That Was May That Was

May has flown by and the start of June has taken me quite by surprise.  The last two weeks have been given over to illness with each and every one of us suffering with a rather nasty and lingering flu bug.  Poor Freddy was wiped out for over two weeks with a temperature, severe tiredness and a dose of throwing up.  Big sister Ella is still really poorly at a time when she is taking her AS exams.  She could really do without the horrible cough that keeps her up half the night and the aching rib cage that is refusing to shift.

In addition to all this, our lovely pet hamster Spinky died.  She was well over 2 years old, but she was a big part of our family life and we will all miss her very much.  Freddy was particularly devastated to lose her.  It was heartbreaking.  We gave her a little funeral, burying her in her cardboard tube, packed with some bedding, hay and her favourite chocolate treats.  We made a stone to mark her resting place. We have decided not to have any more pets...Spinky is irreplaceable.

At least the sunshine has eventually made an appearance for a few consecutive days.  The warm rays on my skin are infusing me with some positive energy and I'm hoping the unwelcome flu bug that has caused us all such grief for the last fortnight will finally pack up and leave. We have so much to do!

I've renewed my Merlin Annual Passes and can't wait to start making the most of it by visiting the attractions.  Alton Towers has its new ride The Smiler and my girls are really eager to ride it!

Freddy has got his place at the tiny village school that I wanted for him and is doing one afternoon a week for the next few weeks to get a taste of what September may bring.  I am so proud of how he is coming on.  My painfully and debilitatingly nervous child is now making friends wherever he goes.  It is a joy to see how far he has come in the past six months.  Now he is back to full health, I'm sure he'll cope with being a little school boy.

May hasn't been a complete write-off.  We had a wonderful weekend at Center Parcs Sherwood Forest.  It was lovely to have all five of our children together for a few days.  Times like this are really precious to me.  The sun was shining and we enjoyed all the facilities on offer in the great outdoors. I loved seeing my son Joe have fun with his sisters and his little brother.  We don't get to see him very often due to distance and commitments, but I treasure the moments when we do.

I also went to see the final ever UK concert in the Last at Bat Tour at the MEN where rock legend Meatloaf did his thing to the entire Bat Out of Hell repertoire.  Bat Out of Hell is the album that most reminds me of my youth.  It was the album I played on my stereo in my bedroom, pretending I was performing on stage.  Being Meatloaf's backing singer on Paradise by the Dashboard Light has been an ongoing secret dream of mine!  Sharing the experience with my two eldest daughters was just perfect.  We danced and sang along and basically had an awesome mummy/daughter date in Manchester.  Meatloaf is now a pensioner but he can still belt it out, bless him. I felt honoured to be there at this last ever live 'Bat' show.

I also had a bit of comping success winning the Silentnight Dream Bedroom competition.  A new bedroom makeover is on the cards.  It's long overdue and will really make a difference to our home!  It will also inspire us to crack on with the dining room that we keep trying to do, but never quite get round to!!

So, that was May.  June is now underway.  Let's hope it's a good'un!!

The Resurrection of Spinky The Hamster

Today my hamster was dead.  At least I thought she was dead.  The cold, stiff little creature was motionless.  Her head was swollen with her eyes fused shut and her ears tucked into her puffy head.  She had lost all her colour and had a white nose and mouth. Her limbs jutted out rigid and immobile. I poked her, I rattled her cage.  Nothing.

I was so upset.  It seemed to compound every crap thing that has happened this month.  It was as though our poor pet had died due to my negativity rubbing off on her fluffy, little body.  It seemed like a terrible omen.

Some time later I thought I ought to 'deal' with the hamster proferring some dignity to her in her death.  But when I picked her up she slowly and slightly raised her head and hissed at me.  I didn't know hamsters made a noise...dead hamsters definitely don't make a noise!  So she was still alive.  I actually freaked a little.

Whenever I am not sure of something I turn to Google.  So that was my first port of call.  It turns out that this is not an unusual occurrence with lots of people having 'dead' hamsters that weren't actually dead.  Apparently it is a hypothermic coma because they get too cold.  Whereas I thought that the big, snuggly nest that she had made was a sign that she was comfortable and warm, it was actually a sign of her struggling to keep herself warm.  The sudden cold weather had dropped the overnight temperature in our dining room enough to send her into a false hibernation.  This kills hamsters.  They are not equipped for it and die of hypothermia.  The advice said to warm up the animal slowly and then there would be a chance of recovery.  I felt so guilty.  I couldn't even take care of a rodent.

I turned on the heating and moved her next to the radiator wrapping her frozen body in an old towelling bib.  There was no change.  The online advice said that if you don't get them out of the coma within an hour then it is too late.  Her lifeless body told me it was all over.  I phoned Ian in tears...I never knew I was that sentimental.

When it was time for the school run I walked past the cage and just had the feeling to try one more time.  Even though she'd been frozen solid for some seven hours, I owed her that.  I took her upstairs to my bedroom where the sun was shining through the window.  With the radiators on for another hour and the warmth of the sun on her, I left for school.  I picked up Kizzy and explained what had happened preparing her for her first pet's death.

We got home and went to say our last goodbyes.  I was shocked to see the previously lifeless body was now shaking violently.  Her head was still all puffy, her limbs were still frozen and stiff, but the body was in convulsion.  I consulted my friend Google again, to see that shaking was a sign of the muscles coming back to life.  There was hope.  Eventually she opened her eyes into little slits and lifted her head.  It was so sad to see her trying to move.  She was stumbling and falling and rolling and dragging her back legs behind her, but she was alive!

Kizzy sat with Spinky, urging her to take water from a dropper.  We gave her chopped carrot and bit by bit she recovered.  The strange swelling went down.  She found her feet.  Her colour returned.  We saved her!

