Everyone should own a hamster at University

Pre-drinks will never be the same again


The worst thing about moving away from home is not moving away from your parents or your rubbish home town. The worst thing is the lack of pets in your student house. Skyping your dog just isn’t the same as cuddling him.

Wild nights are sure to be had

Getting a cat or dog unfortunately is unrealistic. They are expensive, time-consuming and live far longer than you’ve ever planned in the future. Getting a fish is pointless – what do fish really even do? Getting most pets actually have massive drawbacks that negate the positives of buying it in the first place.

Except hamsters.

University students and hamsters have one commonality that makes them the perfectly suited companions: they both make the most noise and are most likely to be awake during the night. Whilst keeping them in your bedroom on a day when you actually intend to make a 9am is less than ideal, but stumbling in from a night out at four in the morning to find this small creature waiting for you is a drunk person’s dream.

We spend a lot of time together

Pre-drinks will never be the same again once you get a hamster. Everyone will want to hold it, and the amusement of watching it run around in its ball is increased tenfold by being a bit drunk. Just make sure at least one person is sober enough to put the hamster back and not just abandoned on a sofa when the taxi arrives.

Students are notoriously lazy creatures, which is not a compatible trait for looking after a pet generally. However, hamsters are literally the lowest maintenance animals on the planet – they don’t have to be exposed to the mess that your house generally is in as they live in their cage and they only eat a meagre five grams of food today. Even the handling of a hamster can be basically palmed off onto other people – just invite loads of people round for pres and insist they hold your pet, and that’s the weeks allowance of it’s handling needs sorted.

Your snapchat game becomes a much better thing. Instead of constantly being the most boring person in the world and just taking pictures of your flatmates doing insanely boring things you now have a hilarious new friend that will add a new level of flair. I haven’t yet worked out how to face swap with the hamster but the second I do I will have probably reached the highest point I ever will on my story.

He loves it

Many people seem to go for the humble fish at Uni but this is the worst possible choice. For a start, what the hell do you do with a fish? You can’t touch it or play with it and even watching it gets boring after a while – though weirdly not when you have loads of work to do. A friend of mine had a fish tank that spontaneously broke in her flat and the water damage, and associated costs were insane. What’s a hamster going to do? The aspect of your pet from home that you’re probably missing the most is the fluffiness, because you can get the neediness and hugs from your overly clingy flatmate, and hamsters have this covered too. You don’t even have to do anything to keep their fur so nice, so it’s literally an endless joy.

Finally a hamster is not a big effort when you eventually leave the world of University and travel home. You can shove it in your little brother’s room to annoy him all night and even getting it home doesn’t take up much space – though if you have to go through the tube on the way then I would strongly suggest finding alternative methods. I have also often thought that it would be amazing taking your hamster to campus with you in their little carry case – maybe it would give you five more minutes in your seminar to come up with some rubbish about the journal you haven’t read, whilst people are distracted?