And the answer is...

MA was spot on in her second attempt to guess what were in the pictures in my entry yesterday.

They were baby hamsters - roborwski snow white hamster - not so sure about the spelling though.

(Ni dia 5 ekor hamster, sekor lagi tengah bergayut kat puting mak dia masa aku ambik gambar ni)

When I came back from office on Wednesday night, all the kids were really excited to break the news that one of Abang Akmal's hamsters has given birth to six (6) new babies.

They were reddish in colour and so soo small. I mean, I have seen 'anak tikus' before; but these newborn babies are so small. To give you the idea of how small they are, I put a 20-cent coin beside them.

And this is the picture of the mother hamster standing guard of its babies.

********

Honestly I was not really in favour of pets. Be it rabbits, cats, hamsters etc. They are cute and may be fun to play with but I don't have the time to really take a good care of them, feed them, wash their cage etc.

Abang Akmal has been pestering me to buy hamsters for a long time. I give all kinds of reasons not to agree. He even offered to use his own money to buy them to which I still said no.

You know la kids, their interests in something may only last for a few weeks. Thereafter, it would ended up that I will be doing all the cuci-cuci things etc.

So when Abang Akmal came to me one night few months back before his mid-term school exam and brought the same subject again and again, I told him that I would grant his wish to have a hamster if he could manage to get 5A(s) in his mid-term exam. He took the challenge. In fact, he was confident enough to say that he could get As for all his subjects except for Arabic. So we had a deal.

I was surprised to see that Abang Akmal put extra efforts to do revisions and once the exam results were announced, Abang Akmal actually got all As including his Arabic!. He got fifth placing in his class - his best result so far.

So that weekend we went to Carrefour and I bought not one, but THREE hamsters for him. Abang Akmal was pleasantly surprised. He named them Alvin, Simon and Theodore. He he...canggih tu.

One of the problems having pets is that you would have to consider their logistics too if you were to go away from home for a holiday. So we have to bring along the three stooges back to Ayer Keroh if were were to balik kampung during the school break, the fasting month and even during the hari raya break.

And when Alvin and Simon kept chasing and fighting with each other until Simon bled and hurt his legs, I was forced to buy a new cage to separate the two. And as expected, every Saturday, I have a new routine - to clean the hamsters' houses.

Unfortunately, Simon died after Raya recently....but not before meninggalkan zuriat. It turned out that Theodore is a female hamster. Patut la si Alvin gaduh dengan si Simon, berebut awek rupanya.  

So, begitu lah ceritanya.