My Life in Prose

RIP Ivy

One of my most vividly despairing memories is of the time the Blake cried the hardest I had ever seen them cry. It was probably the hardest I had ever seen anyone cry, including myself.

It was so heart wrenching and despair inducing that I wanted to kill myself just for allowing such a beautiful individual as Blake to be torn down so much that they had to make such a painfully sad face. Never had I ever been so afflicted by the sorrow of another to feel that way.

It was a cold February. We had just gotten back from a flight from Washington DC, where we had been attending Katsucon. I do not recall much about that specific convention, save for Blake not enjoying it and feeling inadequate. The flight had been delayed, and everyone we were so tired and exhausted.

Our one solace was that once we returned home, we would get to see our hamster, Ivy, again.

We had Ivy for only a short time before we went to the convention. We were lonely, and had no friends or family in Florida with us, so we decided to open our hearts to a hamster. She was an orange teddy bear hamster. Blake immediately took to her, as Blake is such a kind hearted individual. Ivy would crawl all over Blake and Blake smiled so much.

I was initially scared of Ivy. She had sharp teeth and I'd heard horror stories of hamsters just chomping on to someone's skin and not letting go. It took a few months and lots of tries, but I finally was able to hold her. She was very cute, and Blake and I loved her.

Once Katsucon was nearing, we needed a way to feed her while we were gone. So Blake and I collaborated and invented our own automatic feeder for her. We used a raspberry pi, code, and worbla to create a phone app which would control a container and tip it over into a whole in the fish tank side of the cage set up we had for Ivy. It would tip over and pour out food on to the top of one of the wooden houses we had for her.

We tested it thoroughly and determined it worked. So we had a way to remotely feed her while we were away.

Ivy's set up was a plastic/metal typical hamster cage, with tubing that went into an altered fish tank.  There were two places we'd feed her: one spot was a screwed in spot on the plastic lid of the first cage, the other was in the fish tank where we set up the auto-feeder.

While we were at Katsucon we would press the button for the Fedder at the normal times we fed Ivy. No errors or anything.

We hit the feeder button before we got on the flight to come back to Florida.

I remember distinctly saying, as we unlocked the door, "the con sucked, but at least now we get to be with Ivy". Boy was I wrong. Once we got inside, we immediately went to the game room to check on Ivy. But we couldn't find her. Not in her cage. Not in the fish tank. The feeder had been working, and there was only a small amount of food left in the fish tank, so obviously Ivy had eaten in the last 4 hours since we fed her.

We looked around the game room. Nothing looked out of place. We moved everything we could. I carefully went through my cosplay closet, moving boxes and clothes. Blake looked throughout the rest of the small apartment.

After seeing she was gone, Blake was immediately crying. I kept reassuring Blake that we would find her. We searched for what felt like forever before I finally thought to Google it. Google said that escaped hamsters go towards food smells, and to check under the fridge.

So Blake did. And so she was. Dead. Under the fridge.

I had to put things back in place in the game room, so I didn't join Blake in retrieving her. So I don't know how Blake did it. But Blake came back to the game room, and thier face... That despair. That sorrow. The wailing. The tears. The snot running down thier face.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to kill myself. I could have prevented this somehow. I'll never forgot how Blake's face looked. So red and wet and slimey.

We cried so much that day. I feel like that's all we did at least for a week. I know I called out of work the next day. It was too hard.

We went to a Walmart at 3am the night she died. We had googled it, and it was illegal to bury a pet in an apartment complex. So we had to improvise. We wanted to bury her. So we did. We bought a hanging flower pot, soil, and a display for outside of our apartment. Ivy, stereotypically, loved sunflower seeds. So we bought those. We buried Ivy in the flower pot and planted sunflower seeds above her. I made a tombstone out of worbla for her.

Weeks later when the sunflowers bloomed, we cried a lot again.