Gizmo’s Great Adventure

In which Gizmo, resident pet Angora Hamster at 786 Hilal, escapes his cage and is awol for a whole week.

Every summer the kids and I visit my parents abroad. Abbas usually manages to join us for part of our summer sojourn, but during most of this time he remains in Karachi at work. One summer, he was not alone, for our niece, Alia, was still living with us. Alia had moved into 786 to be with us for the last 18 months of her fine arts degree at Indus, since her own family had just moved to Islamabad and  transferring wasn’t an option or desirable. Abbas’ mother was also installed with us until the dust had settled on her oldest son's move and would then join Ali and his family later in Isloo.

Daily life at 786 was chugging along at a steady and stately pace as usual. Then Ali came down from Islamabad for work and was esconced in the guest bedroom on the lower ground floor (this house has three floors).

Alia was delighted to have her father back in Karachi. She fell asleep in his room while snuggling up to him in her kittenish way. Little did he know that he would also be sharing his room with another, albeit unwanted, guest.

Having repaired for an early night, Ali was woken up around midnight by strange sounds.  He got up to open the door. Outside the door were sprinkled large black uneven shaped ‘droppings’. What kind of creature could poop like that, Ali wondered? I doubt it occurred to his sleepy mind, however, that a cockroach may have mutated into a giant size capable of such feces. Karachi cucarachas can indeed grow to creepy proportions with menacing tentacles. The puzzle was later resolved, however, as we shall see.

He went back to bed. Sounds of scrabbling woke him up again. Switching on the light showed there to be a fluffball perched on the bed with shiny black eyes beaming out of the golden fur. Gizmo! My son Joshua’s pet hamster had escaped.  

Not Gizmo - he was cuter.

But Gizmo proved elusive.

Eventually Ali caught the blighter and marched him up to his cage, which was then residing in the dining room. I had left it there rather than in my son’s room out of fear that he would be forgotten and neglected in our absence. We did not want to return from our holidays to read funeral rites over Gizmo. Josh would be heartbroken.

Finally, thinking the problem solved, Ali went back down to sleep.

What Ali hadn’t realized was that by merely pulling the cage door down, he had not safely incarcerated Gizmo, merely relocated him temporarily. Gizmo soon discovered that the latch had not been clipped shut and once again absconded. Following the same route as before, Gizmo deftly scarpered down 17 giant Aztec steps, braving a possible attack from Sushi, resident cat but heretofore feeble mouser, and back into Ali’s bedroom.

This time, however, Ali was at a loss to locate him and suffered a disturbed sleep.

Days passed with no sign of Gizmo. Nor did Ali hear any more nocturnal scrabblings.

The lower ground floor was searched thoroughly by Chacha and Fatima. There were three other rooms on this floor: a laundry room, a library-cum-majlis (prayer room), and a huge storeroom. No sign of Gizzie. Not a fluff.

It was soon noticed, however, that Sushi, resident cat, was also unaccounted for. No one had seen him for a couple of days either. With two of 786 Hilal’s pet population missing, Chacha was beginning to have sleepless nights himself. He barely slept for 4 hours as it was. This was truly a turn for the worse and he worried about what I would say and how Josh would react. Josh had sometimes declared Sushi to be his younger brother – a show of fraternal affection that worried me whenever invoked. Some time back, Josh’s reaction to losing the garden’s resident chameleon to some marauding crows had stuck in my mind: weeping and wailing, Josh had declared, ‘He was my best friend int he whole world!’ Heart-broken and bereft, he mourned its passing for several days. With Sushi enjoying the status of ‘brother’ – largely fed, I’m afraid, by Abbas’ fondness for our handsome feline which would prompt him to occasionally declare him a third child  - it beggared the imagination to think of Josh’s possible reaction to the loss of Gizmo.

Were the disappearance of hamster and cat both connected in some way? Was Sushi skulking around unseen in a funk of guilt? Or was it coincidental? Chacha pondered over these questions anxiously.

Gizmo in my mind's eye

The storeroom’s high window looked out onto the servants’ quarters. One afternoon Chacha had retired downstairs to have a post-prandial puff on his Hookah, he suddenly noticed Sushi sat in inside the window sill of the store-room. He made an instant connection: cat-in- ambush-pose in storeroom equals pet hamster-soon-to-be-victim.

Chacha swiftly retrieved Sushi from the storeroom and took over Sushi’s watch. An hour of patient squatting was eventually rewarded when Gizmo peeped out from among the boxes.

Chacha was very careful to secure the hatches. And thus did Gizmo’s great adventure come to a peaceful end.

Postscript: The mystery of the mutant cockroach droppings was resolved when it was realized that the droppings were in fact bits of the rubber strip attached to the bottom of the bedroom door to keep out tropical nocturnal insects and retain the cold air-conditioned temperature which had been gnawed away at the corner and spat out by our daredevil hamster. The small hole was a perfect match for Gizmo’s girth.