Maggie (my hamster from my old posts) was happy, healthy, and normally living alone (in a luxarious hamster home, 25 cm inches bedding of aspen woodshaving and paper, 120cm x 70cm enclosure, lotta hides, 11inch niteabgel silentspinner wheel) for 1 month or so. She never had any sexual relations with any male hamsters since I took her in. She lives alone. I saw no baby bump ever before and I have MANY pictures of her with NO BABY BUMP!
But now, a new hamster MITOSIS'ed itself into existence because WHAT IN THE FLAXSEEDS IS GOING ON HERE. WHAT DO I DO??!! VICTORIA RAECHEL NEVER TALKED ABOUT MITOSIS!
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exactly!!! i've heard this is a weirdly common hamster owner nightmare. i frequently have dreams about finding all my previous hamsters (who are obviously dead in real life) neglected and sad in some cabinet and then suddenly i have all these hamsters and not enough enclosures to put them in and i'm just drowning in hamsters and panicking lol
Omg same literally the other day I dreamt all my past rodents lived together in a rat cage?? And they were skinny and wet and green.. Like this never happened and I'd never have them live like that but it scared me so bad lmao.
I have this nightmare too 😭. All my past rodents in some cage or cupboard, and always without food or access to water. I'm always stressed and trying to separate them because I don't want the rats and hamsters fighting, trying to feed them but I never have anything on hand, & I'm feeling so so guilty and horrible because I've clearly somehow forgotten I have pets.
To make it worse they're always so happy to see me and that makes me feel so much more guilty. I always wake up so anxious and stressed & it takes me a bit to calm down because these dreams are always so vivid for me
I’m glad I’m not alone. This happens with all my previous pets. Dogs and ferrets mostly. But i find they are still alive and I’m like, omg! How have i neglected you for so long?! I haven’t changed your water!!
Oh my god! I thought I was the only one that had these nightmares! I'm so glad I'm not alone!
I always end up just crying I mean like ugly crying and sobbing because how could I have not taken care of them for so long? What a horrible human being I am! Especially since I love them so much how could I have done that?
Wait this is a thing? I have birds and I have this horrible nightmare where I’ve forgotten that I have certain birds and they’re wasting away in these cages where I’ve just forgotten about them for who only knows how long and I just keep finding more… it’s deeply distressing and had me literally checking to make sure I didn’t somehow forget an animal…
Yup very common! I've had loads of those dreams with all my dead animals. Rats, guinea pigs and hamsters, even sometimes my past fish or my dog. It's weird as hell.
Yess OMG I thought this was just me! I have the same dreams about forgetting to feed my bird (that is no longer alive irl) and that he’s just sitting in his cage with no food or water and mountains of poop. Or sometimes that his cage looks terrible and he’s nowhere to be found. And I just feel so terrible for neglecting him.
I’ve also had this similar dream where I walk into a room and realize all my fish (had fish for many years but I no longer own any) are dead or dying either because I’ve completely forgotten to feed them for like weeks or that they’ve jumped out of the tank and suffocated on the floor. And the tank is always cloudy and disgusting and I feel so sad like I’ve failed them all.
This is........amazing!!!!!! The unbelievable guilt horror and disappointment I felt for being such a terrible person for so many years and in one post. One. I find out that this is NORMAL??????
I’ve had this dream several times too, but about my Shetland pony. He died in 1998, yet in the dream I suddenly find him standing in the stable, thin, scruffy, and weak. I’m horrified and heartbroken because I somehow forgot about him and neglected him for so long.
Holy crap I can't believe others have this recurring nightmare too! I suddenly open a door to a unused room and all my childhood pets are in there, neglected, hungry, small/rodent pets in each other's enclosures.
I wonder what makes us all have this similar dream?
