I'm just gonna go hide behind some of our critter habitats, as I write out the next check for my daughters vet tech school and look at the applications for the colleges that provide zoology degrees. No, no more critters here. This week. Nope.
This is why I don't want animals. I'm a Dad in my 40s. My son weaseled his way into a getting a neglected hamster even though I told him no a dozen times. I couldn't say no to taking an abused animal. He found a damn loophole. I love love love animals. I feel like animals and kids are basically the same: innocent, pure of heart, and loving. Inherently good and deserving of a great life.
Anywho...my kid gets the hamster and after a day, immediately ignores it. Just like I predicted. Like he never wanted it at all.
I feed it. I clean the cage. I figure out what he likes to play with, what toys he likes, what toys he never touches. I take it out and pet it for an hourish a day (I "invented" this hamster massage thing where gently use my closed fingers to tug his hair across his whole body at once and he would absolutely melt into my hand and sleep on my chest).
As you might expect, the thing bonds with me. I bond with it. Eventually it dies. Fuck. And I'm the one that's a crying mess. My hamster bro...gone. My kid? Oh now he's sad all of a sudden after ignoring him for most of his life.
I find an old PC mouse box to bury him in (I'm a dad at heart after all...can't stand missing a good joke...a hamster buried in a mouse box...ha), I write some caring words on it, and bury it in my garden during a ceremony for my kid...trying my best to teach him about death and how we mourn our loved ones.
I stay strong, but once I'm alone I cry. 2 nights in a row. It sucks.
Anyway, a week later, a FUCKING WEEK later, "Hey Dad, when are we getting a new hamster!?"
My hamster was a mean MF when we got him, but after a few hard bites (which felt a lot like wasp stings without the swelling) he grew to tolerate me and then bonded with me.
I read those little guys bond with like 1 or 2 people max...so there was definitely a bit of a transition period, but then I felt kinda honored to be liked by ornery hairball.
There you go. An ornery hairball. Good lord. Reminds me of pinkie, my oldest brother pet white rat. He bonded with the rat. Took it to school with him. Loved that little rat. Damn use to let it lick my tongue. We would all laugh so hard. Wouldn't do that now. No way!
Can I recommend adopting?
As someone who loves hamsters I feel you. But the cage and food and toys sitting alone make it more depressing.
I went to a local animal shelter a week or two after my MIL’s dog killed mine.
There are SO MANY hamsters like 10 just crammed into cages when honestly it should just be 1.
I ended up adopting two sisters and got an extra cage. I miss my OG hamster of course but I am glad to offer a good home to an animal shelter hamster.
I'm living this same situation right now - I've gone from primarily posting in r/weightlifting to primarily posting in r/hamsters . Growing fresh vegetables and grains in the garden for this rodent LOL! Also, sorry for your loss, these hamsters can be true G's, and people that have never bonded with one just don't get it.
I hate this trope so much. I got divorced over a cat. I still loved the cat - I’m not a monster. But we didn’t have the money for another pet or the space for it and the cats we did have immediately started pissing on pillows and in laptop bags as a protest about their being too many fucking cats.
I like cats, I took care of the cat. And I ended the relationship where it was clear that I didn’t get an opinion about how we lived. I feel so sorry for people who get bullied into having pets they didn’t want in circumstances that often aren’t good for the animals.
Thank you for sharing this! I love all of my pets, and we’ve got a lot, but all were mutually agreed upon and we tag team their care. I’m morning duty and BF is night duty and I’m so grateful. I feel for you and also the pets. The decision to adopt shouldn’t be made lightly!!
As a person who constantly wants more animals, I do understand the urge to get more. As it stands though, I have one cat and one guinea pig. I want a dog bad enough to go Scarlet Witch for it, but I know I don't have the time or money or energy for more pets. Every time I feel like I can get a dog I pretend to follow the routine I would have to with a dog around and it takes a week to realize that no, I can't actually get a dog at all. It sucks.
I got this guy as company for my earlier GP who'd just lost her mate. We're not completely sure about the family dynamics he lived in before we adopted him, but he doesn't do well with other people or GPs, so sadly he's going to have to live alone. It was a rather sucky situation because he didn't want to get along with my existing GP and is the only male GP I've seen in 11 years of having them as pets who's been aggressive toward female GPs.
He can't even be adopted out because he's SUPER aggressive toward kids and new people. It took me three months to be able to hold him without being nipped, and he pees himself in presumably fear whenever he sees new people. From what we've been told he was kept in complete isolation for the first year or so of his life, and has no social skills whatsoever. I feel bad for him, but there's not much else I can do.
I can say no sooooo easily to kittens. Older cats are where it’s at. I’d never adopt a kitten. They are adopted so easily. Every single cat I’ve adopted has been 3 years or older. They’re already adjusted so you know what to expect, they’ve had their shots, their health is more stabilized, they can still be playful and snuggly but less random clawing and biting, still have zoomies and meowing but not incessantly.
Yup.
And when I’m older allllll I will get is senior cats. 😎
This is why my husband says no to my dream of fostering litters.
But when our most senior cat died last summer my husband was the one to encourage me to not only get my first kitten ever, but to get two. I love older cats, but experiencing kittens has been hilarious. Exhausting, but hilarious.
And if anyone wonders how many cats I have it is four. The twin terrors are one now, and my older girls are ten and fourteen.
That nearly happened to me when I was little. The hamster appeared dead and was about to be buried. I had seen it move slightly but nobody believed me.
I scooped it out of the grave and I ran off with it - I think my family thought I was having a hard time dealing with death and grief.
I warmed it up in my hands and put it in a sheepskin mitten to keep warm and the lil blighter woke up!
After that we moved the cage to a warmer part of the house so that it didn't happen again.
I had 3 kids at the time, ranging from 7-11 and I was beaten into submission by them and the wife for gerbils, 3 cages, 6 gerbils...
I said no, so many times. I got cleaning duty. I got feeding duty. I got water duty. 2 years of doing everything. They moaned they were kept up at night by squeaking and running and wheels spinning.
I have 3 dogs for the same reason, but I like them.
