Preliminary diagnosis

Lada went to the vet today and got a preliminary diagnosis of hair follicle mites. He got an injection of medication and vitamin B, and a new appointment on Monday 19th for a follow-up injection if the first one seems to have helped. If it hasn't helped, the diagnosis was wrong…  So we'll see. Fingers crossed!

Doctor's appointment tomorrow

Poor Lada seems to have come down with a case of... fur mites? Hair follicle mites? Something like that? I also just now discovered the site WikiVet. The Internet is wonderful.

Yesterday I booked my first ever vet clinic appointment. Lada will be seeing the vet tomorrow at 6.30pm.

This is the current state of affairs:

Poor little Lada!

Marking his territory

Lada marking his territory last night:

For some reason he's especially attached to this corner in the bathroom. It seems he's better at this "marking territory" thing now. A week ago we thought he was ill when he did this sort of thing:

Dumbo hamster

So, my friend recently told me about these cutest creatures called dumbo rats. New to me, had never heard of them before. They are so cute!

The issue came up because of Lada's gigantic ears! There are no dumbo hamsters, but if there were, Lada would've been a contender. :-)

Cutie pie

So I've been trying to get a picture of this for a while, but it's really difficult… So here's a video instead. Lucky Lada has the cutest little heart-shaped black spot on his tummy. :-)

And here's a slightly blurry picture as well:

Lada is confused...

Just when I thought Lucky Lada was showing signs of brains. For three days in a row he has voluntarily approached the cage door when talked to, and then climbed into his ball.

Tonight though, about 15 minutes into his ball-running-time, he did the following. For minutes on end!

Back & forth, back & forth. I wonder what was so interesting about the balcony door! He didn't stop until I made him and returned him to his cage.

To be continued...

The cage door!

The last few days Lada has been climbing into his ball on his own. And after his little outing tonight, he clearly demonstrated that he has found the cage door!

Luckily you need to be Superhamster to open that door. It's a two-hand job for a human to open it, so I'm pretty sure Lada won't be able to, no matter how hard he tries.

I like that he's climbing into his ball on his own, so I don't have to catch him for that anymore. Now he just needs to learn to sit still in my hand...