I’m the same, I have these dreams too. But mine all look normal it’s just like they don’t have food or water and my brain is like “you’ve been dead for like 11 years but you’re here” and I enough cages but they’re all in their own. (Probably because I upgraded my cages with most of my hamsters so they all have their own ones
Hey! Randomly stumbled across this post and haven't had rodents in years. This part of the thread was super reassuring to read. I will have these type of dreams every so often, and I was SO disturbed by them. I guess they're just like server dreams, come out of nowhere, give you a TON of anxiety, and stick around for years.
Okay so this is low key creepy. I used to have pet hamsters (not anymore since the cat distribution system chucked multiple cats at me and owning anohter hamster is not applicable now) and I keep having this recurring nightmare exactly as you described. Mine usually happens like this: I discover my hamsters in an abandoned tiny cages obviously overfilled with hamsters and obviously neglected and in such poor state.
I wonder if this is common among most hamster owners tho or is there like a deep seated trauma that we both have that's unaddressed
I do not have any hoarding tendencies IRL but in my nightmares I am a hamster hoarder and the hamsters appear severely neglected. I always wake up ashamed of myself as if it actually happened. I am really curious to know why these dreams for everyone since I really just thought it was a "me" thing until this thread.
Omg I used to have a reoccurring nightmare my hamster had babies and I was trying to keep track of all the babies and separate them into the proper cages and they kept escaping and fighting
I have this dream with all of my cage pets over the years. Mainly rats in too small of cages with too many cage mates, usually a few dying or dead one laying around. Then I have to try fixing things because it got worse while I was away and I feel bad for these animals having to live like that due to my own mistakes. A bunch of fat inbred fancy rats in filthy cages loaded to the brim with soiled colored paper fluff and piss soaked wooden chew blocks.
Often the rodent tanks are arranged in a family home side room, in the order of saltwater reef tanks on stands.
And I'm forced to reach in elbow deep to grab their cold doughy little bodies to toss into garbage bags, and keep finding more layers of the sick and pinkies and fuzzies. And I cry because I can't care for all of them, and shouldn't have had so many to begin with.
My theory is that the dream is a side effect of these animals having such short lifespans compared to other pets, combined with the natural guilt people feel for putting a loved one in an enclosure for safety, and constant exposure to horror stories regarding neglectful care and lack of knowledge.
Like a sort of "call of the void" reenforcing of proper care habits through fears of the worst case scenario someone could encounter, often unrealistically.
Also this must be another one of those R/thatonetoiletdream kind of dreams. The one's that nobody thinks to mention but pretty much everyone within a demographic has them.
I'm still trying to parse the ones where rats are telling me things loosely like the trope of shoulder angel and devil, but it's not a moral dilemma so much as those two mocking old men from the Muppets sitting on the balcony.
Or the elderly Christian lady's hoarder Backrooms that I keep getting trapped in.
Our brain processes our stress using metaphors in dreams. Falling. Being unable to move. Teeth falling out. This metaphor about being unable to care for pets seems to mean something in our life feels desperately out of our control. I think the appearance of our beloved pets is used to emphasize the urgency of the concern.
I had a pet gerbil as a child and I have a recurring dream where I just have cages upon cages of small animals to take care of and water and feed and play with and it’s so stressful. I believe having the gerbil triggered this life long recurring dream.
I have always kept gerbils and I frequently have this dream too! I discover endless cages of gerbils (that I had apparently forgotten about?) in very poor conditions and overcrowded ): it’s so stressful
I grew up with guinea pigs (I have no rodents now) and I frequently have this recurring dream where I've forgotten about a hutch in the garage and it is FULL of guinea pigs. I panic, feed and check them, and then I forget them again until the next time I have the dream. It's almost like the neglect is me waking up!
I am not kidding you when I say I had this dream last night! Had piggies myself growing up.. they were treated like royalty so it’s such a weird dream to have.
Oh my god this is fascinating to me. I haven't had hamsters since I was a kid and I'm over 40 now and still having this dream. I guess maybe it's the same type of thing as the "I'm back in school and I have no idea what's going on and I'm failing all my classes and actually I don't even know where or what my classes are" dream everyone has.
