Cocoa’s 1st Week

Hello so I’m back with an update as yesterday was Cocoa’s 7th day with me and my family! The first week is always really interesting as you get to learn your hamster’s personality and habits. So here is what has happened so far!

Okay so as I am writing this, it is day 8 since bringing Cocoa home. So far it has been really nice and surprisingly…. really easy! She is so calm and unbothered by just about everything. Which is strange since the pet shop were so adamant about her aggressive or biting tendencies but I’ve not been bit once or experienced any aggression from her.

So in my last post about Cocoa I was talking about how I am finding it difficult since she might not be able to be held or at least that’s what the vet told me. As of today I can say that we have come on leaps and bounds and I can now hold her! Since she has come from a previous home where she was just left and wasn’t socialised or spent time with, she still is very confused and unsure of what’s happening and will not step onto my hand willingly as I don’t think she knows what she’s meant to do. This being said I can put my hand in her box and to hold her I let her walk into a cardboard tube, then lift it up and she will step onto my hand, so it is kind of a process right now but for one week in with a hamster who’s never been held, I would say this is quite a lot of progress!

So currently I’ve not learnt a whole lot about her personality but she seems happy doing her own thing and doesn’t really like being fussed over, which normal with older hamsters. So if she’s had enough of me she will just go back to bed or burrow under her bedding to be left alone. She’s really calm and isn’t really fussed by anything and generally just easygoing, that being said though she is really hyperaware about people in the house and will just know if someone is near her home. So she has got that curious side to her and does seem to like attention but just not too much as she’s just not used to it and is happier with me just saying hello, giving her food and water then moving on to let her get on with whatever she is doing.

I would say that she now definitely knows me and my scent as I’ve really been the only one around her and I’ve been the only one who has held her. So I would say we are now in a good place where she trusts me and I’ve nearly got her figured out on what amount of attention she needs.

Generally this week has been really easy but I’m really glad that I was the one to take her home as I can see that someone who maybe hadn’t had a hamster before could do the wrong thing and mistake her for being aggressive or not really friendly. I just think that if you going into it with the knowledge that there’s a soul in the animal and it acts on what it’s experienced then you can adapt for each hamster. So I’ve just had to adapt and learn that she is happy but probably won’t appreciate to much attention like my previous hamsters and may need more time and patience to get used to attention, or she may just never need a lot of interaction but I can tell she is interested sometimes and can be very curious.

I’ve just learnt through my spirituality that it’s best to care for your pets or animals regardless of what animal with intuition and this has been maybe one of the biggest life lessons for me. Each animal is different even if they don’t look different, they all have experienced different situations just like us humans.

Such as I had this experience the other day in the park where this woman was with her daughter and walking there dog. Now there is a river running through this park and the dog jumped into the river and started barking. The woman clearly was frustrated that the dog wouldn’t stop barking and she just started walking away knowing that the dog would eventually get out of the river. Now I don’t know why but my intuition was just telling me that I needed to go to the dog so I got up and walked over to the river where the dog was, and then the woman came back to try again to get him to leave the river and this dog started staring at me whilst still barking and it was like he could tell I was trying to understand what was wrong and was attempting to tell me. I think we forget a lot of the time that barking is how dogs communicate and clearly he was trying to say something. In the end he got out of the river and came over to me and I said hello to him, the woman apologised for her dog’s behaviour and I’m not sure why this really stuck with me but I just felt annoyed with this woman and compelled to stay with the dog as she was waking away because she just wasn’t listening to her dog at all, she was just continually shouting out to him and calling him without going and trying to figure out what he was trying to tell her.

This experience really taught me that I really have changed and I’m am learning that every animal has something to say and you can lean to understand them if you try. So I’m glad that Cocoa is with me and I can hopefully help her to tell me what it is she needs and I learn to listen to her! Regardless of the animal, they all deserve to be heard.

Thank you for reading this and I hope this was interesting and just thought I would add a bit of wisdom on connecting with your pets or animals on a different level as it does change your perception of the world in a beautiful way, and you may find more animals are drawn to you or come to you. Personally for me It’s an amazing skill to have and I hope you enjoyed this update on Cocoa! She is definitely interesting to me and I’m sure we will learn and teach each other a lot.