Ciao Sesame

"Sesame may resemble a mouse at times, but she is the pet that I have chose and I am not going to just desert her because other people don't think she's cute and she's not some adorable little puppy. She is who she is."

Two years ago, on Dec.31, we fell in love with a little (don't call her a dwarf) hamster, teetering on her hind legs, trying to get a droplet of water from a bottle 3 times her side. Sis and I were at the Petco in Union Square trying to find our dad a birthday present (fish!) but were instantly distracted by the cutest little (don't call her a dwarf) rodent EVER. Now I know, I know. You hear "rodent", you think "subway track paraphernalia". But no, no, no. This one was different. This one had cute little buggy eyes and a twitchy little nose and a tail the size of a piece of cous-cous.

But I digress. Or rather, we tried to. We stuck to the plan and picked out the perfect fish tank (sans fish) for dad. And then, we looked each other in the eye with a glimmer only two sisters can share, and knew what we had to do. Get that hamster.

We left the starfish, passed by the gerbils, and made our way straight back to the hamsters. Now at this point, we sorta couldn't quite figure out which hamster was the one we had fallen in love with at first sight (ahhh, isn't that always how it is), but we finally decided it just HAD to be that one, with the white runner-stripe down her back, curled up in a pile of newspaper shreds in the corner.

"I don't think mom will let dad have her," Sis said.

"Well, my cat will eat her," I said. "Or use her as a badmitten prop."

We were silent. And then I said, "You."

"Me???"

"You. You have to take her," I said to Sis.

"Me??? But what will I do with her?"

"You will love her," I said, placing my hand on her shoulder. "You will care for her like she is your own. You will feed her little tiny food, and buy her little tiny toys, and fill her tiny little heart."

"But. But."

"Be the mother she longs for," I said. "Take her home to the home she always wanted for a home."

So, my speech kinda worked, and that New Year's Eve, one little (don't call her a dwarf) hamster was an orphan no longer.

As the ball dropped and the year turned into 2006, we christened her, Sesame, poetically named for her shape and color. Abstract, we know.

For two years, Sesame was cared for by my sister. When she came to visit me in Italy (my sister, not the hamster), we were very frugal about everything we spent. But one afternoon, during a historic, emotional pilgrimage to the Jewish Quarter in Venice, Sis found a pet store in the little shtetl and was uno momento away from buying a $15 wooden playground set for Sesame. "But she'd lovvvve it so much," my sister lamented, when she realized, to her chagrin, that she had spent all her euros already on "presents" for "people".

Nonetheless, Sesame was a spoiled, happy rodent. She was indulged in vegetables, exercise machines, multicolored grains and "treats". She was a camera hog, and a rabid shitter. She could maneuver her way across the hardwood floors in the Brooklyn brownstone she lived like no other (did we mention she was a hipster hamster?). She had her own blog. She had higher page stats than we had on our own websites. She was a star on youtube. She stood her ground against a dog named Lulu, found her way home again after many successful cage escapes, and was considered a world traveler. Well. Maybe not a world traveler, but she once spent a week in the Bronx.

Sesame made my sister happy. When she became a teenager and rebelled, my sister waited up for her. When she started going grey, my sister loved her just the same.

On Dec.30, I received a text message from my sister that said: Sesame died.

It's the end of an era.

And so, we bid farewell to Sesame, our teeny weeny companion. We're blessed you bit our fingers. We're grateful we never stepped on you. We're honored you always rolled the ball home again when we let you out of the cage in that big, plastic, yellow mechanism thingy.

Heaven has a new little (don't call her a dwarf) angel tonight.