Lesson 18: One Evening at a Time: A Calm Routine for the Late Season

Here is something small to try this evening. When the light begins to go, and before anyone switches on the big lamp, sit down by the cage for five quiet minutes. Do not reach in. Do not call her name. Turn your phone face down, put your hands in your lap and simply wait to see whether she wakes.

I did this for the first time almost by accident, on an evening when I was too tired to read. I sat on the footstool beside the low wooden chest where Clem’s cage stands, by the bookshelf, and let the room grow dim. For a while nothing happened. The fridge hummed in the kitchen. A car went by outside. Then the bedding at the mouth of her nest moved, very slightly, and a pink nose came out to test the air.

Five minutes is not long. It is about as long as it takes for a cup of tea to go from too hot to just right. But in those five minutes I saw more of Clem than I had seen in a week of passing glances: how she woke, how she stretched, which way she turned first, how carefully she placed her feet. I have done it most evenings since. It has become the quiet centre of her late season, and of mine.

First: What does a settled routine look like for her now?

Clem is a little past two and a half years old now. That is a long life for a Syrian hamster, who usually lives about two to three years, and every month of it lately has felt like a gift that nobody expected to be given. She is thinner than she was, slower, and her coat is sparse over the hips if you look closely. She is also, most evenings, herself.

Her days have taken on a steady shape, the way an old house settles into the same sounds. In the morning, while she sleeps, June checks and fills the water and draws her pencil line on the bottle, and I do the spot clean around the edges of the cage, leaving the nest alone. Then the house goes quiet. Clem sleeps through the day in her nest of shredded paper, curled up tight, breathing slowly enough that I sometimes lean close just to see the fur rise.

At dusk she stirs. That is when I sit with her. She comes out, usually within a quarter of an hour of the same time each evening, sniffs the air, and walks the short distance to her bowl on the ground floor. She eats a little. She drinks. She wanders across to the small scatter of her usual food, finds a few pieces, and sometimes climbs the gentle ramp to the low platform to wash her face, slowly, with long pauses.

After supper, Otto comes for his evening hello and writes his line in the notebook. On weighing nights, Mira lets her walk into cupped hands, sets her in the weighing bowl on the kitchen scale and adds a dot to the chart on the fridge. Ravi checks the ramp and the platform at the weekend. Clem goes back to her nest earlier than she used to, often before the children are in bed, and sleeps until the house is quiet. Sometimes I hear the wheel turn once or twice near midnight. Sometimes I do not.

None of this is exciting. That is rather the point. A routine for an old animal is like the handrail on a familiar staircase: you barely notice it, but your hand finds it every time, and it makes each step a little easier. Clem knows what happens next in her evening, and I think that knowing is a comfort to her, the same way it is a comfort to me.

We have stopped changing things. New adventures are rare now, and small. The cage has been the same for months. If something must change, a new piece of bedding or a tube that has been chewed through, it changes one piece at a time, with her old smell kept around it. Dr. Hale said that, at this stage, steady and familiar is often kinder than new.

My own day has bent around hers without my quite deciding it. I take my walk in the early afternoon now, so that I am home well before the light goes. I read in the chair nearest the bookshelf. I have stopped running the vacuum cleaner after four o’clock, which June has noticed and not complained about. It is strange how a creature that weighs less than an apple can set the clock for a whole household, and stranger still how little any of us minds.

Second: How do we know whether she is having a good life?

This is the question that sits under all the others. It is easy to ask and hard to answer, because Clem cannot tell us, and because she is a small prey animal whose instinct is to hide discomfort. I cannot rely on her face, and I cannot rely on my hopes. What I can rely on is what she does, evening after evening, and what Dr. Hale sees when she examines her.

We asked Dr. Hale how she thinks about it. She answered plainly, as she always does. She said she looks at whether an older animal is eating and drinking, whether she can move about and reach what she needs, whether she grooms herself at least a little, whether she rests comfortably, and whether she still shows some interest in her surroundings. She said that no single one of these decides anything, and that families often see the whole picture best.