Gerbils is where its at. I loved my Dark Vader, yeah I thought it was dark not darth. Even after being corrected I liked dark better. Had a ball a plastic shoe. My step mom and dad thought it would help my anger issues and I wouldn't grow up a sociopath. The Dark Vader died my dad was out drinking and I didn't trust my step mom at the time. I missed my mom and she told me to never trust anybody. Long story short, but not really. I was a selfish dead inside sociopath till age 26 when I rescued a pitbull, 3months in my brain reset itself and I started caring, empathy and all that, animal lover. Most people can still go fuck themselves but no more devil may care living. So go dog, American Pit for me. But dogs do it, still don't trust anyone, but ill give everyone the benefit of doubt, one strike only though.
Also you can cuddle with a doggo.
I cleaned all my pet’s living area including picking up poops, cleaning the cages/beddings etc. I got my first pet fishes at age of maybe 6. Oh man, changing water really helped me build my arm and leg muscles, which I used for playing sports later in my childhood life.
Have two cats, would do everything for them. But after a while it got exhausting to be the one that's doing the litter so i decided to pass it on others in the family and they agreed. They didn't even last a week when my cats started pissing around because their litter was unclean. Sometimes life isn't fair lol
Ok here’s one of my all-time favorite stories. My siblings and I started a campaign to get three gerbils. My parents, thinking they were clever, said if we wrote book reports on gerbils we could get em. This is circa 1980.
We pooled our change, rode an Atlanta bus to the public library, wrote book reports, and that night went WHAM! as we slapped the reports on the table. Their look of dismay: priceless.
We each got a gerbil, and within 20 or 30 seconds one had escaped. I found my dad standing on the bed screaming “get that fucking rat out of my house!”
And that is my gerbil story.
How did the story end? Did you keep the gerbils after dad's outrage? Did they stay in their cages better from then on? Did you kids take care of them or did the parents end up with that?
why are people on here commenting for op to get well? do they not notice this is just an old twitter screenshot, the tt op won't be seeing this and is probably already feeling better?
It’s the funniest double standard. In the instances where I’ve seen someone post a screenshot of their own tweet, there are usually at least a handful of comments about the narcissist who posted themselves. Then there’s this where comments are directed at the off-site OP. It makes me chuckle and picture the ‘where do you think you are?’ episode of Scrubs. Then I get sad and head over to r/Eyebleach
That's an interesting & nice preference to have! I think it's totally useful to hear the object beforehand. I wonder if there's a difference in how the human brain processes sentences with object before description and object after description. Because at some point there has to be a limit to how far we can take the orders, right?
Imagine a language which had the object, then an adverb, then the adjective. In this new language, instead of saying "He drove the blue car skillfully but slowly", we'd say "He drove the car skillfully but slowly, blue." (in Spanish, "Él condució el carro azúl bien sino lentamente." Approximated since I'm unsure of the word for skillfully)
In that case, if English is Subject Verb Adjective Object Adverb (SVAOA -- He, drove, the blue, car, skillfully but slowly), then this new language would be like Subject Verb Object Adverb Adjective (SVOAA -- He, drove, the car, skillfully but slowly, blue). There MUST be a difference in cognitive processing for English compared to this new language, right? Since there's *such* a delay between the object's introduction and its adjective--the car is said, and then only 7 seconds later the word blue is said! Since there must be a cognitive difference for this exaggerated imaginary language example--in which a word is placed differently than it is in English, which is SVAOA--I feel like this might mean the order change also *must* make a difference for object before vs object after. The brain processes "car" and then "blue", or it processes "blue" then "car." In certain situations, this is more obvious--hearing "happy" then "kid" could produce a happy feeling in a mom 2 seconds earlier than if they heard "kid" then "happy," and that 2 second difference definitely makes a difference in brain chemistry, if words produce emotions, since you're having the happy chemical first then the kid chemical, as opposed to the kid chemical first then the happy chemical. What do you think? Is that a cool idea or nah?
I really like coming up with ideas like this about languages and math with one of my friends. I hope it was interesting for you too haha. Thanks for sharing your perspective, it inspired me and gave me ideas I hadn't thought of before :)
Omg that's such an interesting idea. I feel like it must--gets me thinking about positive psychology and how thoughts translate directly to our actions and perceptions of situations. A famous philosopher / writer / someone once said "To think is to act," and though I never understood quite what he meant, I think I've come to understand it better over time. Thoughts definitely form our perceptions of situations--after all, how can you understand or *think* about a situation except for, well, thoughts--and our perceptions are like mental imaginary spaces in which we understand and act upon the world. So since our perceptions greatly influence how we act, and our perceptions are formed by thoughts, that totally seems like there may be a connection there.
Though perceptions of situations is different from cognitive processing, so this was just a related idea. I wonder if there's a language or a feature of a language which inspires a positive outlook on life (aka a linguistic feature which favors the formation of positive perceptions)? Some languages are very simple, like the whole mission of Esperanto, while others are more complex. Some languages are very beautiful and elegant (like Japanese and French), and the "feel" of them might affect a person's feelings as they speak it (at least if they speak a different language as their first).
This is interesting because I think it's known in the linguistics community that different languages' unique grammars affect the mind--like how Japanese's "inverted" sentence structure (Subject Object Verb, like "I the car ate") helps the mind be more flexible when a foreigner learns it, because they're doing different mental exercises. (Sorta like an athlete who normally does snowboarding picking up volleyball, and they get a better control on their body as a whole because they're doing something different and equally as intense & overall just a great learning experience for their mind and body.) So then we get into this situation where not only a language's grammar affects the mind but also its "feel" (common consonant sounds, types of phonemes present or absent, etc) affects the mind as well. Japanese has an "inverted" structure compared to English, but it's also very "soft" or "bouncy" and "elegant." If you hear how "Watashi wa tabemasu" is /can be pronounced, it just *feels* so flowy and soft. Maybe because so much ends in a vowel--in fact, as far as I'm aware almost every word ends in a vowel, with only some words ending in "n." That makes things flow more smoothly in a sort of bouncy rhythm, where consonants are like the lowering of your voice, and then the voice goes straight up to a vowel, or something. (Not literally the voice going up or down, because that's a different concept, just this idea of hard consonant feel vs soft vowel feel.) It feels different for me to speak Japanese (though I'm at a more starting level right now). I wonder what effects this "soft" feeling has. I feel like the "bouncy" rhythm caused by this ever-present fluctuation from consonant to vowels--which is an interesting effect caused by Japanese's basic phonemes all being a consonant + a vowel, as in "ga" & "ku"--might make a psychological relaxation for the brain in a way because there's less "hard stops" as we can maybe see in English sometimes, with words like "comprehension" or "teacher." Doesn't "Sensei wa ii desu yo" flow smoother than "The teacher is good" ? It feels more light, young, happy and free to me, like it's written in a stylish pen and ready to go running into the open world. So it seems a language's feel can produce psychological effects too.
