Lesson 13: Two Numbers on the Fridge: Water and Weight

In the first eight weeks of Mira’s chart, Clem’s weight never moved by more than three grams from one weighing to the next. Three grams. Out of plain curiosity I put a single coin from my trouser pocket on the kitchen scale, and it weighed about the same. In her life, the whole difference between a good week and a poor one can weigh no more than a single coin.

That small number changed the way I think about grams. If a grown man loses a kilo over a month, he may not notice it at all, because a kilo is a small part of him. If Clem loses ten grams, she has lost about one fifteenth of her heaviest weight of about 150 grams. I am not giving that as a rule for every hamster. I give it only as a picture of how little room a small body has.

So two numbers now live on our fridge, held up by a magnet shaped like a lemon. One is her weight. The other is her water. Neither of them is exciting. Both of them have told us things that her face never did.

First: Why weigh her every week, and not just look at her?

I used to believe I could see a change in Clem simply by looking. I have spent more hours watching her than anyone else in the house, after all, and I know the curve of her back when she sleeps and the way her cheeks bulge when she has been to the bowl. But eyes are poor scales. Fur hides a great deal, and a hamster curled into a ball looks round whether she is plump or not.

There is also the matter of instinct. A hamster is a small prey animal, and her whole family history has taught her to hide discomfort. An animal that looks weak gets noticed by things that eat it. So she carries on, eats a little less, sleeps a little more, and keeps her coat as tidy as she can, while underneath the fur the numbers are quietly moving. The scale does not care about her instincts.

It was Mira who first turned the weekly numbers into a picture. For months they had sat in the notebook, one line among the others, easy to read and hard to compare. Then she came down from her room, from the desk by her bedroom window where the sketchbooks lie open in drifts, with a sheet of squared paper. “You can’t see grams,” she said. “But you can see a line.” I had no good answer to that. She was right.

Weekly weighing works a little like the marks parents pencil on a door frame as a child grows. No single mark says much. A line of them tells a story. One weighing of Clem is just a number; twelve weighings, set out side by side, show which way she is drifting and how fast, and that is the part a vet finds useful.

I have come to think of the scale as a second pair of eyes that never gets tired, never feels hopeful, and never tells itself that she looks fine today. It only reports. That plainness is a kindness, in its way. It lets the rest of us be soft-hearted without being careless.

There is one more reason, a quieter one. Writing the number down each week means that someone in the family looks closely at Clem at least once a week, on purpose, with her in their hands. While Mira reads the scale, I glance at her eyes, her coat and her bottom, and Otto counts her whiskers, which he never manages. The scale gives us a reason to look, and the looking is half the value.

Second: How do we weigh a hamster who does not want to sit still?

Clem has never been fond of standing on anything flat and bare. The small, shallow bowl we used at first did not hold her for long. One evening she stepped straight out of it and off the scale, sniffed the edge of the worktop and looked down at the floor with what I can only call interest. I caught her. My heart beat faster than hers, I think, which is saying something.

The answer turned out to be a deeper bowl from the back of the kitchen cupboard, high-sided and smooth, washed and kept only for her now. We set the empty bowl on the kitchen scale, press the button that sets it to zero, and then lower Clem into it with a scoop of her own bedding underneath her feet so the bowl smells familiar. She sits. She sniffs. The number settles, and Mira reads it aloud.

The time of day matters more than I expected, because a hamster who has just filled her cheek pouches or emptied her bowl can weigh a few grams more than the same hamster an hour later, and those few grams are exactly the size of the changes we are trying to see. So we weigh her once a week, on the same evening, soon after she wakes and before she has eaten much. Same bowl, same scale, same hour.

We keep it short. If she is asleep, we wait; nobody lifts her out of her nest just to be weighed, because a startled old hamster is worth less to us than a missed number. If she is restless and will not settle in the bowl, we try again a little later, or the next evening, and Mira writes a small question mark on the chart instead of guessing.

I sometimes think of it as weighing a letter at the post office. You put it down gently, you wait for the needle to stop trembling, and you take the reading you get. You do not press on it, and you do not argue with it. Clem goes back to her nest within two minutes, usually with a seed of thanks from her own mix, handed over by Otto.

Third: How can we tell whether she is drinking enough?

Water is harder to measure than weight. A hamster drinks very little, in small sips, mostly in the night when nobody is watching. For a long time I simply refilled her water every morning and assumed she was fine. I never asked how much was gone.

June was the one who changed that. She works at the kitchen table with her laptop, beside a scatter of pale rings left by years of tea mugs, and she likes things she can check at a glance. She stuck a thin strip of paper tape down the side of Clem’s water bottle and drew a short pencil line at the water level each morning after filling it. The next morning, she drew where it had fallen to.

Those lines are not exact, and they were never meant to be. Some water drips, some is lost when the bottle is bumped, and a warm week makes everyone thirstier, hamsters included. What the lines give us is a usual pattern. After a few weeks we knew roughly what an ordinary night looked like, the same way I know how fast our kettle boils without ever timing it.

Whatever she drinks from, the water itself needs a daily look. I check that it is fresh, that nothing has fallen into it, and that it actually comes out. A spout can stick, and an old hamster may give up more quickly than a young one if the water does not flow at once. I press it with a fingertip every morning and wait for the small, reassuring drop.

If she is drinking much more than her usual pattern, or much less, or seems to have stopped altogether, that is something to show the vet soon. We do not try to work out why on our own. I have learned that a change in drinking is one of those quiet signals that means more than it seems, the way a small new noise in a car engine means more than its volume.

