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.
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.