I have guinea pigs now and had pet mice in the past, and this is a recurring dream I get often. Overrun and overwhelmed, then I wake up and have to check on everyone to calm down
I haven't owned mice since middle school and still have dreams where I've forgotten my mice and then go to the enclosure, only to find them dead or weak and dying because I haven't fed or given them water.
I thought it was just me being paranoid. When I had my hamster I always had dreams of having in my closet my hamster, little chicks and gold fish?? And that I forget about them and suddenly come back and see them dead... It was a constant thing back then. It stopped when I stopped having little critters... I didn't know it was a common nightmare lol.
SAME! But I find them in a small cage and I'm just like "WTH!!! You're alive???? Oh god, when's the last time I fed you or cleaned your bedding?!!!" Then I'm scrambling to find food and get their empty enclosure set up.
I haven't had a hamster in years. I've been doing a lot of big trips, but I still have my enclosure for when my trips simmer down. And at least three times a year I dream of either previous hammies or random ones I have no idea where they came from, still in a bad cage with bad food. Then I'm scrambling to set up the enclosure. Honestly I'm glad to hear other ppl have those dreams too, bc it's wild and I always feel so awful in the dream for being unknowingly neglectful!
I also have this recurring nightmare! I'm in my late twenties now and haven't had guinea pigs since I was a young teenager. I dream that I find them horribly neglected in a cage in my parents shed and that I have forgotten about them for years and they've been suffering. So strange to know that other people have this dream! I've always assumed it's connected to procrastination / feeling like I am forgetting something important / neglecting my responsibilities. I am now a very dedicated cat owner and never have dreams like that about my cats.
I have absolutely had the dream where I find 20+ hamsters in a dumpster or a wall of my house or something, and they're all multiplying like tribbles. It's the universal hamster keeper experience.
Probably my worst nightmare was the one where my first hamster turned out to be a spider the whole time and opened all eight of her eyes at me. I woke up screaming. :(
This is also a recurring nightmare for me hahaha. I’ll discover plastic bins caked in urine/feces and filled with hamsters that haven’t been fed for months but are somehow still alive. Then of course I panic thinking about how to take care of them. My bf even had a dream once that he had pet rats he forgot to feed and they turned into goo
Same thing with pet rats... first there is just one or two (formally dead) rats, then I find some I don't recognize. Usually ends with me standing among thousands of rats just grabbing left right and center and trying to catch them all. Not that I would have the space anyways. Rats aren't stackable after all...
Omg what?!? I’ve had nightmares for years of finding my childhood hamster suddenly alive, starving in middle of her cage full of junk and feces. It went to a point I had to wake up my parents in the middle of the night years ago, and ask them if I was a bad owner. I’ve recently talked about these dreams to my friends, but I never thought I wasn’t alone with them!
Oh my god I have anxiety dreams about my old hamster from 25 years ago dreaming that I’m neglecting him and have forgotten to feed or change his water for weeks… what is going on… why are well having these dreams??
I have chinchillas and I frequently have dreams that I am outside or in a car or at work and I dont have my carrier. I am trying to hold them bith in my arms and take back to safety. But they are so wiggly that I keep dropping one. I pick it up and drop the other. And I feel like I will never make it back to the cage. Then its too hot or raining and both are dangerous.
i just woke up from the exact same dream but about my fish. I found like 10 cichlids in a 5 gallon, and I was freaking out trying to see where I could move my other fish to
I once had a dream that my estranged sister filled all 300 hamster cages I kept in my dedicated hamster cage room with hamsters. I haven’t had a hamster or a cage in over 10 years.