Fourth: What change on the chart should take us to the vet?

Mira’s chart is drawn on squared paper, with the weeks along the bottom and the grams up the side, and a pencil line that joins the dots. She draws a little hamster in the corner each month, looking slightly different every time, rounder or sleepier or crosser, depending on Mira’s mood. The line itself is the serious part.

For the first months we watched it, the line wandered inside a narrow band near 150 grams. Up a gram, down two, up one again. That wobble is normal. A body is not a statue, and Clem’s weight changes with how full her pouches are, how much she has hoarded and how long she slept. We learned not to worry about any single dot.

Then, as she grew older, the band began to tilt very slightly downwards. It was slow, the way a clock winding down is slow, so slow that you could not see it from one week to the next. Dr. Hale, in her small clinic where the fish tank in the waiting room hums like a fridge, told us that some loss with age is common in old hamsters. She also told us that slow, common and harmless are three different words.

I asked her what, exactly, should make us telephone. She would not give me a number that would suit every hamster, and I understood why. Instead she said to call if the line drops suddenly between two weighings, if it keeps sliding week after week instead of levelling off, if Clem gains weight quickly and looks swollen, or if any change on the chart comes together with other signs, such as eating less, a dirty bottom or breathing noises.

So now the chart has a rule of its own, written by Mira at the top in her neatest letters. A steady line is good news. A slow drift is something to mention at the next visit. A sudden step, or a drift that does not stop, means we ring the clinic that week and bring the chart along. Dr. Hale likes the chart very much. She says a picture of eight weeks tells her more than a sentence about yesterday.

I find that comforting in an odd way. We cannot stop Clem from growing old, any more than I can stop my own knees from creaking on the stairs. But we can notice. We can notice early, and calmly, and bring what we noticed to someone who knows more than we do.

Fifth: What can we do at home while the line drifts slowly down?

This was the question that kept me awake one night, after the chart had tilted for a month and Dr. Hale had seen her and said that, for now, we should keep watching. Watching felt too small. I wanted something to do with my hands, the way you want to tuck a blanket around someone who is already warm enough.

The first thing I learned is that we should not change everything at once. When an old animal grows lighter, the temptation is to rush in with new bowls, new places, new things to eat, all at the same time. Clem dislikes surprises. A whole new arrangement can put her off her food for a day, which is exactly the opposite of what we want, so we change one small thing and then wait a week to see what the chart says.

The things we did change were modest. Her bowl now sits on the ground floor of the cage, close to her nest, so that an evening meal does not mean a climb. We still give her the mix she has always eaten, and the softer pieces and fresh vegetables we offer are only the ones Dr. Hale has said are fine for her. I asked before adding anything. I will keep asking.

We also look at her hoard. A hamster carries food back to a corner of her nest in her cheek pouches, and an old hamster may hoard and then forget, or hoard less, or stop. A shrinking hoard told us something before the scale did, once. So when I spot-clean, I peek at the store without taking it all away, and I make a mental note of whether it is growing, steady or nearly empty.

Warmth matters too. A thin old body loses heat faster, the way a mug of tea cools quicker than a full pot. I check that the room stays comfortable for her, roughly 20 to 24 °C (68 to 75 °F), away from draughts and direct sun. None of this makes her younger. It only takes away small costs, one at a time, so that what she eats can go into keeping her.

Questions Around the Table

Otto, spreading his toy animals along the edge of the table, asked, “Is Clem going to get lighter and lighter until she floats away?” I told him no, she would not float anywhere. Old animals often get a little lighter, the way an old jumper gets thinner at the elbows, but she still has her feet firmly in her bedding. The chart helps us make sure she stays comfortable while it happens.

Ravi came in from the shed with sawdust on his sleeves and asked, “Should we weigh her every day, to be safe?” I said I had wondered the same thing. Dr. Hale told us that once a week is usually enough for a hamster who is doing well, and that daily handling for the scale would cost her more rest than it would give us information. If something looked wrong, we could weigh her again sooner.

June asked, “What if the number goes up?” I said that a small rise is often just a full pair of cheek pouches or a good week. A quick rise, especially with a rounder or swollen look, is a thing to show the vet, just like a quick fall. The chart is not hoping for a particular number. It is watching for change.

Mira, tapping her pencil on the table, asked, “Can I draw her in the corner even when the news is bad?” I told her yes, please. The chart is about Clem, not only about her grams. I think a small drawing of a hamster in the corner reminds all of us that each dot on the line is a living animal who was lifted gently and put back in her nest.

Otto had one more, asked from under the table where a plastic giraffe had fallen: “Does Clem know we are weighing her?” I said I doubted it. To her, I think, it is a short ride in a bowl that smells of her own bedding, a sniff of the kitchen air and a seed at the end. She knows the routine, perhaps, the way a cat knows the sound of a tin. She does not know about grams. That part is our job.

Points to Watch

Weigh her at the same time each week, on the same scale and in the same bowl, so that the numbers can be compared fairly; a reading taken at a different hour is a different kind of number.

Look at the line over several weeks, not at a single dot, because one heavy or light evening means little, while a slide that keeps going or a sudden step down means a great deal.

Notice whether she is drinking about as much as usual, and check every day that the water is fresh and flows freely, since a stuck spout can look like a hamster who has stopped drinking.

Treat a sudden loss, a sudden gain with a swollen look, or a change in drinking as something to show the vet, and bring the chart with you. If you are concerned, see a vet.

Keep the weighing calm and short, and never wake her just for the scale; a missed week costs far less than a frightened old hamster.