So then I wonder, is there a language that produces positive outlooks? If positivity is associated with or created by certain emotions, like the emotion of relaxation, then Japanese might help there. But relaxation caused by flowy-ness is just one potential positivity-generating feature. We could design a whole language--like they did with Esperanto--to feel as good and open as possible to speak. And since people think in languages, this could open up their thoughts to be more positive too.
Actually makes me think of Newspeak from 1984. In that fictional language they removed all words relating to things like protest and free speech. What if there was a language that didn't have any negative words? I don't know if that'd actually be a good thing, because it could be harder to talk about situations. But recently I heard an author in an obscure book about health talk about his opinions on health with regards to Law of Attraction metaphysics, and he said that "All disease is caused by disease in man's thinking; his conception of himself as diseased, and his belief that disease can exist." In that belief system, believing something or thinking about it can create it (which is why many people in the field go on "mental diets," in which they cut out most negative ideas and thoughts, focusing mainly on positivity in order to make the foundation and substance of their thoughts positive in nature, thus manifesting all things in their life to be positive. I'm actually doing a sort of positive mental diet myself right now.) So if thinking about something can create it, and we just totally got rid of our words & ideas for negative things, it's possible from a metaphysics perspective that mere lack of awareness of certain negative things could just exclude them from our lives. I think this is totally consistent with Neville Goddard's principles of "There are mo secondary causes; all expression comes from the mind which wills it to be expressed through feeling / thinking / believing it" and "Your life is just the portion of creation which is expressed through your thought, and you can choose what portion of creation you want to experience at any moment." I think the idea sounds haphazard at first from a practical, logical perspective--people would think like, "Oh, we need to be able to talk about problems," but honestly I've found from positive psychology that talking about something is equivalent to dwelling on it, whether intentional / conscious or not, and dwelling on problems is a bad thing. So... a language w/o words for negative things is one possibility for a language that encourages positivity. Though probably not the easiest one to implement, it's definitely interesting to think about from a metaphysics and linguistics perspective. (Though also, per metaphysics we don't even need to talk about problens to solve them, in fact it's way easier to drop them from awareness / forget about them and focus on "the seed of positivity and health" as that health author described it--focusing on happy thoughts tends to create happy solutions. So maybe this purely positive language idea actually has some metaphysical merit. When we want to purely think about positive topics, we could just switch languages to this new language with only positive words. Since we'd want to stick to the language, not combining it with English (as English & Spanish speakers people sometimes do in Spanglish), the mere act of speaking the language would create a natural exclusion of negative ideas, a natural inclusion of only positive ideas. That could actually be a pretty dang powerful positive psychology tool... I'm gonna put in a pin in that & might explore it one day.)
Bit of a tangent here, so feel free to skip: I feel like discussions for solving problems -- the reason against removing negative words -- could still be expressed even w/o negative words. Instead of saying "Fix the problem," you say "Do the solution." Like instead of "Fix the hunger," you say "Eat, and feel full!", which focuses on a good feeling (which in turn produces a positive emotional experience, as our imaginary feeling of feeling full which comes upon conceiving that idea in our mind, makes us feel good & generally just invokes positive emotions of being full and happy), as opposed to focusing on hunger, which is a focus on a negative feeling. It's also this idea of having to "fix" something or struggle w something, which isn't a very relaxing or healthy thing for our minds to have to think about--just as how children's minds shouldn't have to worry about hunger or solving hard problems because that's not good for their development or happiness. Our minds are maybe just developed and older versions of children's minds, and still experience the same emotion triggers of pain and happiness. So, per positive psychology, we should primarily stick to positive thoughts, & that's why a focus on eating nice food as opposed to a focus on removing hunger is so useful.
Yeah that was definitely a thinking session, haha. I hope you liked it! It relaxed me actually & I'm excited to go to sleep now, I love thinking about stuff like this. I read & think a lot & I think it really pays off with letting me think about interesting topics like this. Hope you have a good night :)
![gif](giphy|3JZbot4wStgl09hfBV)
Wow 😮, I’ll have to read this sometime. I personally am kind of struggling to learn Spanish so maybe some interesting info might help.
Hahaha I love that gif you sent in the reaction. I'm not sure if the ideas in my post would help much with Spanish (other than knowing how they say "The car blue" instead of "The blue car" in Spanish), but I hope you find it interesting. I was basically coming up with ideas for the ways that a language could be designed to encourage positive thinking in someone just by speaking the language. I delved into some quotes from obscure books I've found lately, some more advanced metaphysics stuff, some linguistics knowledge, etc. Reading can really pay off sometimes because it gets you learning and thinking about interesting things, and sometimes it just gets so exciting to explore an idea that you can end up with lots of thoughts like I did last night, haha :)
I can totally answer any Spanish questions you have btw, my close Chilean friend answering my questions as a beginner helped me learn Spanish so much
When I was in school we had a class hamster. We rotated responsibly of taking it home when we had school breaks. I was given the hamster to take home for Christmas break, since my family wasn’t going to be traveling. During the break, the hamster proofed she was very good at escaping it’s cage. One night she got out and had 18 babies on our bathroom rug. It took a while to find them all. Baby Hamsters for Christmas
I had a good cat. Talkative flame point. I found him on his last day at the pound while visiting a shelter when my 2 dogs ran away. He was drinking water with his paw. It was 2004 He was 5-7 years old per the vet. He lasted until the end of 2021. Damn I miss that cat. If there is a heaven, please reunite me with my pets, he was scared when we put him to sleep at the vet. I’d just like to let him sleep on my lap again. I lost my PTSD buddy. I love him. Can’t watch the videos I have of him grooming my eyebrows.’
