Thursday, July 30, 2009

Sunday, July 5, 2009

A Tale of the Yellow Tail

Chippy is our first & only Pearl White hammy. As you can see he is quite a sparkling shade of white. There was however a mystery surrounding this snow white - he is white throughtout except for his backside area which has this odd yellowish tinge. We tried cleaning him with a special pet friendly solvent but it remained stubbornly. We even asked the vet about it, but he was no wiser. In desperation, I searched the internet for answers to this yellow tail mystery. I even went to forums and asked for help but nobody was able to give a satisfactory answer. So what was it? I was about to give up when one day while observing Chippy - to my horror, I saw him sitting on his wee wee after he has done his deed! The light bulb went off in my head when I realised that his yellow tail was caused by wee wee stain! Arrgh..... To solve this problem I bought a little hammy potty and tried to toilet train him. It wasn't successful, but Chippy got the idea and stop sitting on his wee wee (maybe coz I screamed NOOOOooo! everytime I catch him doing it). Eventually his fur colour returned to normal again. The morale of this tale is that .... white coloured hammies are like white cars which needs to be cleaned and polished more often than other colours, otherwise it will turn yellowish too.