So we watch those things. Is she eating? Her bowl tells us, and the scale tells us. Is she drinking? June’s pencil lines tell us. Can she move about? We see her walk to her bowl and climb the ramp, slowly but without struggling. Does she groom? A little, most evenings. Does she rest comfortably? She curls up, she sleeps deeply, her breathing is quiet. Does she still care about the world? She noses the scatter. She lifts her head when Otto speaks.

When most of those answers are yes, I believe she is having a good life, even if it is a slower and smaller one than she had. I think of my father in his last year, sitting in the garden in the afternoon sun with the newspaper, unable to walk to the shop any more but very content to watch the birds. His world had grown smaller. It had not stopped being good.

When some of those answers start to change, that is something to show the vet. Not because a change always means the worst, but because we cannot judge it ourselves, and because it is better to ask early. A run of evenings where she does not come out, a bowl that stays full, a drop on Mira’s chart, a new way of sitting hunched: those go into the notebook, and then to Dr. Hale.

I have also learned not to take one bad evening as a verdict. Old animals have off days, as old people do. A cold night, a noisy house, a day when the neighbours are drilling, and she may sleep longer or eat less. One evening is a note in the book. Several in a row, or a sudden change, is a phone call.

Sometimes the answer is mixed. Last month she ate well and drank well but stopped climbing the ramp for a week, and sat more often on the bedding near her bowl. I wrote it down, and we mentioned it at the next visit. Dr. Hale looked at her carefully and talked with us about what she saw. The ramp is back in use now, most evenings. I do not know why. I am simply glad.

Third: Why notice the good days, and how do we do it?

For a long while, our notebook was a book of worries. We wrote down what had changed, what looked odd, what we wanted to ask the vet. That was useful, and it still is. But Mira noticed, one evening, flicking back through the pages, that it read like a list of things going wrong. “There’s nothing in here about her being happy,” she said. She was right.

So she began to draw a small star at the end of the line on any evening that had been a good one. Not a remarkable evening. A good one. Clem came out at her time, ate, drank, wandered, found her seeds, washed her face and went home. Star. Otto, who writes the evening line, asked if he could choose the stars sometimes, and now they share the job with great seriousness.

The stars do something quiet and important. When I turn the pages now, I do not only see the drift on the chart and the notes about her thinning fur. I see rows of stars. Weeks of them. Good evenings, set down one after another, like the rings on a tree that each mean a year that was lived. On a hard day, I read them. They remind me what we are looking after.

They also help us notice change in the other direction. If the stars thin out, if a week goes by with only one or two, that is information too, gentler than a drop on the scale but no less real. I mentioned it to Dr. Hale once. She said that a family’s sense of how many good days an older animal is having is one of the most useful things they can bring her.

I think noticing good days is a kind of attention that animals deserve and rarely get. We notice when things go wrong because worry makes us look. We should notice when things go right, too, because otherwise the good days slip past unrecorded, like a fine afternoon you only remember because it rained the next day.

There is a selfish part to it as well, and I will admit it. The stars are for us. When Clem is gone, some day, I want to be able to open the notebook and see, plainly, that she had a great many good evenings in her late season, and that we were there for them.

Otto has his own way of doing it. On a starred evening, before he goes up, he takes one pebble from his line along the hallway floor and puts it in a jar on the windowsill. The jar is getting heavy. He has not counted them, and I have asked him not to. I like it better as a jar that is simply full of good evenings than as a number.

Fourth: What changes should still go to the vet, even now?

Late in an animal’s life, it can be tempting to stop calling the vet. She is old, one thinks, what can be done? I felt that once, briefly, and I am glad I did not act on it. An older hamster can still have things that the vet can help with, and comfort is always worth asking about. A late season is not a season without care.

The signs that always go to Dr. Hale are the same as they have been for months. Any new lump. A wet or dirty bottom. Not eating, or not drinking. Breathing noises, clicking or wheezing or a sound that was not there before. A sudden change in how she moves, sits or behaves. A drop on the chart that does not level off, or a sudden step. Any of these, and we ring the clinic. We do not wait to see.

