Until We Meet Again, My Teeny, Tiny, Sofia

I knew this time would come eventually, but it doesn’t make it any easier!

My sweet, tiny, itty-bitty, little Sofia passed away in my hands on June 16th, 2022.

I will also do a video about Sofia soon, but I think it might take me a few weeks. Taking care of elderly pets is stressful, heart breaking work. At the same time, it also feels so meaningful, like you know you were there for them in a time they really needed you.

Sofia had not been in great health since February. In fact, even starting in December (2021) we started to notice that something was off about her. She had a vet apt in January of 2022 and we got confirmation that she was blind in one eye. By mid-Feb, that had progressed to two eyes.

It took some learning and observing on my part to create a cage set up that worked for her. Poor Sofia was obviously scared by losing her sight. All I wanted to do was comfort her, but she was in high-anxiety mode and accepting no comfort from human hands. There were times in the beginning of all this that I found her sleeping in her coconut fiber area, a very unusual thing for her to do. I’m sure the world felt scary and weird.

After some time, both Sofia & I got used to her new life as a blind hamster. I had to put eye drops in her eyes daily. Neither of us enjoyed the ritual but we did get better at getting through it.

Sofia continued to live a fairly normal life. She ate sunflower seeds greedily and ran on her wheel all night long. She spent hours digging for seeds in her coconut fiber digging area.

By the final month or so, she stopped eating much except for fresh cucumber, pear & apple and whole nuts. She particularly loved cashews and would spend an hour just eating a cashew. I couldn’t understand how such a tiny creature could consume so many cashews and never gain a gram, but she must have had an incredible metabolism. I knew her time was coming near, so I gave her whatever foods she seemed to enjoy most and tried to ensure she was comfortable and happy as possible.

At the end, she even allowed me to start petting her again, which she had refused once she went blind.

On her final day, I had her in a smaller cage during the day time (when she’s sleeping anyway) so a family member could watch her and make sure she was able to get to her food and water without issue while I was at work.

I went to my parent’s house to pick her up and decided to scoop her up and hold her for a few minutes. Maybe she was waiting for this moment, maybe it was just happenstance, but she wiggled around a bit, gave a few, final breaths and then went into her forever sleep.

It’s such a strange thing to experience, to see a creature go from being so full of life to not have any life at all, right in the palm of your hands. I held her for hours after that, I kept watching her, thinking, “what if she’s actually alive still but I just can’t tell?”

It’s lovely being human, with our long lifespans and high-tech medical procedures. But, as a human, I’ve rarely had to deal with death. Even when it was a close relative or friend, I’ve never been there, in the moment. I never had to be the one to decide, “what now”? It always felt like some strange thing that just sort of happened, but never in the same place that I’m in.

Dealing with frequent loss is a downside of having hamsters, I won’t disagree. But, I will say, this time around, with Sofia, it was a little easier. Of course I was sad, I cried. I felt totally useless the next day. But I felt more equipped to deal with the reality of her being gone. I didn’t take three weeks to clean out her cage while I cried over each and every seed casing she once had eaten (like I did with Shirley!). I put on a good podcast & I started cleaning up the next day.

I felt a little guilty that I didn’t drag out her mourning process the way I did with Shirley, but in another way, I felt like maybe this is just honoring Sofia in a different way- rather than spending days crying, I would try to accept her death so I could move on to remembering her tiny legs and the way she would scale a sorghum spray to eat it. To remember how she was so brave and fearless in a world so much larger than her. To remember the way she began to trust us and would even let us hold her at times, giving us teeny, tiny bites to tell us she was ready to be put down.

I got Oscar (my young Roborovski hamster) in part, because I knew that 2022 would be a hard year for me. And, as much as I love Oscar, I realize with each hamster passing, how incredibly unique they are… how no new hamster will ever fill the void of a hamster who passed away. That any new hamster from here on out will be their own thing, and when they leave this world, they’ll leave behind a hole, of course, but they’ll also leave behind happy memories and so many of those salty-sweet (happy-sad) moments that make up the best parts of life.

Goodnight, my sweet, little Sofia. While I know you didn’t have much choice in the matter, I’m forever grateful that you lived your life with me. You were a special, tiny soul indeed!