By Jeremy Decker

A week ago, my hamster, Fluffers, told me he was experiencing either a mid-life or an existential crisis. He wasn’t sure which.

“It depends on how long I have left to live,” he said. He was running on his wheel, huffing and puffing as he squeaked. Maybe trying to strengthen his heart. I don’t know. “How do I know if it’s a mid-life crisis if I don’t know when mid-life is?”

I looked it up for him. “Wikipedia says a hamster lives about two years.”

“Okay, that’s not bad,” he said. “How long have I been alive?”

“About two years.”

“Oh. I see.” He stopped running on the wheel and rocked pendulum-like at its base until it stopped. “Existential then,” he said.

After that, he got broody. He started to talk about regrets — never starting a family, never seeing France, never writing a book. I hated to see him like that. So I bought him a little RC motorcycle. He cruised it carefully around the kitchen table a few times before he let out the accelerator, then he had to bail before he crashed into the wall beneath the window. The front wheel left a little tread-mark indent in the sheetrock, and he stormed off in a frightened huff and complained I was trying to kill him. But it wasn’t me who was trying to kill him. It was time. I was just an easier target.

Still, I knew I had to keep his mind off of it somehow — off of death, I mean. So I bought him a little tablet and loaded up all kinds of apps for him: games, books, news, you name it. It even had Pacman and Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. But he just used it to watch videos of vet surgeries.

“You’re obsessed,” I told him. “You have to think of something else. How do you expect to live life if all you think about is death?”

“I already lived it. It’s already over. I missed it.”

“Okay then,” I said. I was getting desperate, so I asked him: “What could I buy you that would fix this for you? Name it. Anything.”

He stuffed a wad of pellets into his cheeks and with a muffled little squeak he said: “A girlfriend. I want babies.”

So I bought him this cute hamster named Tinkles. She was Syrian, the pet shop said. She had a white patch around her left eye and a brown patch between her shoulder blades. As far as hamsters go, she seemed pretty attractive. But they fought. A lot. A religious dispute, as far as I could tell. And she was young, almost half his age. But they still had babies. He named them all after himself. There was Fluffers Jr. and Fluffina and Fluffo and Fluffondra and so on. His girlfriend accused him of narcissism and they fought all night about it. Then, while he slept, she ate their babies. Then he woke up and killed her. It was all very daytime television.

Still, I felt guilty about the whole thing. Not that it was my fault. It was time doing these things to him, not me. But I guess if you’re a hamster, taking on an undefeated heavyweight champ like time can be a daunting prospect.  So I let him be mad at me.

I held a funeral for his Tinkles and the dead little half-pieces of hamster babies. Buried them in the backyard by the lawn flamingos in a shoebox and an Altoids tin, respectively.  But he didn’t show up. He just sat in his cage, snout buried in the corner in a pile of wood chips, butt sticking up in the air. I poked him and asked if he was okay.

“I’m considering suicide,” he said.

I had come prepared for just this conversation. I said: “Don’t do that. I’d miss you too much.”

He pulled his head up from the wood chips and glared at me. “You don’t even know my real name.”

I bit my lip. “Your name is Fluffers, isn’t it?”

He made an unintelligible squeal followed by several short tongue clicks and a stertorous squeak. “That’s my real name. You utter asshole.”

I didn’t like being called an asshole by a hamster. So I asked: “How would you even do it? Suicide, I mean? You don’t even have thumbs.”

“I’d just stop eating.”

“I could force feed you.”

“I’d bash my head against the wall, then.”

“I’d pad your cage.”

“I’ll smother myself in wood chips.”

“I’ll remove every last one.”

He was getting heated now. He stood with his paws on the side of his cage and shouted up at me. “Then I’ll rip out my own throat with my claws, and if you cut off my fingers, I’ll drown myself in a puddle of my own piss.”

“Jesus,” I said. 

He was determined. It seemed there was no way to stop him.

I barely slept that night. All I could think about was poor Fluffers. I watched the first rays of light shine on the glittering dust motes in front of my bedroom window. Each one, for a moment visible, then gone. I knew then what I had to do.

I got up, dressed, got in my car, and drove to the pet store. I bought a cat. His name is Araqiel. He’s a calico.

He’s sitting in the front seat of my car, soaking up the sun as it warms the brown leather. His eyes are lazy little green emeralds, and he blinks long and slow, almost asleep as he’s awake. 

“You’re going to solve two problems for me today,” I tell him.

But he doesn’t say anything, or ask what they are. He just stretches his back leg high into the air and licks himself once, twice, three times, and closes his eyes in the sun.

*   *  *

Jeremy Decker is a writer from Colorado. His work has appeared in The Metaworker, Old Red Kimono, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Verse, and various others.