One sign deserves a sentence of its own. If Clem ever seems cold and still, slow to wake and floppy when she does, that is a reason to warm the room gently and call the vet at once. A comfortable room for her is roughly 20 to 24 °C (68 to 75 °F), and an old, thin hamster loses heat faster than a young one. We keep the room steady, away from draughts and direct sun and heaters close to the cage. The visit bag stays ready by the door.

What we do not do is try to treat anything at home. No home remedies, no guessing from what we have read, no changes to her food beyond what Dr. Hale has said is fine for her. Our part is to notice early, write it down plainly, keep her warm and quiet, and take her in. Dr. Hale’s part is to examine her, listen and tell us what she thinks, in her careful, plain way.

I find the list oddly calming now that it is so familiar. It is like knowing where the fuse box is and which switch does what. You hope never to need it. But because you know, the dark does not frighten you quite as much.

Dr. Hale sees her more often now, every few weeks, even when nothing seems wrong. The visits are short and calm. She weighs her, looks at her eyes and teeth and coat, listens to her chest, reads the last pages of the notebook and the chart, and tells us what she thinks in a few plain sentences. Clem usually sleeps most of the way home. I have come to think of those visits less as checks and more as a second pair of trained eyes, borrowed for ten minutes, on a life we are trying to see clearly.

Fifth: How can we be ready for the end without being afraid?

I will not pretend that this question is easy, or that we have answered it perfectly. Clem is old. Her life will end, and the months ahead are probably not many. We have talked about that as a family, plainly and kindly, on an ordinary evening, using the real words. What we have tried to do since is to be ready without being afraid, which is a little like packing an umbrella on a cloudy day without spending the whole walk looking at the sky.

Being ready, for us, has meant a few practical things. We asked Dr. Hale, on a calm day when nothing was wrong, what we should do if Clem became suddenly unwell, and when we should call. The clinic’s number and the number for when the clinic is closed were already inside the back cover of the notebook and on the fridge beside the chart. We agreed who would call and who would stay with the children. Those things are done. They do not need to be thought about every day.

We also asked Dr. Hale how we would know, near the end, whether Clem was still comfortable. She did not give us a list of rules. She said that when the time came, she would look at Clem with us, listen to what we had seen at home, and help us think about what would be kindest for her. She said that families often know more than they think they do, and that we would not have to decide anything alone. I have held on to that.

Being unafraid is harder, and I have not always managed it. What helps most, I think, is the routine. When I sit by the cage at dusk and she wakes and eats and washes, I am not thinking about the end. I am watching a hamster have an evening. The fear lives mostly in the future, and the five minutes by the cage live firmly in the present.

The children have helped me more than I expected. Otto, who once asked whether Clem would float away, now says, quite calmly, that Clem is very old and that we are looking after her for as long as she has. He says it the way he says the time or the weather. Mira draws her more often than ever. One of the drawings, a sleepy Clem curled in her nest, is pinned above her desk by the window.

I do not know exactly how the end will come, or when, and I have stopped trying to imagine it. That is not denial. It is simply that imagining it does not help Clem, and noticing her today does. We are ready in the ways we can be. The rest, I think, we will meet as a family when it comes, with Dr. Hale beside us, the way we have met everything else.

I have also tried to be gentle with myself about the future, and to let the others be gentle with themselves. Whatever happens, and whenever, nobody in this house will have to wonder whether Clem was loved or looked after. The notebook says so, line by line, and the jar on the windowsill says so, pebble by pebble. That thought steadies me on the evenings when the fear comes back, the way a hand on a banister steadies a step in the dark.

Sixth: What does an ordinary good evening feel like now?

Let me describe last night, because it was an ordinary one. The house was busy with supper. June was clearing the kitchen table, stacking the mugs that leave their rings. Ravi had come in from the shed with a faint smell of wood shavings on his jumper. Mira was upstairs. Otto was lining up pebbles along the hallway floor, one for each day of the week, he said, though there were nine of them.

