I think the cruelest thing ever to a hamster is to be owned by a couple of bored suburban kids.  My sister and I got two hampsters as a hand-me-down sort of situation when one of my mother's coworkers brought them to work and asked me if I wanted them.  After almost an hour of begging and "please"-ing and promising I'd take care of them, Mom conceded, probably against her better judgement. 

I still remember her coworker's smile when we said we'd take them. It was bone-chillingly evil.  I'm not kidding. Except, thinking back, it might have been when the same lady gave us the parakeet. But that's a different story. And also proof that we, as a family, have a short memory when it comes to lessons learned.

They say it's good for kids to have pets, that it's a learning experience.  Here are some of the things my sister and I learned from hamster ownership:

• When a hampster has been in a wire cage with a wheel forever, and you put her in an expensive Habitrail environment, she will never, ever crawl in the tubes, no matter how many you buy.
• She will, however, groove to the Hamster Ball thingie.  Running around the house in a plastic bubble?  Sign ME up!
• The dog will spend hours swatting the Hamster In A Ball thing around, and your adolescent mind will thinks it's really, really funny.  Inhumane? Not hardly!  The hampster LOVES it!  Okay... not LOVES... but doesn't look any worse for the wear!
• Hampster Balls break in half at the seam when they go down a flight of stairs.
• One very freaked out hampster will run the hell away when this happens.
• Your household will be very, very tense when the hampster is known to be loose in the house.
• Despite this situation, it is best to tell members of the family of the escaped rodent, because your mother will freak the fuck out when she finds it in the kitchen when she's not expecting it.
• My mother has an impressive vocabulary of swear words, and can array them into an impressive sentance structure, such as "Shit-fire, son-of-a-bitch, motherfucker!"
• When you're grounded, hampsters aren't really exciting.
• Everything, including hampsters, die.
• When it looks as if your hampster is about to die, it is time to donate it to your school's science department!
• Because they have ether and can euthanize the thing when it starts shitting its own intestines.
• I'm not really cut out to have hampsters in my house.

See? A great learning experience.  Every child should have pets!