Ziggy P. Whiskers

Each year we give a family gift for Thanksgiving.  This year, we decided that it was time to get our first pet in our new South African home.  After weeks of researching hamsters, Ani persuaded us that they were a manageable and appropriate pet.  The missionary volunteers in our church bought a hamster, and she absolutely loved playing with him.  After generating approximately ten handwritten pages of research information, we felt she had passed the test to responsibly take care of one of these little critters.  

Now I did not grow up having little critter pets.  We had outside cats and dogs who were played with very little and frankly, a hamster was something way too close to a mouse for me.  A few years ago, I began to soften on my opinion of the rodent family when we looked after the school pet gerbils and I survived the experience.  But when one of the gerbils suffered a near death experience at the hand of 3 year old Wyatt, it confirmed my suspicion, that this was not yet the pet for our family.  

We found the cutest little russian dwarf hamster at the pet store and picked out a really cool cage and brought him home.  Everyone had different ideas of what to name him.  We even did a poll and had some really cool names suggested by our friends on Facebook.  The family voted for names such as fuzzybutt (Cam), Vodka, Nibbles, and other fluffy type names, but in the end, I won the luck of the draw to name him.  I chose Ziggy and he was peeing in my hand, thus the P. and Whiskers was the kids name they had second choice.   We've all grown quite attached to this sweet little guy and think he fits with our family perfectly!