I sat down on the footstool by the cage just as the window turned blue. I did not switch on the lamp. I waited. The fridge hummed, a door closed upstairs, somebody laughed in the kitchen. After about three minutes the bedding stirred, and Clem’s nose appeared, then her whiskers, then the rest of her, slowly, like someone getting out of a warm bath on a cold morning.

She sat at the mouth of her nest for a while. She sniffed. She turned her head towards the kitchen, where the voices were, and then towards me. I do not know how much of me she can see. Probably a dark shape. Possibly just a smell she knows. She did not seem worried by it.

Then she walked to her bowl. She ate slowly, selecting each piece, turning it in her paws the way she always has, and then she drank, a little longer than usual, I thought, though June’s pencil line in the morning said it was ordinary. She found three seeds in the scatter. She climbed the ramp. She washed one side of her face thoroughly and the other side not at all, and then sat on the platform looking at nothing in particular.

Otto came in for his hello. He knelt beside me, said her name very softly, and held his hand near the bars until she came to sniff it. Then he offered a single seed, which she took and put in her pouch rather than eating. He wrote his line in the notebook, “Came out. Ate. Drank. Washed half her face. Took my seed home,” and then he drew a star, and then he went to bed.

Clem went back to her nest a little after eight. I sat a while longer in the dark, listening to the small rustle of her settling. Then I got up, rather stiffly myself, and put the kettle on. That was the evening. Nothing in it would interest anyone outside our house. It was, I think, a very good one.

I have sat with her at dusk on perhaps a hundred evenings now, maybe more; I stopped counting somewhere in the second month. They have not all been like last night. Some were short, when she woke, ate, and went straight back to bed. A few were anxious, when something looked different and I wrote it down for Dr. Hale. Most were simply slow and ordinary and good, and I would not trade any of them for a faster year.

Questions Around the Table

Otto, who had come down for a glass of water and lingered by the table, asked, “Is Clem the oldest hamster in the world?” I told him I doubted it, but that she was old for a hamster, and that she had done well. I said it was a bit like being the oldest person in a village. Not famous, perhaps. Still worth celebrating.

Mira, closing her sketchbook, asked, “Should we be doing more for her, now that she’s so old?” I said I had wondered the same thing, and that I did not think so. Dr. Hale had told us that steady and familiar is often kindest at this stage. We are doing the things that matter. Watching, noticing, keeping her warm and comfortable, and taking her in when something changes.

Ravi asked, “Is there anything else I can build for her?” I said that I thought the cage was right as it is, low and easy and familiar, and that changing it now might cost her more than it gave. Then I suggested that he sit with her at dusk one evening instead. He looked surprised. The next night, he did.

June asked, “Are you all right, Dad?” I said that I was, mostly. That some evenings I feel the shortness of it, and some evenings I only feel glad. That sitting with Clem at dusk has been good for me in ways I did not expect. She put her hand on my shoulder for a moment, and then she went to fill the kettle.

Otto, on his way back up the stairs, called down one last question. “Will we still sit with her tomorrow?” I said yes. Tomorrow, and the evening after that, and every evening she wakes. He said good night to her through the doorway, very quietly, and she did not hear it, and it did not matter.

Points to Watch

Keep her day steady and familiar, with the same small jobs at the same times and as few changes as possible, so that every evening feels like home to her.

Watch whether she eats, drinks, moves about, grooms a little, rests comfortably and still shows some interest in her world, and bring any change in those things to the vet.

Notice the good days as well as the worrying ones, perhaps with a small mark in the notebook, so that the whole family can see how her late season is really going.

Treat any new lump, a wet or dirty bottom, not eating or drinking, breathing noises, a sudden change, or a hamster who seems cold and still as a reason to call the clinic at once. If you are concerned, see a vet.

Be ready in practical ways, with the vet’s numbers written down, a visit bag by the door and a plan agreed as a family, so that worry has less room to grow.

Sit with her at dusk for five quiet minutes, as often as you can, and let her wake in her own time; it costs nothing, and it may be the kindest habit of all.