To hamster or not to hamster, that is the question

[expatinscotland]

K, so dd1's been begging for a hamster.

And DH and I quite like hamsters so wouldn't mind keeping one.

Finally moving to a place where there's room for one.

But we have a very dominant 7-year-old black and white female cat who likes to exercise her hunting skills.

Is there a workround?

Will there never be a hamster, 'spinning round and round on a wheel', as DD1 says in our future?

Aren't cockroaches meant to be unclean?

It's only males which scent-mark with urine - not every step (quite frequently though)

Females don't, and our females look after their babies beautifully too - they are immaculate and very well behaved.

I'll try to take some nice pics of the babies and post them on a profile - they are the sweetest little things

Hamsters dont live as long as guinea pigs - pro if you dont want one for too long, but con if you consider the tears and heartache when hamster dies every 1-3 years. Guinea pigs can usually do a good 6 years or so on average.

We have a coupple of gerbils. They are awake more during the day which is more fun for DD, and they do tend to sleep at night - so not as much noise from them.

However they nibble everything. We have had two plastic cages and they nibbled through both. We now have a glass gerbilarium thing which they can no way get through! We have to to up thier play stuff regularly though as they do chew the pastic and wooden toys very quickly!

Very easy to look after though and they don't appear to smell either. They are naturally pretty clean animals. We clean ours out every 1-2 weeks, topping up food and water every couple of days. And I give the top couple of shelves of the gerbilarium a wipe every few days between clean outs too.

However, ours don't really like handling very much. So petting is limited really. DD loves to just watch them playing though. She spends ages sat by their cage just watching.

kekouan - I was thinking of the peat idea as heard it was easier and cleaner. Does it really help?

Hulababy - yes, it's great. Make sure you get a deep enough tank though, and only half fill it with peat, or you'll have some escaping gerbils. I put some chicken wire over the top and secured it down, and it was fine.

They build loads of tunnels and generally seems pretty happy (so don't try and escape)

Only downside is that sometimes you can't see them as they're huddled in their little den in the middle of the tank, but they usually come out of you chuck in some food.

Doesn't smell, they don't have any bars to chew and they seem much happier. When I got mine they were initally in a crappy cage and they were obviously miserable (fighting, chewing etc) but much better once they had something to dig up.

God that was long... sorry :-p