a bucket trap nearly always works!
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I had thought about that but I didn't quite know what to use offhand, and then luckily it didn't come to that. I do love hearing other stories about shy hamsters, because even though it's in the spectrum of normal hamster behavior, it still gets me how timid he can be and how content to stay in a small space even when given a "longer leash."
 
Zara said:
Oh wow, felt like I was holding my breath just reading this. So pleased you found him, it must’ve been so stressful looking everywhere to locate him, you both did a great job. He was no doubt super pleased to see you too 😊
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We were so stressed that afterwards we kept talking about how stressed we had been and how relieved we now were for the next hour (until we went to bed).
 
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