Janet Christie: Mum's the word

"When it happens I don't want to be told. I don't want to hear about how it happened, when, or what she looked like. I don't want to see the body being carried out and I don't want to hear about what happens to it." Eldest Child shudders.

We're discussing the hamster and the fact she's declining fast. She must be about 150 in hamster years and can't be far off escaping her cage to gambol across that field of golden sunflowers in the sky.

I'm expecting him to break into WH Auden's Funeral Blues. "Stop all the clocks…"

The hamster lives in Youngest Child's room, banished from Middle Child's after she ate her babies. He never got over such un-mum-like behaviour and couldn't sleep with her in the room, carnivorously eyeing his sleeping form. So Youngest Child renamed her Emily and loves her very much. But she's phlegmatic about her eventual demise.

"She's old. She'll die soon," she says, dry-eyed.

Now it's fallen to Eldest Child (who is allergic to all things furry and feathered) to keep an eye out for the frail little old lady in her baggy fur coat. It turns out he and his big lumbering pals are the ones who have been putting her tiny food dish next to her bed, having observed her struggles to climb the ladders in her cage. It was them who noted the thinning fur and shaky gait, who picked out the juiciest sunflower seeds and put them within reach.

"Thanks for looking after her. That's nice," I say.

"Yeah, well. Just don't tell me when she goes."

He thought that hamsters would last for ever. He was wrong.

• This article first appeared in the Scotsman on Saturday 2 January, 2010