It feels like I have turned a corner.  Definitely a sign that things are on the up.  Things are getting better.  The resurrection of our hamster means so much more to me than I could ever imagine.  She was all but stone cold dead, now she is running around her cage.  I nearly gave up on her, but I didn't.  That is quite prophetic!

We are now investing in a heated cage for her.  Our born again hamster deserves to be treated like the little miracle she is.  She's not out of the woods yet, but she is fighting back.  A lesson for us all!!

Do Your Kids Have Pets?

I've not had good experiences with pets in the past.  In fact, my childhood exposure to animals should probably have scarred me for life...and to be honest it very nearly did!

The first pets I remember were our tortoises.  Back in the day when they were not considered exotic pets, we kept them in our garden, in a home made run and boxed them up for winter according to the annual Blue Peter hibernation tutorial.  Many tortoises came and went.  Osmo was an escape artist, Gemini got crushed in the shed mid hibernation and Crusty Pie failed to survive over winter. It was always heartbreaking to lose them.

We had fish who faired no better.  As a very young child I decided to feed the goldfish who inhabited the little bowl in our front room, with a pint of full cream milk.  Needless to say, it didn't go down well.  Another time, whilst having their tank cleaned, a fish made a break for the sink and ended up going down the plug hole.  My dad grabbed a net, ran to the drain cover in our garden and tried to catch him as he swept past.  His rescue attempt was not successful.  Our fishkeeping skills must have become common knowledge in the piscine world.  We actually had fish commit suicide by jumping out of the tank.  We'd find then stiff and dry on the floor in the morning. Very depressing!

Our rabbit Sweep was our first foray into the warm blooded variety of household pets.  My parents swore that it had been attacked by a rat and got rabies, but in hindsight I think he was a little boy bunny who needed "fixing".  He was very aggressive and raped everything within shagging distance.  Teddy Bears, slippers, me.  My mum honestly thought that she was putting him out of his misery when she opted for a DIY method of "putting it down".  Money was beyond tight back then, we had no car to transport him and even if we had vets were considered an extravagance.  It wasn't pretty.  I won't go into details, but clumsily euthanasing a family pet in front of your pre-schooler is not something I'd recommend.

We didn't learn from our experiences and we became mice owners.  I picked out a lovely brown mouse that I called Ben.  I sang the Michael Jackson song to him and loved him.  We decided to get him a friend...cue the beginning of the end!  The "friend" turned out to be a female and within a fortnight we had 24 mice.  We tried to sex them and separate them, but we weren't very good at it.  The population explosion was epidemic.  At first we had a deal with a pet shop exchanging baby mice for pet food.  Soon they were inundated and our outlet for baby mice closed.  We had escapees disappear into my bedroom, into the airing cupboard and beyond.  Another misguided idea followed as we liberated our family pets in a local beauty spot.  I waved good-bye to Ben believing he was about to become King of Mouseville.  Instead in reality I'm sure they became the bottom layer of the food chain.

Hairbear the stray cat was our next animal acquisition.  My eldest sister Carol was at Polytechnic and had adopted the black furball, feeding her Smash and Angel Delight (she was a student remember).  Carol bribed me to turn on the waterworks so my dad agreed that I could keep her at our house.  He agreed...how could he refuse the sobbing child clutching at the little pussy cat.  She later had a litter of kitties that I watched be born. We found good homes for the kittens and had her spayed as by now we more aware about petcare and our responsibility to our animals.  I left home leaving my cat with my parents.  Things were going well until Hairbear developed a massive tumour on her tail.  She was put to sleep on my birthday and I was only told after the event. I was more upset than I would ever had expected.

At 18 I was given Stick Insects who I found fascinating.  I thought I'd found the ideal pet...low maintenance and easily looked after.  One day I decided to get up close and personal with my biggest sticky pet and held him in my hand.  All was fine until it started climbing up my arm.  I went to take it off, but his feet stuck firmly. As I tried to remove it I was horrified to realise he was stuck fast and the more I pulled the more I felt like I was going to break its legs clean off.  I started to panic and it developed into full blown hysteria.  I was hyperventilating and in a real state, needing to be rescued.  I've had an phobia of bugs ever since.

I steered clear of owning animals for years until we adopted a very grumpy 8" long catfish called Bart, which my parents had acquired through buying a built in aquarium and contents as part of a house purchase.  They wanted pretty guppies and tetras, not a big brown fish that lived under a rock.  We looked after him and loved him in spite of the fact that he gave nothing in return barring the time he attacked Ian when being cleaned out which was very funny!  We went away for a few days when I was heavily pregnant with Kizzy.  Unfortunately the filter and heater in the tank broke while we were away.   We returned to find a stinking, floating Bart on the surface of the festering tank.  In my delicate state I was heaving at my poor pet's unfortunate demise.

That was over 8 years ago and no other pet has found its way into our home....until last weekend.  Kizzy has always had a very nurturing soul and longed for something to take care of and have responsibility for.  Freddy discovered the joys of animals on a visit to a farm and loves shouting "manimal" whenever he sees anything with fur. So I felt the pressure to deliver an animal related experience for the two littlies.  I offered Zhu Zhu pets and Fur Real Puppies but they just wouldn't do. We went to a pet shop just to have a look.  I don't consider myself to be a soft touch but one look at my kids cooing over the cute creatures and I was sold.  We settled on a gorgeous little Syrian Hamster which we named Ripley after the Aliens' character.  She is a delightful, inquisitive, energetic little bundle and the children are so in awe of her.  I'm glad we have opened the door to the world of pets.  The children treat her with such respect and they love the new addition to the household.  They can learn so much through a positive experience of caring for an animal, and with all my experiences under my belt, I can steer them in the right direction!