EATING UP

Teener's hamster has just eaten Teener's hamster's sister. This was not supposed to happen. The woman in the pet shop said it would not happen because these hamsters were not cannibalistic. If you don't believe me, she said, have a look in the little book of hamsters. So we bought a copy of the little book of hamsters and we looked up the type of hamsters we were planning to buy and sure enough it said these are nice little happy family hamsters. They live together and play together and eat together and sleep together - "just like you and your sisters and brothers do".

So Teener and I bought the little hamsters and the little book of hamsters and a hamster starter kit and a cage for them to share and we went home.

And for a long time, everything went swimmingly. Bubble and Squeak lived together and played together and ate together and slept together just like the little hamster book told us they would. Sometimes we would hear the hamster wheel whirring round and we would run through to the (wait for it) utility room to watch them, Bubble and Squeak, happily playing happy families, running round their wheel side by side. Bubble was slightly smaller than Squeak and had to pelt round the outside at full tilt in order to keep up with his best friend and sibling. This induced in Teener waves of giggles. Even Bloggiana herself was known to laugh at the sight.

Reminds me of that Alan Whicker programme about Palm Beach, Bloggiana used to say, though quite what she was referring to I never really knew.

Then one day everything went wrong. We felt like tearing up the little book of hamsters and writing a strongly worded letter to the lady in the petshop. We felt like we had been duped, Teener and Bloggiana and I, because one day, instead of hearing the wheel whirring, we heard silence. And we went through to the (wait for it) utility room and there it was, a ghastly hamster carnage scenario: the half-eaten ribcage of Bubble being tossed around the cage by Squeak in a kind of high pitched dirty dancing cannibalistic hamster frenzy.

Well fuck me, said Bloggiana. Don't recall them doing that on effing Palm Beach.

A few days on and now the hamster wheel is pretty much full-time stationary. Teener and I sit at our parlour table tapping our fingers and fending off other animal death memories. I cannot help but recall the moment when Bloggiana hoovered up Cheeko the chipmunk. But for the sharp bend in the inflow pipe, Cheeko might have survived. (Bloggiana to this day has retained a wholly ambivalent attitude towards housework.) Teener says she wishes we still had Bertie the beetle.

Only last week, Piccalilli, I'm sure I saw him trotting along the dado. But it can't have been him because of those antennae I found sticking to Our Dog's nose.

And I'd know Bertie's antennae any day of the week, she adds, with a sniff.

Bloggiana herself seems remarkably piano. When we ask her if she wants to help us make a hamster headstone, all we get is a kind of vacant stare. There is a shop brochure in her left hand and a cigarette clinging for all its life's worth to her lips. In the post, an envelope is about to arrive containing confirmation of Bloggiana's place in the official North West Regional Championship Winston Churchill tribute evening.

And all Bloggiana seems to be able to do is sit - as though her animal death memories were simply too many and too great to bear.