Happy Christmas Hammy the Wonder Hamster Read online

  ‘He looks as if he’s sending a text,’ he said. Hamilton whipped his paw from the keypad and busily washed his whiskers. ‘Will you come and watch me do my snowball thing?’

  They were watching from the bedroom door while Sam did three somersaults in a row, two forward and one back, when Mum came up the stairs. She carried a cardboard box in her arms.

  ‘Sam, it’s like having a baby hippopotamus in the house!’ she said. ‘Do you have to do that?’

  ‘I’m practising!’ insisted Sam. ‘I have to keep practising!’

  ‘Oh, if it’s for the concert, I suppose it’s OK,’ she said, but she looked as if she’d be glad when the concert was over. ‘Bethany, you’re making a cushion for Chloe, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bethany, ‘but I haven’t got anything to –’

  ‘– to stuff it with, I know,’ said Mum. ‘I went to the wholesalers today, so I bought some kapok. That’s the white fluffy stuff for filling toys and things. You can use some of that.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum!’ said Bethany as she took the box. Hamilton peeped inside and saw soft white fluff.

  Snow! he thought. At least, it looked like snow to him.

  The next morning, Bethany opened her advent calendar and found a picture of something that looked like a big brown stone with white paint poured over it, but she told Hamilton it was a Christmas pudding. When she had gone to school, he let himself out of his cage. The box of white fluffy kapok was beside her bed, so Hamilton measured the distance, took a run and a jump and landed in it.

  What wonderful stuff! He tunnelled into it, rolled in it, burrowed down into it with only his nose and whiskers sticking out and finally remembered what he was meant to be doing. He crammed his cheek pouches with all the kapok he could fit in. He’d need lots of this. Soon, he’d managed to fill the secret corner behind the wardrobe, so he had to start on the suitcase that lived on top of it. Fortunately, it had been left lopsided and had fallen open at one corner.

  Bethany’s dressing gown came in very useful for reaching the suitcase. She had left it hanging on the wardrobe door, and it gave Hamilton something to climb up. Even so, running up and down the dressing gown was hard work. He had to stop for a ten-minute feed, a five-minute wash and a three-hour nap, then he went on scurrying back and forward with his cheeks bulging and fluff sticking to his nose and ears. He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t hear the front door open as Bethany came home. He was halfway up the dressing gown with his pouches brimful of fluff when he heard her running up the stairs, singing her song. He leapt over to his cage and dived head first into his nest box. Bethany opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Hamilton!’ she called. He usually came straight to meet her, and she was surprised to have no answer. It made her nervous if he didn’t greet her right away.

  ‘Hamilton,’ she said softly, ‘are you all right?’ Hearing strange scrabbling noises coming from the nest box, she knelt down in front of the cage. ‘I’m home!’

  Hamilton was struggling to empty the stuffing from his pouches into his nest box. It didn’t taste nice, so it might not be good for hamsters and it made his nose tickle. He was rubbing his face with his paws when he finally popped up to meet Bethany.

  ‘Have you been asleep?’ she said, and lifted him from his cage. ‘You’re such a sweetie!’

  Hamilton didn’t like being called a sweetie, but he knew Bethany couldn’t help it. He rubbed his face on her hand much harder than usual, to take the tickle out of his nose. There was a thud and a bump on the landing as Sam practised being a snowball. Bethany took out her phone and sat Hamilton in front of it.

  ‘What have you been doing all day?’ she asked.

  Hamilton shrugged. NOT MUCH, he texted back.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve done lots of things,’ she said. ‘Did you have a run?’

  YES. He’d done lots of running.

  ‘Have you done anything else?’

  His whiskers twitched as if he were smiling.

  JST STUFF, he texted.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Bethany said, ‘I want to finish Chloe’s cushion tonight.’ She picked up the box of kapok. ‘Oh. I thought there was lots more than that! Mum must have used some. But there should just about be enough.’

  Hamilton yawned, ran back into his cage and hid in his nest box before Bethany could ask any more awkward questions. Tomorrow would be one more window on the advent calendar and a day nearer to Christmas, and he still needed another 4,200 more snowflakes.

  The next morning, Bethany opened her advent calendar and found a picture of a white dove. It was the dove that made Hamilton think of feathers.