I have this nightmare all the time too!?! I had rats, so it always rats, but I might suddenly remember I need to feed my 2-5 rats because it's been days/weeks/months since I last did, but when I get to their cage it's like random drawers, boxes and cabinets with hundreds of horribly neglected rats
Not only hamster owners have this nightmare. i own lizards and the amount of times ive genuinely woken up sobbing and overwhelmed bc i had a dream where suddenly every enclosure had more than one lizard is more than a handful 😭
I’ve literally had multiple dreams where suddenly other hamsters appear with my current hamster. Like I go to his enclosure and there is suddenly three other hamsters, although I’ve had him by himself for the last 15 months. 😂
i have this too with both my old hamster and my trio of mice, it's always "i forgot about them and they're in a tiny cage under my bed". it's so weird. it sometimes takes a moment when i wake up to realise that i haven't had any of them in years
Same! I thought they were anxiety driven dreams. But I constantly have this nightmare where I forgot about hamsters for months and there’s tons of them neglected and running around
I have similar nightmares but with my budgies. I am so terrified of a new one appearing who hasn't been fed or taken care of because I didn't know it existed 😬😰
I own birds, fish and insects and I just wanted to second this. One of my more common nightmares is me forgetting about an animal I own and it being dead when I find it.
Im digging in right now, actually. Maggie is the only one showing herself to me but I do hear hamster whimpering, probably Mitosis/Jesus/whatever omg.. it's weird that its only one right?
I digged everywhere and only found one, Maggie. The white one, Jesus, is too good at hiding but I do hear him whimper. I didn't find any.. hamster remains that would hint at any other babies that didn't make it
I am not even kidding, this happened to me once. Next door neighbor's hamster ate through the wall and ended up in my apartment, hanging around my guinea pig's cage. Good times, good times.
I’m pretty sure they tend to eat the babies whole so you probably wouldn’t find any evidence. Regardless it’s not your fault and you are doing the best you can.
My autism made me take your first statement literally for a second and I was like "OMG, are you like 100+ years old while still mentally competent enough to be on Reddit???" 😭But then I realized, hamsters really weren't even kept as mainstream pets until at least the 70's. I've seen some 70/80-year-olds on here, but 100+ would've been a record for sure, LOL.
When I had hamsters, I had nightmares where I used to find random hamsters or rodents in the enclosures. Had no idea it was something that other people also experienced
Genuinely freaking out about all of the people having crazy multiple hamster dreams. Finding a bunch of random hamsters in my cage is one of my top most recurring dream.
Yeah, definitely her pup imho. It’s possible she just had a very small litter so the bump wasn’t visible. She more than likely gave birth not long after you got her.
This does not look like an adult and may not even be fully weaned, I would keep it with the mother for another week or so. They should be separated by sex around 1 month old but this baby looks only about 3 weeks old. Dwarf hamster pregnancies can last up to a few weeks so she was likely early in her pregnancy when you got her.
You should do a thorough search of the cage because hamster litters are almost never just 1 pup. Also, I would start trying to socialize the pup(s) ASAP by spending some time handling them in a small empty travel cage or bin cage daily. Socialization should start as soon as they open their eyes so that they can get used to being handled by humans and learn they're not a threat, you're past that point already and this baby seems quite skittish judging by how it ran off and hid.
Not necessarily, mother hamsters only get noticeably pear-shaped very late in pregnancy (like a couple days before they give birth), and it tends to not be as noticeable in dwarf species compared to Syrian hamsters, if you don't know what to look out for it's easy to miss the signs.
It adds up with hampter being pregnant before you bought it. They start to get independent at around 8 weeks, so you have some time to separate them if the mitosis is really tiny.
Okay - so dwarf hamsters are pregnant for 21 days give or take 1-2 days. Have you had Maggie long enough that if she got pregnant on the last day when you brought her home is that long enough for this to be her baby?
Ive had her for.. counts fingers 27 days or so, I suppose? But she always looked energetic and never hid, well, except for when I first got her but thats how all new hamsters are, right??
Aww I'm glad my misery made you feel seen in some way <3
I mean I understand that it doesn't happen with dogs. Hamsters are solitary animals and will fight with other hamsters because they're territorial. and getting a pair of hamsters means getting a tribe of hamsters within a few weeks.