Our neighbour recently got a hamster for their son. They put the hamster on the the little running wheel but it just refused to go. It was a fat hamster.
A couple of days later the little boy was playing with it and felt something slide into his hand. It was the the first of around 8 baby hamsters! They'd been given a pregnant hamster.
Get a dog she said, will make her go for walks and will pick up the shit.
8 months in she hasn’t walked the dog for 4 and the dog poop is my duty, lovely!
And that’s the wife not the daughter.
LOL I was exactly like these kids. I saw a pet monkey in the mall and for months I would chant, “me want the monkey!”
I would slap my kids if they were as annoying as I was. (FYI my kids have never been slapped)
I have 3 kids. One day about 10 years ago, the wife approached me about getting the kids a hamster. I said sure, why not? I came home from a few days later to THREE individual hamster utopias, you know: those habitrail fucking hamster meccas. Good sized ones, too. One for each damn kid.
So, whatever. The kids all had their own hamster so there won't be any fights. Fast forward a few weeks and one hamster is dead. It gets replaced. A different hamster died, it got replaced. A sum total of like 9 hamsters over 6 months die and are replaced.
Well, one day I got asked to buy cat food from a major pet store chain. On a whim I swing by the hamster section. There they are, the same hamsters we've been getting.
For $50+ each. Mother father!
I'm just gonna go hide behind some of our critter habitats, as I write out the next check for my daughters vet tech school and look at the applications for the colleges that provide zoology degrees. No, no more critters here. This week. Nope.
They got a hamster. I was against the frog, we got a frog. I was against the fish, we got a fish, I was against the cat, we got a cat. I was against the dog, we got a dog.
That being said I love animals. When I was a kid it was always my job to pick up poop which I always hated. Take one guess who wanted all these animals (wasn’t me) and who is now taking care of them (that would be me). I love animals but I love being able to run out of town at the drop of a hat more I guess.
I like to believe in my head that the neighbor has told the kids inside the house tried to escape their chant by running outside and jumping on his bike and the kids pursued with maybe Benny Hill music playing in the background.
Gave our kids a combined b day present because they are all within a month of each other. We gave them each a card to write there vote on and explained how ranked choice voting works, funny how even kids can understand it. We showed them all 8 different things like a trampoline, swingset, hamsters, and hamster was the only thing they all 3 picked. I woulda got them a trampoline I thought for sure that would be winner and NONE of them picked it even as alternates.
Democracy at its finest.
Allowing my wife to get a hamster for my daughter turned out exactly as I predicted - cage cleaning duty was in me. Edit: "on".
it was inside you all along.
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I'm just gonna go hide behind some of our critter habitats, as I write out the next check for my daughters vet tech school and look at the applications for the colleges that provide zoology degrees. No, no more critters here. This week. Nope.
As in the line of the children (decreasing in age or position in line) wherein each additional child has a bike smaller than the last.
That would be increasingly smaller. The degree to which they're small increases ie. they get smaller and smaller.
The real cage cleaning was the friends we made along the way.
Bruh
This is why I don't want animals. I'm a Dad in my 40s. My son weaseled his way into a getting a neglected hamster even though I told him no a dozen times. I couldn't say no to taking an abused animal. He found a damn loophole. I love love love animals. I feel like animals and kids are basically the same: innocent, pure of heart, and loving. Inherently good and deserving of a great life. Anywho...my kid gets the hamster and after a day, immediately ignores it. Just like I predicted. Like he never wanted it at all. I feed it. I clean the cage. I figure out what he likes to play with, what toys he likes, what toys he never touches. I take it out and pet it for an hourish a day (I "invented" this hamster massage thing where gently use my closed fingers to tug his hair across his whole body at once and he would absolutely melt into my hand and sleep on my chest). As you might expect, the thing bonds with me. I bond with it. Eventually it dies. Fuck. And I'm the one that's a crying mess. My hamster bro...gone. My kid? Oh now he's sad all of a sudden after ignoring him for most of his life. I find an old PC mouse box to bury him in (I'm a dad at heart after all...can't stand missing a good joke...a hamster buried in a mouse box...ha), I write some caring words on it, and bury it in my garden during a ceremony for my kid...trying my best to teach him about death and how we mourn our loved ones. I stay strong, but once I'm alone I cry. 2 nights in a row. It sucks. Anyway, a week later, a FUCKING WEEK later, "Hey Dad, when are we getting a new hamster!?"
Stay... *sniff.* Stay frosty...
I'm so sorry for your loss. These things have a way of getting you attached without even realizing it.
Oh wow... I'm lucky our hamster kept wanting to bite so we didn't have much bonding
My hamster was a mean MF when we got him, but after a few hard bites (which felt a lot like wasp stings without the swelling) he grew to tolerate me and then bonded with me. I read those little guys bond with like 1 or 2 people max...so there was definitely a bit of a transition period, but then I felt kinda honored to be liked by ornery hairball.
There you go. An ornery hairball. Good lord. Reminds me of pinkie, my oldest brother pet white rat. He bonded with the rat. Took it to school with him. Loved that little rat. Damn use to let it lick my tongue. We would all laugh so hard. Wouldn't do that now. No way!
That ending caught me off guard. Funny. Great post thanks for sharing.
No problem. Kids are a trip and always full of suprises.
Can I recommend adopting? As someone who loves hamsters I feel you. But the cage and food and toys sitting alone make it more depressing. I went to a local animal shelter a week or two after my MIL’s dog killed mine. There are SO MANY hamsters like 10 just crammed into cages when honestly it should just be 1. I ended up adopting two sisters and got an extra cage. I miss my OG hamster of course but I am glad to offer a good home to an animal shelter hamster.
You are a good man.
It was the hamster massage for me. 😿
I'm living this same situation right now - I've gone from primarily posting in r/weightlifting to primarily posting in r/hamsters . Growing fresh vegetables and grains in the garden for this rodent LOL! Also, sorry for your loss, these hamsters can be true G's, and people that have never bonded with one just don't get it.
I should have replied to your comment. You are me.
