or, Kicked in the Nads Yet Again.
Today I was planning on taking an online survey to see what I should call my new hamster. Potential names would have included Bubble (but that only really works if you've also got a fish named Squeak), Marley (after my esteemed brother), Lancelot, Hector, and my personal frontrunner, Brutus. (Isn't there just something inherently riotous in the idea of a hamster, a dwarf hamster no less, named Brutus? I love it.)
But we're not taking that survey today. We're not taking it because when the giant box with my new crittertrail 2 hamster cage arrived today and the woman at the reception desk downstairs asked me what was in it, I made the mistake of telling her. "In this building?" quoth she? "But you're not allowed any pets in this building!"
"B... bu.. but," I stammered. "When I moved in I specifically asked a woman in this office if I could have a pet and she said that cats and dogs weren't allowed but that I could have a small pet like a fish or a hamster."
"Well," she replied. "I don't know who that was, but you didn't ask me and if you'd asked me I would have told you 'no' straight away before you went and wasted a bunch of money on a cage."
So off she goes to pull out a copy of the contract, and lo and behold there it is in the fine print (who the fuck reads the fine print, anyway? I mean besides my esteemed brother, who if he reads this will yell at me very loudly) "no pets allowed." As they say in the legal industry (and in a few illegal industries), "what the large print giveth, the fine print taketh away."
So now not only am I stuck with a very nice, rather expensive (bearing in mind that at this point in my life expensive is defined as "anything that isn't free") hamster cage, but I got all my flatmates were really excited about it, too. Tom and Orn want to come with me to pick it out, and Tom wants to take care of it while I'm away. Everyone's really excited. Especially me. You know how excited I am. Was. Am. What do I do?
So here's the online survey of the day: Do I...
a) Pack away the cage and continue my miserable, lonely, furry friend-less, albeit legal, existance?
Or do i
b) Say "fuck them" and go buy a hamster anyway, and risk unknown repercussions (fines? being evicted for breaking contract? who knows) if and when the little guy is discovered during a random room check, which they claim to perform periodically. (Course, they havn't said a thing about the green paint yet, but that shit may yet be en route to the fan.)
And if anyone out there can come up with a rock solid legal explanation of why they can't hurt me if I do get a hamster, I'll name the little bugger after you.
Vote... NOW!
5 comments:
Can you remember the name of the person who gave you permission? Because if you can then I'd be tempted to tell the person who said you can't have a pet, that so and so said you could and let them fight it out between them. Point out that you will pay for any damage it might do and that if you get any complaints then you'll reconsider keeping it but in the meanwhile...
Or say that its not a pet but part of your scientific research. If it takes X monkeys X years to randomly type the complete works of Shakespeare then your thesis is on how long it takes a lone hamster with no typewriter to carve the complete works of Chaucer onto a sunflower seed...
They might buy that.
Me. I'd get the hamster, smuggle it in and chuck a cloth over the cage when you go out. Being nocturnal the hamster won't mind the dark for a bit.
But it all depends on where your living...I got the real Hendrix cat when I got my first flat in London and since then have lied to all but 1 landlord about the no pets rule... If you're in a hostel then you probably won't get away with it...but I'm not so sure that even in hostels your landlords are allowed to check your room without your consent. They certainly shouldn't be doing it when you aren't there - that sounds very dodgy to me.
i can't remember her name, but i told Ms. Nopets that it was a woman with short dark hair and a french accent, upon which Ms. Nopets ascertained that it was someone who is no longer employed here. (Apparently she was fired after the whole flood fiasco in October.) That fact that she's been fired unfortunatley trumped my "i was told" card.
I thought the whole room inspection thing sounded dodgy as well. I'm already taking a closer look at the legality of that. Will let you know when I learn more.
Get the hamster. Get two. Call them Redgrave and Pinsent. I'm going to get two cats and call them that. Or if one is a little scrawny sweet thing and the other a big cute bruisner, Foster and Cracknell.
Don;t get two! They'll breed. Even if you get 2 of the same sex they'll breed...and then you'll be up to your neck in hamsters (although selling them to labs could be a lucrative way of eking out your student funds!)
Anyway. Since I was the one who pointed out that no-one was allowed in your room then doesnt that mean that the hamster gets called after me. (although Hendrix Cat is stupid name for a hamster.) I vote that you call it herebe hendrix the thrid. (the thris not the third!) sort of like ther in Winnie ther Pooh
yeah, i made that mistake once. i bought 2 hamsters (Crumpet and Churchill, respectively), and even though i asked for 2 of a kind, i wound up with a matched set. Soon there were 4 hamsters. The solution involved raising the spares until they were just old enough to be sexed but not old enough to breed (a very narrow window in hamsters), taking them all in to the pet store and telling them "right. sort it. give me 2 of the same. you keep the other 2. do it right this time." they did. Mrs. Churchill and generic baby 1 went back to the pest store, and Crumpet and Baby Frodo came home with me.
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