To wait till morning to get hamster seen at vets

[ChitterChatter1987]

I found our little hamster seriously unwell in her cage this evening....she is only 9mths old and belongs to my daughter.
I think she has 'wet tail' as that area is wet, her chest is wet, she is hunched over, lethargic, making sort of coughing
/raspy noises and her eyes are all puffy.

My gut feeling is it's not looking good.
I worry we have found her too late.

I don't want her to suffer but the out of hours vets want £270 just for consultation, not alone any treatment or dare I say it euthanasia if it came to it.
We really don't have that sort of money lying about .I could borrow it from my mum if needed, but (and I don't want to sound cruel here) would it actually be worth it or is the likelihood of her being saved very minimal at this stage?

I spoke to my friend who is a vet nurse and said it doesn't sound good..
The out of hours vets said often small animals don't come through things like this....but if I wait til the morning to go to our own vets and she dies I'm worried I'll feel so guilty that maybe she could have been saved, and it's my youngest daughters birthday tomorrow.....really don't want my oldest having her hamster (who she only got on her last birthday) dying on her sisters :(

Oh please help me know what to do....

I’m not particularly thick, no.
Are you?

No, I’m not particularly either.

So if not, please can you acknowledge my question?

OP was unaware of the cost of OOH bill for this illness, should she pay this if it meant not feeding her children for the next couple of weeks to ensure the hamster lives through the night?

i think you are wrong to suggest this.

@NinaPersson

OP was unaware of the cost of OOH bill for this illness, should she pay this if it meant not feeding her children for the next couple of weeks to ensure the hamster lives through the night?

This was never the situation.

OP got paid today and posted at 7:30pm last night so I think it's safe to assume her children had been fed, given no mention was made to her not being able to feed them.

Now o don't agree with leaving the pet overnight, I was appalled at the suggestion actually, but let's not add arms, legs and heads to the situation. It was never about feeding the children.

Kindly, yes I’m aware and I don’t need you to tell me this. I was actually addressing the previous poster who implied that paying for vet bill should have come before grocery shopping.

but thank you

The idea that only people who can afford to pay 270 pounds at the drop of a hat should be allowed hamsters is so classist .
I'm very happy the OP got a happy outcome.

True right....it was another £91 this morning and luckily they said she didn't need any of the further treatment options which they were unsure might be a possibility (which would have been either another £200+ or £400+ depending on what was required!!)

We care about her welfare alot but would certainly never let our children go without food to pay for a hamster! Would hope nobody would! :-/ Not that that would ever be the situation in our case anyway.

I'm sure nobody when they buy a hamster expects hundreds of pounds of vet bills within the first 6mths.....

I think people just (wrongly) assume that small animals are cheap pets. I mean, they can be, but vet bills can absolutely crop up. I've spent well over £10k on vet bills for rats over the past 5 years and am a part of a few rat-related groups. Whenever someone expresses an interest in getting into rat-ownership, the potential for high vet bills (particularly for pet store or rescue rats) will be one of the first things I caution them on.

I agree, some people have lost their marbles on this thread

Wow, why so much? Is it a thoroughbred?

10k on RATS????!!! What did they have done? Brazilian butt lifts?

Rats are very prone to respiratory issues and cancers.

If you wanted some pet rats, my advice would be to get them from a specialist breeder, as they will only breed healthy rats with healthy rats, which massively reduces the risk of health issues arising.

Pet stores, or rather their suppliers, do not take any such care, so if you get pet store rats or adopt from rescues, you have a high likelihood of needing to make some vet trips. They also often house them in sawdust-lined enclosures that can cause significant lung damage.

I do not follow my own advice because I like to give down-on-their-luck rats a second chance, and do have sufficient disposable income.

We have, however, been extremely unlucky over the past 5 years. Even among the rat rescue community, we're an outlier in how many illnesses have arisen.

Those vet bills cover ten rats. Three had inoperable brain tumors (that can be treated with expensive medication to temporarily shrink them, giving the rat a temporary recovers and longer life), a lot of mammary tumors (that are capable of growing to tennis ball size if not surgically removed) and lots of respiratory illnesses.

Tbh, if I'd known how expensive they'd have proved, we might have thought twice, but once I have an animal in care I'll do my duty to give it the best life I reasonably can. Kept hoping our luck would turn but it didn't. Have recently switched to all-boys rather than all-girls (lower risk of tumors) so hopefully that'll help.

We had 20 or so rats from 2008 to 2018 and I reckon we paid for removal of 8 or 9 mammary tumours. We started getting boys but they tended to be worse with respiratory issues. We also had to have every single one euthanised when it was time (all breathing issues or brain tumours).

I don't think people realise that rats are exotic pets!

We averaged more than 1 mammary tumor op per rat, sadly, and all but one had to be euthanized due to pituitary tumors or respiratory illness. Was devastating at the time.

So many wonderful little characters though 😊 we've been lucky in that respect at least.

Absolutely - that's why we kept going! Only stopped when we had DS and needed their room. Now we have a giant African land snail.

My first rat had to be PTS because a neurological illness causing circling. I dropped her off as I had to go to work and picked her up later. The vet didn't charge me and all the staff signed a sympathy card. I cried my eyes out when I received it because although she was only a rat they cared.

@Suzuki70 I had my snail for 8 years. A good return on the price of £1.

Interestingly, there was actually a man in the vets this morning with a pet rat...I heard his bill was a couple of hundred too.

It's really hard to know where to draw the line...it's a slippery slope once you get into it, but I think we would/will have had to draw it somewhere.She has the medication now so will give her that over the wkend and watch and wait.

It could go either way at the moment as she is a very poorly hamster still today but fingers crossed.

It wouldn’t even occur to me to get not insurance for a hamster!

Just to update- sadly our little hamster didn't make it...she deteriorated yesterday despite having been on the antibiotics since Thursday night, so we took her back to the vets and they tried oxygen and diuretics, but overnight there was still no improvement so we agreed this afternoon the time had come to let her go :( My little girl is heartbroken and we all miss her little hamster very much as she was gone too soon and was a special little part of our family life.

Oh dear , that is a shame . RIP hammy

Just remember these lil guys often only show they are ill, when they are very ill

There was nothing you could do to change this outcome, but your poor little girl, its very hard losing a pet you love, esp as a child. I am so sorry

Such sad news op. I am so sorry to hear this.

Thanks all....we have buried her in the garden in a special little box which my DD decorated, and we have ordered a plaque and will get a Rose plant to go on top of her grave (Rose was hamster's name) We have also kept a bit of her fur, and the vets did a little clay stone with her pawprints 🥹
It's been tough for DD but I think those little touches have really helped her.

Sorry to read this OP. Poor little hamster and how sad for you and your daughter.

You got her treatment quickly so you did all you could.

💐