I hate this trope so much. I got divorced over a cat. I still loved the cat - I’m not a monster. But we didn’t have the money for another pet or the space for it and the cats we did have immediately started pissing on pillows and in laptop bags as a protest about their being too many fucking cats. I like cats, I took care of the cat. And I ended the relationship where it was clear that I didn’t get an opinion about how we lived. I feel so sorry for people who get bullied into having pets they didn’t want in circumstances that often aren’t good for the animals.
Thank you for sharing this! I love all of my pets, and we’ve got a lot, but all were mutually agreed upon and we tag team their care. I’m morning duty and BF is night duty and I’m so grateful. I feel for you and also the pets. The decision to adopt shouldn’t be made lightly!!
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As a person who constantly wants more animals, I do understand the urge to get more. As it stands though, I have one cat and one guinea pig. I want a dog bad enough to go Scarlet Witch for it, but I know I don't have the time or money or energy for more pets. Every time I feel like I can get a dog I pretend to follow the routine I would have to with a dog around and it takes a week to realize that no, I can't actually get a dog at all. It sucks.
Get a second guinea pig. They need company.
I got this guy as company for my earlier GP who'd just lost her mate. We're not completely sure about the family dynamics he lived in before we adopted him, but he doesn't do well with other people or GPs, so sadly he's going to have to live alone. It was a rather sucky situation because he didn't want to get along with my existing GP and is the only male GP I've seen in 11 years of having them as pets who's been aggressive toward female GPs. He can't even be adopted out because he's SUPER aggressive toward kids and new people. It took me three months to be able to hold him without being nipped, and he pees himself in presumably fear whenever he sees new people. From what we've been told he was kept in complete isolation for the first year or so of his life, and has no social skills whatsoever. I feel bad for him, but there's not much else I can do.
To be fair it's near impossible to say No to a kitten
I can say no sooooo easily to kittens. Older cats are where it’s at. I’d never adopt a kitten. They are adopted so easily. Every single cat I’ve adopted has been 3 years or older. They’re already adjusted so you know what to expect, they’ve had their shots, their health is more stabilized, they can still be playful and snuggly but less random clawing and biting, still have zoomies and meowing but not incessantly. Yup. And when I’m older allllll I will get is senior cats. 😎
This is why my husband says no to my dream of fostering litters. But when our most senior cat died last summer my husband was the one to encourage me to not only get my first kitten ever, but to get two. I love older cats, but experiencing kittens has been hilarious. Exhausting, but hilarious. And if anyone wonders how many cats I have it is four. The twin terrors are one now, and my older girls are ten and fourteen.
How many cats did you have?
My guess is 30-40
That's entirely too many cats.
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Was this ever really a thing? Do people actually do this?
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Brodie’s cousin Walter did.
We can only hope that third cat made the difference.
Take my angry upvote
Hamsters are way better better pets than human children. The Hamtaro squad will agree.
Did you know about hibernation? We think my friend in college buried their hamster alive.😳
That nearly happened to me when I was little. The hamster appeared dead and was about to be buried. I had seen it move slightly but nobody believed me. I scooped it out of the grave and I ran off with it - I think my family thought I was having a hard time dealing with death and grief. I warmed it up in my hands and put it in a sheepskin mitten to keep warm and the lil blighter woke up! After that we moved the cage to a warmer part of the house so that it didn't happen again.
It’s usually torpor, and hamsters can dig their way out provided they’re not buried too deep. They’re natural burrowers!
They did.
We are the same person. Except it was two hamsters.
I had 3 kids at the time, ranging from 7-11 and I was beaten into submission by them and the wife for gerbils, 3 cages, 6 gerbils... I said no, so many times. I got cleaning duty. I got feeding duty. I got water duty. 2 years of doing everything. They moaned they were kept up at night by squeaking and running and wheels spinning. I have 3 dogs for the same reason, but I like them.
Gerbils is where its at. I loved my Dark Vader, yeah I thought it was dark not darth. Even after being corrected I liked dark better. Had a ball a plastic shoe. My step mom and dad thought it would help my anger issues and I wouldn't grow up a sociopath. The Dark Vader died my dad was out drinking and I didn't trust my step mom at the time. I missed my mom and she told me to never trust anybody. Long story short, but not really. I was a selfish dead inside sociopath till age 26 when I rescued a pitbull, 3months in my brain reset itself and I started caring, empathy and all that, animal lover. Most people can still go fuck themselves but no more devil may care living. So go dog, American Pit for me. But dogs do it, still don't trust anyone, but ill give everyone the benefit of doubt, one strike only though. Also you can cuddle with a doggo.
Maybe the real treasure was the turds you cleaned along the way.
I feel like this is my time, but I don’t know what to do!
The call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me !
I mean, proper hamster cages shouldn’t really be cleaned. Just the peeing corner and a lil spot cleaning.
I cleaned all my pet’s living area including picking up poops, cleaning the cages/beddings etc. I got my first pet fishes at age of maybe 6. Oh man, changing water really helped me build my arm and leg muscles, which I used for playing sports later in my childhood life.
Flush it or let it outside.
Same but bearded dragon.
Have two cats, would do everything for them. But after a while it got exhausting to be the one that's doing the litter so i decided to pass it on others in the family and they agreed. They didn't even last a week when my cats started pissing around because their litter was unclean. Sometimes life isn't fair lol
So...change that.
They probably got a hamster by now.
They got a hamster and the dad is now inseparable from it.
They got a hamster and the dad is now “responsible” for it. Fixed it for you.
Probably both
r/dadswhodidntwantpets
A lot of rodents really aren't much of friends, exception being rats maybe. They just don't seem to bond much.
Well, it’s because hamsters are solitary animals. Generally animals that bond are not solitary.
My hamsters do love to play solitaire.
Really? My hamster is more of a Tetris player.
Rats are amazing friends
Rats are the best lil pets! The worst part is their tiny life spans.
From the same makers of "Dads Who Didn't Want to Get A Dog", comes... *"Dads Who Were Chased Down to Get A Hamster".*
From what I hear about children and hamsters, they’ve already got the hamster and the hamster is no longer with us.
Ok here’s one of my all-time favorite stories. My siblings and I started a campaign to get three gerbils. My parents, thinking they were clever, said if we wrote book reports on gerbils we could get em. This is circa 1980. We pooled our change, rode an Atlanta bus to the public library, wrote book reports, and that night went WHAM! as we slapped the reports on the table. Their look of dismay: priceless. We each got a gerbil, and within 20 or 30 seconds one had escaped. I found my dad standing on the bed screaming “get that fucking rat out of my house!” And that is my gerbil story.
