I found Zoë at Aardvark Pets on Meadowood, after much searching.  I arrived at the store about 5:30 in the afternoon.  The store clerk said no, they didn't have any hamsters right then, male or female, but they were expecting a new shipment by 7:00 in the evening.  I went for coffee, and upon my return, there was beautiful little Zoë - the only short-haired golden female in the lot.  We got the baby hamster into a ball, and she rode home in my lap, looking up at me all the way.  What a bright, gorgeous little girl.  But wild as can be.  She had never been handled by a human.

When first introduced to her new home, she seemed really confused about where to set up a nest.  Was it because she had just been removed from mother?  Whatever the reason, the SAM house did not seem to meet with her needs.  It was fine for both DJ and Cleo, but Zoë appeared to be a "tube dweller".  She spent the first week sleeping, eating, and going to the bathroom in the tubes.  I finally had to pick a more open home for her.  What I came back with was the Hagen Space module, and a separate look-out tower, for her toilet.  Well, Zoë had other plans.  The look-out tower was not going to be her toilet - it was her new bed.  Once again, change of plans.  Back to the pet store, and this time I purchased an actual hamster toilet.  It even came with clumping litter, just like a cat's litter box.

And now Zoë was happy.  She had a bed that was small, confined, and one in which she felt safe.  She had a toilet area that kept the rest of her cage spotless.   And two water bottles!  One in each part of her cage.  She seemed finally to have settled in and the house now met with her standards, which, for a hamster, were quite high.  There was no leaving her cage unclean for a few days.  If she didn't have fresh bedding at least every second day, she would refuse to sleep in her bed.  Unlike Cleo, who became totally confused as to where her bed should be every time I cleaned her cage, Zoë never even attempted to move her fresh bedding once she had established that the little lookout tower was her bedroom.

Zoë never did become much of a cuddler.  For well over a year, she would not let me pick her up to put her into her home at the end of her play time.  She insisted that she be allowed to walk into her home from my lap.  And she was a  morning hamster.  Not only would she get up in the evening to play, she also wanted out of her cage every morning.  Just like a little toddler, that would be her time that she “pretended” she wanted contact with humans.  I say pretended, because she teased me continually.  She would look at me with those great big beautiful eyes, and bump up against my ankles, until I would take her out of her ball.  And they she would try as hard as she could to escape from my lap.

Zoë was a climber.  She trained me to play a game with her in the evening when she first woke up.  We would sit on the couch, and as fast as she could move, she would jump up onto the arm of the chesterfield, into my waiting hand.  And I would place her back down on one of the cushions.  We would repeat this over and over - 10, 15 minutes at a time - until I was too tired to continue.  I never did figure out if she just liked the feeling of being carried back to her starting point, or if she truly believed she was going somewhere.

Her birthday was June 12th and she was two years old.  On July 2nd, I bought her a new ball, but she only used it once.  In a very short period of time, it became too difficult for Zoë to run in her ball through the house.  My bright, beautiful little pet was now an old lady who was beginning to have difficulty walking.

On July 17, 2005, Zoë passed away in her sleep.  She had grown frail in her old age and would become exhausted just trying to eat and drink.  The last night of her life, Zoë and I curled up on the couch together.  I cradled her in my arms, all bundled up in a towel for comfort and to keep her from becoming chilled.  I fed her a yogurt drop, and a raisin, and she had little sips of water.  But mostly she slept.  Her eyes remained closed constantly.  When I put her back in her home in the early morning hours of the 17th, she was too weak to climb into her bed.  She fell fast asleep, in the corner, next to her food dish.  In the morning, when I awoke, Zoë had made her way into her bed.  Checking on her later in the afternoon, I found she was still curled up in her bed, on her side.   But she had stopped breathing - Zoë never woke up again.  The little girl had finally gone to sleep for the last time.