  He sat up, washing his whiskers and waiting for Bethany to go to school. And as soon as the house was quiet, he left his cage and jumped on to her roughly made bed.

  Running across a soft and lumpy duvet isn’t easy for a small animal. Hamilton sank into it at once and couldn’t see where he was going, but he was a determined hamster, and with a few jumps he was safely on the pillows. There must be thousands of feathers in those pillows – he’d seen the odd one fall out when Bethany or Mum plumped them up. Feathers would make wonderful snow.

  Hamilton was much too sensible to simply chew a big hole in the pillow. Feathers all over the floor wouldn’t do. He nibbled delicately at a corner, just enough to pull out a few soft white feathers. He took one, blew it into the air and watched it drift across the bed. He blew it again, and it lifted a little.

  Feathers are fun, thought Hamilton. A bookmark lay on Bethany’s bedside table, so he picked it up in both paws and fanned furiously. The feather rose in the air, drifted and fell. Hamilton had never seen a real snowflake, but he thought they must look very like this. He tugged out some more feathers and flapped the bookmark until his paws hurt – then he reminded himself that he was supposed to be gathering these feathers, not playing with them. He took one in his mouth and ran back to his nest box.

  He did stop for a second when he happened to see his reflection and realized that a hamster with a feather in his mouth looks a bit silly. He was glad there was nobody to see him. Bethany and Chloe would probably have called him cute, but he thought he just looked ridiculous. He avoided the mirror after that. He pushed a few feathers into his nest box and a lot more down the back of the radiator.

  Finally, he went back to examine the hole in the pillow and was surprised to see that it was bigger than he’d meant it to be. Bethany always gave it a little shake before she went to bed at night to make it comfortable, and she wouldn’t want a feather explosion. Could he mend it? He sat back, considering it. He knew where to find a needle and thread, but his paws wouldn’t be able to manage a needle made for human hands. Sewing was out then.

  Bethany kept glue in her desk. He could glue the pillow back together – but when he read the instruction on the glue pot he decided it wouldn’t be a good idea. Bethany might come home to find a feathery hamster stuck to a glue pot. And what if the glue took a long time to dry? He wouldn’t like Bethany to wake up stuck to her pillow. He would have to make do with pulling the edges of the hole together as closely as he could and tucking the nibbled corner neatly over. Then he went back to his cage and burrowed into his nest box.

  Feathers make you tired, he thought, as he fell asleep.

  He woke as usual at ten to four, feeling exceptionally cosy. He could hear Bethany and Chloe running up the stairs, chatting and laughing, and he came to the bars of the cage to meet Bethany.

  ‘Have you had a lovely day?’ she said, and took him from his cage and stroked his back as he rubbed his face against her hand. ‘We’ve had such a fun time!’

  ‘Bibble-bubble!’ called Chloe, and fell laughing on the bed.

  Listening to their conversation, which didn’t always make sense, Hamilton put the story together. Bethany didn’t usually like maths, but they had been playing a maths game at school that had actually been quite fun. Starting with ‘one’, everybody had to say a number in turn, but if the number was a multi
ple of three, you had to say ‘bibble’. A multiple of four was ‘bubble’ and a number like twelve, which was both, was ‘bibble-bubble’. By the time they had taken off their coats Hamilton had worked out the whole sequence up to several million bibbles and bubbles, but Bethany and Chloe were still playing the game.

  ‘It’s bibble-bibble-bubble!’ gasped Bethany.

  ‘No, it’s bubble-bubble-bibble!’ began Chloe, and, laughing too much to say any more, grabbed a pillow from the bed.

  No, don’t! thought Hamilton. Suddenly, the bibble-bubble game was turning into a bubbly-bibbly giggly pillow-fight as Bethany picked up the other pillow with both hands. Hamilton wasn’t sure he could look. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  Oh, no, Bethany, don’t!’ he thought. Daring to open one eye, he shook his head as hard as he could, but it was no good. Bethany wasn’t looking.

  ‘It’s bibble!’ laughed Bethany, swinging a pillow at Chloe.

  ‘It’s bubble!’ shrieked Chloe, hitting back. Hamilton put both paws over his eyes.

  When he peeped through his claws, he couldn’t see Bethany and Chloe at all. They were hidden in a swirl of feathers that filled the room from floor to ceiling.