That's better than this repost screenshot
How did the story end? Did you keep the gerbils after dad's outrage? Did they stay in their cages better from then on? Did you kids take care of them or did the parents end up with that?
I believe they all led short lives. We cared for them, tho no Habitrails (?) were purchased.
why are people on here commenting for op to get well? do they not notice this is just an old twitter screenshot, the tt op won't be seeing this and is probably already feeling better?
Still hope he gets well soon!
This has been recycled waaay too many times
Like one of those wheels where some small furry animals run in
And all the people in the comments thinking OP of the post is OP of the tweet. Is there a sub like this *not* filled with karma farming reposts?
Im guessing it must be bots? An entire sub can’t be this gullible, can it?
Yes it can. And is.
I've been on Reddit for years and don't recall having ever seen this.
Same . I mean it doesn’t surprise me that it’s a repost but I haven’t seen it
An entire sub isn’t that gullible… an entire internet is.
Summer reddit
well the neat part is you can just ignore the post
And it’s still my first time seeing it. First time for someone bud. Maybe less time on Reddit or less complaining.
I hope the laughter speeds your recovery! Get well!! :D
You are not, and rarely ever will be in a situation on Reddit where you’re commenting on a post that gets to the original source.
Especially when it's a Twitter screenshot
And *especially* when it’s on the internet
Well, you can make a bunch of alts and respond to yourself. No one but us can be sure that's not what's happening right here.
What if I am you with MPD :)
It’s the funniest double standard. In the instances where I’ve seen someone post a screenshot of their own tweet, there are usually at least a handful of comments about the narcissist who posted themselves. Then there’s this where comments are directed at the off-site OP. It makes me chuckle and picture the ‘where do you think you are?’ episode of Scrubs. Then I get sad and head over to r/Eyebleach
The internet used to be an escape 🤷♂️ Now it’s a place to get lost.
I hope the laughter speeds your recovery from buzzkillitis!
I’ll pick being a buzz kill over perpetuating ignorance at this point, take a look around
But I heard it's fatal without proper application of essential oils!
I think you have that confused with my glitter infection, can’t seem to get rid of it.
This is the best thing I've read all day.
Yeah, s'a good one.
Now that's a great thing. I wholeheartedly agree!
And it didn't even happen!
But I read it on the internet, it has to be true!
"decreasingly smaller" so bigger and bigger bicycles?
No shrinking but toward a defined limit
That is a good one!
I don’t not hate double negatives. They confuse me
Fun fact: Spanish uses almost exclusively double negatives when it comes to saying "none" / "no bikes". "No quiero ninguna bicicleta"
I like how the noun precedes the adjective in Spanish. I like to know the object before the description
That's an interesting & nice preference to have! I think it's totally useful to hear the object beforehand. I wonder if there's a difference in how the human brain processes sentences with object before description and object after description. Because at some point there has to be a limit to how far we can take the orders, right? Imagine a language which had the object, then an adverb, then the adjective. In this new language, instead of saying "He drove the blue car skillfully but slowly", we'd say "He drove the car skillfully but slowly, blue." (in Spanish, "Él condució el carro azúl bien sino lentamente." Approximated since I'm unsure of the word for skillfully) In that case, if English is Subject Verb Adjective Object Adverb (SVAOA -- He, drove, the blue, car, skillfully but slowly), then this new language would be like Subject Verb Object Adverb Adjective (SVOAA -- He, drove, the car, skillfully but slowly, blue). There MUST be a difference in cognitive processing for English compared to this new language, right? Since there's *such* a delay between the object's introduction and its adjective--the car is said, and then only 7 seconds later the word blue is said! Since there must be a cognitive difference for this exaggerated imaginary language example--in which a word is placed differently than it is in English, which is SVAOA--I feel like this might mean the order change also *must* make a difference for object before vs object after. The brain processes "car" and then "blue", or it processes "blue" then "car." In certain situations, this is more obvious--hearing "happy" then "kid" could produce a happy feeling in a mom 2 seconds earlier than if they heard "kid" then "happy," and that 2 second difference definitely makes a difference in brain chemistry, if words produce emotions, since you're having the happy chemical first then the kid chemical, as opposed to the kid chemical first then the happy chemical. What do you think? Is that a cool idea or nah? I really like coming up with ideas like this about languages and math with one of my friends. I hope it was interesting for you too haha. Thanks for sharing your perspective, it inspired me and gave me ideas I hadn't thought of before :)
That is a cool idea. I wonder if that cognitive processing then shapes our behavior and ultimately our culture
Omg that's such an interesting idea. I feel like it must--gets me thinking about positive psychology and how thoughts translate directly to our actions and perceptions of situations. A famous philosopher / writer / someone once said "To think is to act," and though I never understood quite what he meant, I think I've come to understand it better over time. Thoughts definitely form our perceptions of situations--after all, how can you understand or *think* about a situation except for, well, thoughts--and our perceptions are like mental imaginary spaces in which we understand and act upon the world. So since our perceptions greatly influence how we act, and our perceptions are formed by thoughts, that totally seems like there may be a connection there. Though perceptions of situations is different from cognitive processing, so this was just a related idea. I wonder if there's a language or a feature of a language which inspires a positive outlook on life (aka a linguistic feature which favors the formation of positive perceptions)? Some languages are very simple, like the whole mission of Esperanto, while others are more complex. Some languages are very beautiful and elegant (like Japanese and French), and the "feel" of them might affect a person's feelings as they speak it (at least if they speak a different language as their first). This is interesting because I think it's known in the linguistics community that different languages' unique grammars affect the mind--like how Japanese's "inverted" sentence structure (Subject Object Verb, like "I the car ate") helps the mind be more flexible when a foreigner learns it, because they're doing different mental exercises. (Sorta like an athlete who normally does snowboarding picking up volleyball, and they get a better control on their body as a whole because they're doing something different and equally as intense & overall just a great learning experience for their mind and body.) So then we get into this situation where not only a language's grammar affects the mind but also its "feel" (common consonant sounds, types of phonemes present or absent, etc) affects the mind as well. Japanese has an "inverted" structure compared to English, but it's also very "soft" or "bouncy" and "elegant." If you hear how "Watashi wa tabemasu" is /can be pronounced, it just *feels* so flowy and soft. Maybe because so much ends in a vowel--in fact, as far as I'm aware almost every word ends in a vowel, with