Amazing story! so interesting to follow! i really admire your craftsmanship and patience!!
thx a lot, michael! to be honest, i sometimes admine my craftsmanship and patience as well
why, you might ask? well, let me go a little bit off topic here and give you guys some background information!
about 6 years ago, i didn't even have my own screwdriver, let alone a drill or a router. one day charlotte came up to me and told me that she'd like to have a hamster for her birthday. since we both are animal lovers, it was a no brainer and so we got her one, a lady we called DIVA (because of her behaviour)!
it was a lot of fun getting to know her, her habits and hamster life in general, but two or three weeks after we had taken her into our home (and into our hearts
) we realized a change in her behaviour. at first we thought something horrible was wrong with her, when in fact she was totally fine - or should i say:
THEY were totally fine ...
without us fully realizing it, she had given birth to eight baby hamsters and from that day on we had a new television channel:
hamster tv!!! we spent countless hours in front of the cage watching those tiny animals grow up and explore the world around them!
but soon we realized that a single cage is simply to small for an army of nine
we joined hamster forums, read about proper cage sizes and how to build them yourselves - it was obvious that we had to do something. we were able to give most of the hamsters away into caring hands of people from the forums, but we decided to keep two of them to ourselves: diva and one of the white hamsters who we realized was something special: a teddy bear hamster. charlotte named him ully, not because of his long hair (which i don't have), but of the way he acted. she said hamster ully reminded her of me ...
diva was allowed to stay in her original cage, but for ully we decided to build a palace! for that, i had to buy a lot of tools and learn how to use them, but the results were beyond our expectations: it really was a
palace!
ully even got his own maze
our hamster days (and unfortunately our hamsters as well) are long gone (and so is ully's palace), but we often look back at that time of our lives and how it changed us in so many beautiful ways. believe me, being new to the hamster world and suddenly having to take care of not one but nine of those animals is not easy, but it's something we embraced and will always cherished.
one thing that came out of this is my dedication to build / repair stuff. when people ask me how / why i started with the arcade hobby i always tell them it wasn't me, it was the hamsters - and that is not a lie!
hope you don't mind me going off topic, but somehow i wanted to share this with you!