  Oops, thought Hamilton. Sorry. He really hadn’t intended this to happen, but he did think the snowstorm was beautiful, and Bethany looked very pretty as she appeared gradually through the cloud with feathers in her hair. The girls stood in wide-eyed silence, their hands pressed to their mouths, as feathers settled on their heads, their school uniforms, the bed and the floor. Some landed on Hamilton’s cage, so he grabbed them and stuffed them in his nest box while nobody was looking. Bethany’s cuddly dog, Wimble, was a feathery mound with only his nose sticking out. There was a nervous little giggle from Chloe and a spurt of smothered laughter from Bethany.

  ‘My mum will kill me!’ she whispered.

  ‘She doesn’t have to find out,’ Chloe whispered back, scooping up a handful of feathers from the bed. ‘Quick, we can…’

  She stopped as the door opened. Mum stood there, staring.

  ‘Bethany!’ she exclaimed. ‘What is going on here?’

  A moment before, Bethany couldn’t stop laughing. Now, her legs felt wobbly and she could hardly speak.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, in a very small voice. ‘It just – sort of – burst.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Mum. ‘I suppose it burst all by itself, without any help?’ She took the sagging, half-empty pillow from Chloe’s hands and inspected it. ‘It could be just old, and the stitching’s worn…’ She looked more closely. ‘You haven’t made a hole in this on purpose, have you?’

  ‘No!’ said Bethany so indignantly that Mum believed her. Mum sighed.

  ‘Sorry. I’ll clear it up,’ said Bethany.

  ‘Yes, sorry, Mrs Elliott, so will I,’ said Chloe.

  ‘Your mum just phoned, Chloe,’ said Mum. ‘She wants you home now.’

  Chloe left with a sad and sympathetic glance towards Bethany, and Mum followed her downstairs. As soon as the door had closed, Hamilton scrambled out of his cage, gathering up a mouthful of feathers and taking them to Bethany.

  ‘Are you helping?’ she said, and lifted him on to her hand, holding him against her cheek the way she did when she was sad. As it was his fault that she was sad in the first place, this made him feel even worse. It was no good trying to explain and apologize – he couldn’t do that without giving away the secret of Bethany’s Christmas present. All he could do was to help tidy up.

  Bethany pushed feathers back into the pillow, which only seemed to make the hole bigger, while Hamilton cleared up as many feathers as he could and hid some while Bethany wasn’t looking. By teatime, with his help, Bethany had not only cleared up the feathers, but she’d also done her homework, mended the pillow and practised her song.

  When she was asleep, Hamilton helped himself to a few tissues from the box beside her bed and some scraps of paper from the waste-paper basket. They’d make good snow when he’d shredded them up.

  Every day, when nobody was about, he added to his snow store, but he urgently needed some new supplies. His idea with the feathers had got Bethany into trouble, and now he wasn’t sure he could even give her the white Christmas she wanted. At a rough guess, Hamilton still needed about 3,900 snowflakes.

  Christmas drew nearer day by day, and Hamilton had still only half-filled the suitcase. The day before the concert, Bethany opened her advent calendar and found a picture of an angel blowing a long thin trumpet. She gazed out of the window dreamily.

  ‘Frost!’ she suddenly declared.

  Hamilton got out of his cage to have a look, and his eyes widened. Everything sparkled. A white twinkly blanket covered the ground, fences and tops of cars. He leant his paws against the glass to take a better look, and a little damp condensation from the window clung to his fur.

  ‘Don’t stay there getting wet,’ Bethany warned. ‘You might catch cold.’

  Hamilton held out his paw for the phone. U ALWAYS WORRY ABOUT THAT, he told her. I’LL B OK.

  ‘Keep warm,’ she insisted. ‘Colds can be dangerous for hamsters.’

  The minute Bethany had gone to school, Hamilton ran to Mum and Dad’s bedroom to look for more cotton-wool bobbles and tissues, but there were hardly any left, and it might look strange if the last ones disappeared. He’d have to search elsewhere. He was running along the landing, twitching his nose hopefully, when he saw a cardboard box that he knew hadn’t been there the night before. Christmas decorations was scrawled in felt-tip pen on the side.