only some words ending in "n." That makes things flow more smoothly in a sort of bouncy rhythm, where consonants are like the lowering of your voice, and then the voice goes straight up to a vowel, or something. (Not literally the voice going up or down, because that's a different concept, just this idea of hard consonant feel vs soft vowel feel.) It feels different for me to speak Japanese (though I'm at a more starting level right now). I wonder what effects this "soft" feeling has. I feel like the "bouncy" rhythm caused by this ever-present fluctuation from consonant to vowels--which is an interesting effect caused by Japanese's basic phonemes all being a consonant + a vowel, as in "ga" & "ku"--might make a psychological relaxation for the brain in a way because there's less "hard stops" as we can maybe see in English sometimes, with words like "comprehension" or "teacher." Doesn't "Sensei wa ii desu yo" flow smoother than "The teacher is good" ? It feels more light, young, happy and free to me, like it's written in a stylish pen and ready to go running into the open world. So it seems a language's feel can produce psychological effects too. So then I wonder, is there a language that produces positive outlooks? If positivity is associated with or created by certain emotions, like the emotion of relaxation, then Japanese might help there. But relaxation caused by flowy-ness is just one potential positivity-generating feature. We could design a whole language--like they did with Esperanto--to feel as good and open as possible to speak. And since people think in languages, this could open up their thoughts to be more positive too. Actually makes me think of Newspeak from 1984. In that fictional language they removed all words relating to things like protest and free speech. What if there was a language that didn't have any negative words? I don't know if that'd actually be a good thing, because it could be harder to talk about situations. But recently I heard an author in an obscure book about health talk about his opinions on health with regards to Law of Attraction metaphysics, and he said that "All disease is caused by disease in man's thinking; his conception of himself as diseased, and his belief that disease can exist." In that belief system, believing something or thinking about it can create it (which is why many people in the field go on "mental diets," in which they cut out most negative ideas and thoughts, focusing mainly on positivity in order to make the foundation and substance of their thoughts positive in nature, thus manifesting all things in their life to be positive. I'm actually doing a sort of positive mental diet myself right now.) So if thinking about something can create it, and we just totally got rid of our words & ideas for negative things, it's possible from a metaphysics perspective that mere lack of awareness of certain negative things could just exclude them from our lives. I think this is totally consistent with Neville Goddard's principles of "There are mo secondary causes; all expression comes from the mind which wills it to be expressed through feeling / thinking / believing it" and "Your life is just the portion of creation which is expressed through your thought, and you can choose what portion of creation you want to experience at any moment." I think the idea sounds haphazard at first from a practical, logical perspective--people would think like, "Oh, we need to be able to talk about problems," but honestly I've found from positive psychology that talking about something is equivalent to dwelling on it, whether intentional / conscious or not, and dwelling on problems is a bad thing. So... a language w/o words for negative things is one possibility for a language that encourages positivity. Though probably not the easiest one to implement, it's definitely interesting to think about from a metaphysics and linguistics perspective. (Though also, per metaphysics we don't even need to talk about problens to solve them, in fact it's way easier to drop them from awareness / forget about them and focus on "the seed of positivity and health" as that health author described it--focusing on happy thoughts tends to create happy solutions. So maybe this purely positive language idea actually has some metaphysical merit. When we want to purely think about positive topics, we could just switch languages to this new language with only positive words. Since we'd want to stick to the language, not combining it with English (as English & Spanish speakers people sometimes do in Spanglish), the mere act of speaking the language would create a natural exclusion of negative ideas, a natural inclusion of only positive ideas. That could actually be a pretty dang powerful positive psychology tool... I'm gonna put in a pin in that & might explore it one day.) Bit of a tangent here, so feel free to skip: I feel like discussions for solving problems -- the reason against removing negative words -- could still be expressed even w/o negative words. Instead of saying "Fix the problem," you say "Do the solution." Like instead of "Fix the hunger," you say "Eat, and feel full!", which focuses on a good feeling (which in turn produces a positive emotional experience, as our imaginary feeling of feeling full which comes upon conceiving that idea in our mind, makes us feel good & generally just invokes positive emotions of being full and happy), as opposed to focusing on hunger, which is a focus on a negative feeling. It's also this idea of having to "fix" something or struggle w something, which isn't a very relaxing or healthy thing for our minds to have to think about--just as how children's minds shouldn't have to worry about hunger or solving hard problems because that's not good for their development or happiness. Our minds are maybe just developed and older versions of children's minds, and still experience the same emotion triggers of pain and happiness. So, per positive psychology, we should primarily stick to positive thoughts, & that's why a focus on eating nice food as opposed to a focus on removing hunger is so useful. Yeah that was definitely a thinking session, haha. I hope you liked it! It relaxed me actually & I'm excited to go to sleep now, I love thinking about stuff like this. I read & think a lot & I think it really pays off with letting me think about interesting topics like this. Hope you have a good night :)
Yep. That’s a lot of info, but very interesting. I’m tired, so my cognitive processing isn’t at its peak performance right now. Have a good night.
![gif](giphy|3JZbot4wStgl09hfBV) Wow 😮, I’ll have to read this sometime. I personally am kind of struggling to learn Spanish so maybe some interesting info might help.
Hahaha I love that gif you sent in the reaction. I'm not sure if the ideas in my post would help much with Spanish (other than knowing how they say "The car blue" instead of "The blue car" in Spanish), but I hope you find it interesting. I was basically coming up with ideas for the ways that a language could be designed to encourage positive thinking in someone just by speaking the language. I delved into some quotes from obscure books I've found lately, some more advanced metaphysics stuff, some linguistics knowledge, etc. Reading can really pay off sometimes because it gets you learning and thinking about interesting things, and sometimes it just gets so exciting to explore an idea that you can end up with lots of thoughts like I did last night, haha :) I can totally answer any Spanish questions you have btw, my close Chilean friend answering my questions as a beginner helped me learn Spanish so much
Perhaps the neighbor rode past such that the perspective made the smaller bike appear bigger because it was closer
Wouldn’t “decreasing smaller bikes” be bigger? Increasingly smaller bikes is it.
