Lesson 5: Teeth and Cheeks: Looking Closely at an Older Mouth

A hamster's front teeth grow for the whole of her life. They never stop. Every week of Clem's twenty-odd months, her front teeth, the incisors, have been quietly getting longer, like fingernails, and every week her gnawing and chewing has been wearing them back down again.

I learned this on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, reading at June's kitchen table while the rain ran down the window. I put the book face down and sat for a while. A whole life spent keeping pace with your own teeth. It seemed to me a very hamster-like arrangement: busy, practical and slightly relentless.

It also made me look at Clem's mouth for the first time as something to understand rather than something that simply ate. In her late life, the mouth turned out to be one of the most telling places of all.

First: Why are her front teeth yellow?

Otto noticed first. He had been watching Clem take a seed from my fingers, and he suddenly sat up. "Grandad, her teeth are yellow! Is she not brushing them?" I laughed, and then, because I did not actually know, I said I would find out. It is one of the more useful things a grandfather can say.

Yellow or orange-yellow front teeth are normal for a hamster. They are meant to be that colour. White front teeth would be the surprise, not yellow ones. I found that oddly cheering, the way it is cheering to learn that the strange noise the boiler makes every morning is just the boiler being a boiler.

Clem's front teeth are a warm orange-yellow, like the rind of the fruit she is named after, though a little paler. Mira drew them, with some difficulty, because Clem would not hold still for a portrait of her mouth. In the end Mira caught them in a quick sketch while Clem was gnawing the edge of her house: two upper teeth and two lower ones, neatly lined up like a pair of chisels in Ravi's shed.

So the colour itself was nothing to worry about. What I learned to watch instead was the shape. Were the teeth even? Did the top and bottom meet properly? Were any of them broken, or longer than before, or growing at a strange angle? Those were the questions that mattered, and those were the things I wrote down when I had a good view.

I had a good look at the photographs on June's laptop from Clem's first months, too. The light was poor in most of them, but in two or three her teeth showed clearly, and they were the same warm colour then as now. That settled it for me. The colour had not changed with age. It had simply been there all along, waiting for someone to notice it.

Second: What happens to teeth that never stop growing?

In a young, busy hamster, the arrangement looks after itself. She gnaws, she chews, she cracks seeds and works at the edges of her house, and the teeth wear down at roughly the rate they grow. It is like a path through a field that stays open only because people keep walking it.

In an older hamster, the balance can change. If she eats less, or more slowly, or chooses softer pieces, or gnaws less because she is tired, the wear may not keep up. Her teeth may also change in other ways as her body ages. I do not want to say more than I know here; how a hamster's teeth are doing is for the vet to judge. What I can say is that the teeth are worth looking at more often in the late years than in the early ones.

The signs that sent me to the notebook were simple ones. Front teeth that looked longer than I remembered. Teeth that did not seem to meet evenly. A broken tooth. Food dropped from her mouth more often than before. Wet fur on her chin. Any sudden change in how she ate, or what she would eat. These are things to show the vet. They are not things to fix at home, however tempting it might be to try.

I say that last part firmly because I have heard of people who try to trim a small animal's teeth themselves. I would never do it. A hamster's mouth is tiny, the teeth are close to soft parts, and a wriggling animal and a pair of clippers in an anxious hand are a recipe for harm. Teeth go to the vet. Full stop.

For Clem, nothing alarming showed up in those early months. Her teeth stayed even. But I noticed that she spent less time gnawing, and that she was choosing the smaller pieces in her mix and leaving some of the harder ones. I wrote it down, with the date. At the next check, Dr. Hale looked at her teeth carefully with a small light and said they looked well, and that she was glad we were watching.

Third: How far do her cheeks really go?

Further than I ever imagined. A hamster's cheek pouches reach back towards her shoulders. When Clem fills them, she does not just have chubby cheeks; she carries a small larder along the sides of her head and neck, like a walker with a rucksack slung low on both sides.

I had watched her stuff her cheeks a thousand times without really thinking about it. She would sit at her bowl, pick up seeds one by one with her front paws, push them into her mouth, and swell slowly sideways until her head looked twice as wide as it should. Then she would trundle off to her nest and empty the lot into a hidden store, pushing the seeds out with her paws.

Otto tried to work out what that would be like for a person. He puffed his own cheeks out as far as they would go, then pointed at his shoulders and asked whether his cheeks would ever reach that far. I said I hoped not, for his mother's sake. He spent the rest of the evening walking round the house with his cheeks full of air, until Mira asked him, very politely, to deflate.

Knowing how far the pouches reach changed how I looked at her. A full pouch can make a hamster's head look lopsided for a few minutes, and that is normal. A face that stays lopsided, or a swelling that does not go down after she has emptied her cheeks, or pouches that seem to stay full for a long time, is something to show the vet. So is any new lump on her face or neck.

In her late life, Clem began to fill her cheeks less. She still carried food back to her nest, but smaller loads, and she sometimes ate at the bowl instead of storing everything. I found that touching, in a way I cannot quite explain. It was like watching someone who used to bring home armfuls of shopping start to carry just one bag, because one bag is enough now.

Mira kept a small note on the side of the notebook page for cheek habits, just a word or two each evening: "full loads", "half loads", "ate at bowl". Over a few weeks it became clear that Clem's change was slow and steady, not sudden, and that it came along with a slightly smaller appetite. Dr. Hale agreed that this fitted an older hamster and asked us to keep watching her weight.

Fourth: How can we look at her mouth without upsetting her?

