Confessions of a Drama Mama

I don’t remember if I wrote about Max finding Toutou on the stairwell when we were still living in Ghim Moh. She was the cutest little thing with a face like a schnauzie. This morning Max found her lying on her back and not moving and we realised quickly that she had passed on.

We called her Toutou, which was a pet phrase for ’stuffed toy’.

It’s funny how some people will probably be saying ‘how can you be so sad when it’s just a hamster?’. Even Max says that there is a financial limit when it comes to lengthening the life of a hamster. But is there really?

Is her life worth any less because we found her abandoned at the stairwell? Is Ah Huat’s life worth little too, because we bought him for $8 from Pet Centre at Holland Village? To me, a life is still a life (I’m even kind to snails, ok), and there is no such thing as a worthless life. Except maybe abusive drug addict men who rape children.

But it really made me think. Was I a bad surrogate mother? Was there anything I could have done? Was I wrong to think that she was a strong girl, because of the circumstances in which we found her? I think the girl led a tough life.

Because she would never let us pet her, we didn’t have the chance to hold her and to see the lump that was growing inside her leg. It got bad and she needed some help climbing into her tube. She loved being in that tube. I think it made her feel safe. When she finally died, I think she lay on her back so that we could see the lump. Poor baby, it was bigger than I thought.

Max always said that Toutou was such a girl. She’d keep her cage clean and tidy. Whenever we wanted to put her in the ball to run around the house, we’d have to coax her for a long time. It was almost like she was saying ‘mmm, tao yan, don’t want la, shy la.’. Even when eating, Huat would toss his food all around until he found what he wanted. She would move the pieces slowly around but kept most in her bowl. And she was so small she could sit nicely in her bowl while she ate.

For those of you who have pets, please treasure them. Don’t think that just because they can’t talk back to you like children can, that they have no feelings.

So now she’s in a little pink box (Max so cute, left some food inside for her too), and when it’s dark we’re going to bury her in the ‘garden’ downstairs. Apparently it’s illegal to do so but we don’t care. We’ll bury her and plant some flowers around her.

Rest in peace, my baby. And I’m sorry I was a bad mother. I love you

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.