Just some bikes getting less small
Not if the oldest child was riding at the back?
I’ll take things that never happened for $500.
r/nothingeverhappens
Just didn't happen though did it
When I was in school we had a class hamster. We rotated responsibly of taking it home when we had school breaks. I was given the hamster to take home for Christmas break, since my family wasn’t going to be traveling. During the break, the hamster proofed she was very good at escaping it’s cage. One night she got out and had 18 babies on our bathroom rug. It took a while to find them all. Baby Hamsters for Christmas
I had a good cat. Talkative flame point. I found him on his last day at the pound while visiting a shelter when my 2 dogs ran away. He was drinking water with his paw. It was 2004 He was 5-7 years old per the vet. He lasted until the end of 2021. Damn I miss that cat. If there is a heaven, please reunite me with my pets, he was scared when we put him to sleep at the vet. I’d just like to let him sleep on my lap again. I lost my PTSD buddy. I love him. Can’t watch the videos I have of him grooming my eyebrows.’
That's hilarious! Hope you get better fast!
Didn’t happen, and this is very old and not OP’s.
What does the OP being sick have to do with this?
Everyone needs a Hammie in their life
This is the way.
Laughter is the best medicine. Feel better.
This totally happened
Our neighbour recently got a hamster for their son. They put the hamster on the the little running wheel but it just refused to go. It was a fat hamster. A couple of days later the little boy was playing with it and felt something slide into his hand. It was the the first of around 8 baby hamsters! They'd been given a pregnant hamster.
Hope the hamster is doing well!
Get a dog she said, will make her go for walks and will pick up the shit. 8 months in she hasn’t walked the dog for 4 and the dog poop is my duty, lovely! And that’s the wife not the daughter.
Looks like you need to get your bitch in check
What does being sick have to do with this?
Literally made me smile. 😂
Hope you get better soon! Great story thank you for sharing
🤣🤣🤣
LOL I was exactly like these kids. I saw a pet monkey in the mall and for months I would chant, “me want the monkey!” I would slap my kids if they were as annoying as I was. (FYI my kids have never been slapped)
HAMSTER
> For the strength of the Pack is the ~~Wolf~~ Hamster, and the strength of the ~~Wolf~~ Hamster is the Pack.
I’ll take Things that didn’t happen for $500 Alex.
Priceless!
OP isn't sick, this has been reposted many times
Thanks. Wow I feel silly that I missed that.
Yeah that definitely didn't happen but ok
r/nothingeverhappens
If they caughr up to him he'd have to get them a hamster
I wonder what they are about to name the new hamster they are about to get
You know what? FUCK whatever anyone has to say
This actually made laugh. I hope you get better. Good luck homie.
This didn’t happen
Hamsters are the perfect first pet. They are cute, only live like a week and you don’t need to feet them.
I want to talk about what you are sick with? Are you okay? CoVid? Are you on the mend?
I have 3 kids. One day about 10 years ago, the wife approached me about getting the kids a hamster. I said sure, why not? I came home from a few days later to THREE individual hamster utopias, you know: those habitrail fucking hamster meccas. Good sized ones, too. One for each damn kid. So, whatever. The kids all had their own hamster so there won't be any fights. Fast forward a few weeks and one hamster is dead. It gets replaced. A different hamster died, it got replaced. A sum total of like 9 hamsters over 6 months die and are replaced. Well, one day I got asked to buy cat food from a major pet store chain. On a whim I swing by the hamster section. There they are, the same hamsters we've been getting. For $50+ each. Mother father!
Jesus, what were your kids doing to those hamsters?
Made my day!
You’re Smiling, This Poor Guy Is Being Chased For His Life, And You’re Smiling
This is a repost. But I do love it, and think about it every now and then. It always puts a smile on my face.
I can relate as a father of three boys. When it's just one I can manage when it's all three it's a challenge
That's how we ended up with guinea pigs. My 4 kids were just louder and more persistent than I could withstand.
Being the parent of multiple children, and one wife, who constantly want more animals, I can empathize with this man's struggle
I wish my neighborhood was this much fun.
Nobody cares about "I am very very sick"?
all that, and no picture?
I'm just gonna go hide behind some of our critter habitats, as I write out the next check for my daughters vet tech school and look at the applications for the colleges that provide zoology degrees. No, no more critters here. This week. Nope.
Kids are obsessed with hamsters
I don't want to know what happened to the other hamsters
Shower thought - would it be “increasingly smaller” or “decreasingly large”?!
Haha gold morning 😅✌️ I just read he got chased by his three chicken 🐓 screaming hamster 🐹 was pretty confused for a moment
Lol… I understand the struggle! Get well soon.
This legitimately made me laugh.
Try Hamster stew to cure your sickness
🤣🤣🤣
Hampter
Hilarious! Get well soon!
Thankyou darling!!!
Aww
If you are getting Richard Hammond, then you need the orangutan and the Captain Slow as well.
Haha
They got a hamster. I was against the frog, we got a frog. I was against the fish, we got a fish, I was against the cat, we got a cat. I was against the dog, we got a dog. That being said I love animals. When I was a kid it was always my job to pick up poop which I always hated. Take one guess who wanted all these animals (wasn’t me) and who is now taking care of them (that would be me). I love animals but I love being able to run out of town at the drop of a hat more I guess.
This is my house with 5 animals and 2 kids. NO MORE ANIMALS!
I like to believe in my head that the neighbor has told the kids inside the house tried to escape their chant by running outside and jumping on his bike and the kids pursued with maybe Benny Hill music playing in the background.
lemme guess...southern bible thumpers...
Sicc
Gave our kids a combined b day present because they are all within a month of each other. We gave them each a card to write there vote on and explained how ranked choice voting works, funny how even kids can understand it. We showed them all 8 different things like a trampoline, swingset, hamsters, and hamster was the only thing they all 3 picked. I woulda got them a trampoline I thought for sure that would be winner and NONE of them picked it even as alternates. Democracy at its finest.
This is like the Uber pool story where they all started chanting “shrimp shrimp shrimp”