  Hamilton scrambled up the side of the box and peered into it. This was worth knowing about! Little chunks of something white were piled high, and Hamilton took one in his paws, turned it round, sniffed it and finally bit into it. Expanded polystyrene! White expanded polystyrene! Perfect snow!

  He wriggled further down in the box. The Christmas decorations had been carefully packed, so there was lots of polystyrene to collect. He ran backwards and forwards along the landing, storing his new snow in the hiding places until he was yawning.

  He was very tired, and when he settled down for a sleep his nest felt softer and warmer than ever. He was still asleep at Bethany’s home time, and he might have slept through that if the front door hadn’t banged so hard that the whole house trembled.

  ‘Sam!’ called Mum. ‘What was that for?’

  Sam stamped up the stairs without speaking. Hamilton heard him slam his bedroom door, and there was a thud and a rattle as Sam’s school bag hit the wall. Hamilton let himself out of his cage and ran on to the landing to find out what was happening. At the bottom of the stairs, Bethany was talking to Mum, and he could tell from her voice that she was worried.

  ‘It’s that dancing snowball thing,’ she was saying. ‘They’ve given him a costume to wear and he hates it, so now he doesn’t want to do it any more.’ Sam emerged from his bedroom with another shuddering bang of the door. Hamilton hid behind the door frame.

  ‘Stupid costume!’ yelled Sam. He sounded near to tears. ‘I told Miss Fossett that I didn’t want to wear it, but she said if I don’t wear the costume I can’t do the dance, and I’ve practised and practised. I was looking forward to it!’

  There was a choking sound and a sniff from Sam. Bethany and Mum ran upstairs, and Mum sat down beside Sam with her arm round his shoulders. Bethany slipped past them into her bedroom. Hamilton ran after her and she let him jump on to her hand.

  ‘Poor Sam,’ she said. ‘He was going to do the dance in his PE kit, then Miss Fossett – our Headmistress who teaches music and organizes the concert – found this snowball suit in a cupboard somewhere, which she remembered making years ago. She’s thrilled with it, so she made up her mind that Sam should wear it tomorrow. And by the way, Hamilton, he’s right. It is a stupid costume.’

  Hamilton put out his paw to ask for the phone. WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? he texted.

  ‘It’s like a great big tennis ball made of foam,’ Bethany said, ‘and it’s got lots of
fluffy sparkly stuff all over it. Honestly, Hamilton,’ she leant closer to whisper in his ear, ‘Sam mustn’t hear this, but he looks like a dollop of mashed potato. Sparkly mashed potato. But Miss Fossett thinks it’s wonderful, and once she’s got an idea into her head nobody can get it out again. Sam’s a Year Four boy. Boys don’t do dressing up unless it’s monsters or hero stuff. And snowball costumes aren’t monsters or hero stuff. I wonder how Miss Fossett would like to stand up in front of all the parents herself, dressed as a snowball?’

  WHERE IS IT? Hamilton asked.

  ‘The costume?’ said Bethany. ‘It’s at school, ready for the concert.’

  If only Sam had brought the costume home, Hamilton thought to himself. He could have done something about it then. Bethany’s voice was becoming high and tight, as if she might cry.

  ‘I’m getting sick of this concert!’ she complained. ‘It’s all going wrong for Sam, and now Chloe’s got a sore throat so she needs to rest her voice, and we can’t practise tonight. I wasn’t nervous before, but now it’s so close. It’s tomorrow night, and I’m terrified. At least Chloe will be there, so there’ll be two of us, I suppose.’

  3 OF US? texted Hamilton and looked up at her hopefully.

  ‘Of course you can come!’ she said, and stroked him.

  Bethany went to bed at the usual time and read for a while, as she always did. Hamilton sat on the pillow beside her and read too, until she put her light out and he went for his nightly run. She was pleasantly drowsy when the door opened and Sam stood there, looking very little in his pyjamas.

  ‘I can’t sleep,’ he said. ‘I was really looking forward to the concert, and it’s spoilt now.’

  Bethany moved over so he could wriggle into bed beside her.

  ‘It isn’t spoilt,’ she said. ‘Really, Sam, it’s going to be all right. I’m not sure how, but it will. This time tomorrow it will all be over, and it’ll nearly be Christmas. Worrying doesn’t make it better. Now go to bed, and try to think of something nice.’