There's a Hamster in my Pocket by Franzeska G. Ewart, Helen Bate Page A

back. I was beyond words.
    Mum didn’t seem to notice all the bad vibes coming from Nani and me, though. She went on talking about decluttering, and painting and wallpapering, as if it was some kind of treat.
    And all the while, I was picturing my little room with Nani’s bed in it, and Nani’s hundreds of bottles of cough linctus and nerve tonic and indigestion medicine, and her thousands of tubs of foot powder and face powder and tooth powder, and her corn plasters.
    I pictured my neat shelves covered with her stuffed birds and bats and lizards, and my walls hung with her butterfly and moth collection, and every last bit of my carpet littered with her big vests, and I badly wanted to cry.
    â€œAs Shahid says, it’s only for a couple of months,” Mum told Nani. “Then you can move back. And think of all the extra space you’ll have when we clear out a few things. . .”
    Nani’s nostrils flared wider than ever. She banged the table with her fist, sending Bilal an eyeful of wet Weetabix. He began to howl.
    â€œNot one thing will you clear out,” Nani hissed through clenched teeth. “Not one single, solitary thing, as I live and breathe.” Then she rammed her spoon hard into her mouth, and didn’t say another word till bedtime.
    So that was Worries one and two. And, in thelight of
them
, Worry Number three hardly seems worth mentioning.
    Worry Number three concerned Kylie.
    Now, I don’t think I’m a jealous person. I try not to be, anyway. But that summer I was really jealous of Kylie. And the reason was Kylie’s pets.
    Kylie’s
menagerie
.
    I would have loved a pet. I’d pleaded for a dog, but Mum and Dad said that was out of the question because Nani couldn’t take it for walks during the day while the rest of us were out.
    I’d begged for a cat, but they said Nani was allergic – though how anyone who’s lived all their life surrounded by stuffed leopards and lynxes could possibly be allergic to a mere
cat
is beyond me.
    Eventually I’d had to settle for a goldfish.
    It was a really nice goldfish, with big black eyes and a frilly tail, and I kept it in a bowl on the shelf above my bed and called it Smartypants.
    I liked watching Smartypants, and feeding him and so on, but what I really wanted was something I could cuddle.

    Kylie, on the other hand, was
tripping over
things tocuddle – what with her dad’s dozens of ferrets, and her mum’s seven (yes,
seven
) Papillon dogs, and her brother’s white rat, Fang.
    And now, as if that wasn’t enough, they’d only gone and given her a pair of hamsters.
    Russian Dwarf hamsters, to be precise. The cutest, cuddliest animals you ever saw, with little brown stripy bodies and little white tummies and furry little feet and bright little eyes like shiny black pinheads.

    â€œI’m calling them Toffee ‘n’ Caramel,” Kylie told me when she took me up to her room to see them. “‘Cause they’re s-o-o-o-o sweet.”
    And, boy, were Toffee ‘n’ Caramel ever sweet! Kylie and I played with them all the time. We loved letting them crawl up our sleeves and sniff our necks and dive down under our jumpers and out again. They were drop-dead gorgeous!
    I didn’t begrudge Kylie Toffee ‘n’ Caramel one bit, and she was great at sharing them with me. But no matter how hard I tried not to be, I was still jealous.
    That summer, it seemed to me that Kylie had everything going for her. But, as it turned out, Kylie had a big worry too. Kylie had Sniper.

Sniper
    The evening after the ‘Auntie Shabnam’ news broke, Kylie and me were in her bedroom building a castle for Toffee ‘n’ Caramel, and that was when she told me about Sniper.
    Castle Hamster was amazing. We’d collected loads of old washing-up liquid bottles and toilet roll insides, and we’d glued them onto a big cardboard box to make turrets and secret