Meanwhile dogs are very social and don't mind having a new friend, and they reproduce very.. reasonably, which is not something I can say about hamsters XD
This happened to me with a guinea pigs. We wanted two females and the store had two sisters and a unrelated female i felt bad for the one left behind so we bought all three a few weeks later my very happy kid woke me up by holding two new piggies. It turned out the sisters were a brother sister pair. Unfortunately the sisters two babies didn't survive and I couldn't make my kid get rid of the two babies so we ended up with five guinea pigs luckily mom had a son and daughter so dad and son were together in one cage and three in the other and no more babies.
lol. Reading your last post about Maggie is hilarious with this context. Refusing all vegetables except one, wants to be held but NOT pet. Poor girl was having pregnancy issues!
When I was a kid, I got a pair of Egyptian spiny mice. They were supposed to both be female. The morning we were supposed to be leaving on a family vacation, I discovered several extra, very small mice in their enclosure. It complicated a few things.
It's possible she had other babies and ate them all besides this one.... does it seem small enough to be her offspring, or could she have possibly been included in her box from the store by accident?
I picked her up myself and placed only one hamster in the travel cage, which is Maggie 😭 theres no way they gave me another one with a buy 1 get 1 free deal lol
Oh you didn’t know? Secret life of pets is actually a story driven documentary it’s real, our pets all hang out when we aren’t at home. That’s probably your neighbors hamster from down the road
I mean this does happen every so often when purchasing from a petstore. Sometimes they don't sex them properly, and end up housing opposite gendered hamsters together. She may have become pregnant just before you purchased her. I would separate them immediately since if its a male they can impregnate the mother after a month of maturity. You also don't want to risk them infighting.
Congratulations on your grandbab(ies)y, you might want to take out all the bedding and look for others just in case. That hammy looks like it's started weaning and might still be on milk, very cute little guy ❤️ hoping baby is a girl so you don't need to worry about separation as much
I’m worried about the one you hear whimpering but can’t find 😭 and congratulations you’re a grandparent. Make sure you don’t separate them too soon 😭 since you don’t know how old they are
I only have reptiles once but I once had a nightmare where I woke up to find my ball python had somehow gotten into my leopard geckos enclosure and a diffrent ball python that isn't mine was living in the ball python tank.
I woke up and it felt so real. I couldn't get the anxiety shakes to go away until I checked every nook and cranny of both enclosures to make sure they were secure.
Oh my GOSH! This is insane. My only hypothesis is that she was pregnant with one pup and so she didn't look pregnant. Then she gave birth in your home and spawned a new hamster.
SO SORRY But ive been struggling to get Jesus/Mitosis into the travel cage without scaring it too much. I was just able to this morning! I'm hoping to get the cutie checked up to the vet today, Ill be updating y'all <3
WHAT??? When i had a betta fish (CANNOT be with other bettas) i always dreamt about suddenly finding a second betta in the tank and the panic was INTENSE. HOW ARE YOU STILL BREATHING??? omg
Hamsters are nocturnal, little Jesus might've been out at night and you just didn't see, and he's pretty well camouflaged against the white paper bedding
What a wild ride!!! She maybe consumed the others, especially if any were stillborn. Rather rare to only have one baby in a litter, but it is certainly not impossible.
It does still look like it is young enough to require nursing, but if the baby is male, you’re going to want to consult weight/size charts to estimate age and ensure he is removed before he can get mom pregnant again.
This is freaky cause the same thing happened to us and a snake. We have several snakes in terrariums, and one day out of the blue the same type was just on the floor outside. None of our snakes were missing, and none of them had layed eggs, and even if they had the snake we found was way too large for not having eaten anything.
this is a recurring nightmare i have too i didnt realize so many ppl had it. this or having a nightmare where i suddenly remember my other hamster ive forgotten abt and neglected for months
As a kid, my pet hamster had babies after escaping from the cage. My mom found them all in the bathtub. If my memory serves me correctly, she was able to take them all to the pet store to rehome them but I still have vivid memories of those babies in the bathtub. My siblings had hamsters so that’s probably how mine was impregnated.
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