This was the hard one. A hamster does not open her mouth on request. And an older hamster who dislikes being held should not be squeezed or turned over just so that a well-meaning grandfather can peer at her teeth. The look has to come to us, not the other way round.

So I learned to look at the moments when she showed her mouth by herself. When she yawned, waking at dusk, there was a brief clear view, and I tried to be ready for it. When she took a seed from my fingers, her front teeth showed for a moment. When she gnawed the edge of her house or a piece of her gnawing wood, I could see the front teeth working. Little glimpses, like seeing into a neighbour's lit window as you pass.

Mira had a better idea. Once a week, she held a single seed just above Clem's nose, at the door of the house, so that Clem had to reach up a little to take it. In that moment the front teeth showed clearly. Mira did not try to hold the pose or catch a better angle. One look, one seed, and then Clem was left alone. She wrote down what she saw, and if she was unsure, she drew it.

I also learned to watch from the side, at her level, rather than from above. Looking down into a cage is like looking at the roof of a house and trying to see who is at the kitchen sink. When I sat low, with my chin almost at the height of the wooden chest, I saw her face as she saw the world, and the glimpses of her teeth came more often and more clearly.

I never pried her mouth open, and I would advise any family not to. If I could not see what I needed to see, and something in her eating made me worried, that was a reason to take her to Dr. Hale, who has the skill and the light and the gentle hands for it. If you are concerned, see a vet.

Fifth: What should she have to gnaw?

Gnawing is part of how a hamster lives with teeth that never stop growing, and Clem has always had a few things to gnaw in her cage. I will not name products or brands here, because the right thing depends on the hamster, and the best person to ask about it is the vet. But I can say what we did and how we thought about it.

We kept to the kinds of things she had always had and was used to: plain gnawing pieces that Dr. Hale had told us were fine for her, and the edges of her wooden house, which she has chewed into a soft scalloped pattern over the months. We did not suddenly bring in new and unfamiliar things in her late life. A change of habit is harder for an older animal than for a young one.

What we did change was where those things were. Ravi noticed, from Mira's notes, that Clem had stopped using the gnawing piece that sat on her upper shelf, the one she now rarely climbed to. So he moved it down, near her nest and her bowl, where she spent most of her waking time. Within two days, the corner of it had new tooth marks. A small move. A small result.

We also learned not to take a quieter gnawing habit as a problem in itself. Clem gnawed less because she did most things less. But if she had stopped gnawing altogether, or if it had seemed to hurt her, or if it had come with any of the other mouth signs, those would have been things to show the vet.

Sixth: What did we learn from watching her eat?

More than I expected. Eating is where the mouth does its work, so it is where the mouth shows most. I began to sit near the cage at the time Clem usually came to her bowl, a little after she woke, and simply watch how she went about it, the way one might watch a careful old craftsman at a bench.

She chose. That was the first thing. She would nose through the bowl, turning pieces over, and pick out the ones she wanted, leaving the rest. She held each piece in her front paws and turned it round and round before biting. Sometimes she dropped one, looked at it, and picked it up again. Sometimes she left it where it fell. I wrote all of this down without deciding what it meant.

After a few weeks the notes showed a steady picture. She was slower than before and more choosy, which fits the fussier eating that often comes with age. But she was not dropping more food from one week to the next, her chin stayed dry, and her weight held in her usual range. Slow, steady, unchanged in the ways that mattered. I closed the notebook that evening feeling, for once, simply glad.

I still watch her eat most evenings. It has become one of the quiet pleasures of my day, like hearing a kettle begin to sing. And I know that if the picture ever changes suddenly, if she stops eating, or drops most of what she picks up, or her chin is wet, I will not wait to see what happens next. I will ring Dr. Hale.

Questions Around the Table

At supper that week, Otto still had teeth on his mind. "Can Clem's teeth fall out like mine?" I said that her front teeth are not like his baby teeth, which make room for new ones, and that a broken or loose-looking tooth in a hamster is something to show the vet. He looked a little disappointed that she would not be getting a coin under her pillow.

Mira asked, "Is it bad that she stores less food now?" I said that on its own, a slow change like that seemed to fit her age, especially as her weight was steady. But if she stopped storing at all, or her cheeks seemed to stay full, or her weight began to drop, we would take it to Dr. Hale.

June asked, "Should we give her softer food?" I said I would not change her food on my own. The mix she has always eaten still suited her, and any change should come from talking with the vet. Dr. Hale could look at her mouth and her weight and say what made sense for her.

Ravi asked, "Could I make her something to gnaw?" I said it was a kind thought, but that wood from a shed may have been treated or painted, and that it would be better to ask Dr. Hale before giving Clem anything new. He nodded slowly, put his pencil back behind his ear, and I could see him filing the idea away rather than giving it up.

Points to Watch

Remember that yellow or orange-yellow front teeth are normal for a hamster, and watch instead for teeth that look longer than before, uneven, broken or not meeting, which are things to show the vet.

Watch how she eats, because food dropped from her mouth, wet fur on her chin, or a sudden change in what she will eat can come from the mouth and should be shown to the vet rather than explained away.

Watch her face after she has emptied her cheeks, since pouches that reach back towards the shoulders can make her look lopsided for a while, but a face that stays swollen, a new lump, or pouches that stay full are signs to show the vet.

Never trim, file or pry at her teeth at home, and never force her mouth open for a look, because the mouth is small and delicate and those jobs belong to the vet. If you are concerned, see a vet.

Keep her usual gnawing things close to where she now spends her time, and ask the vet before bringing in anything new, so that her teeth keep getting the steady wear they have always had without any new risk.