Cookie baby ill?

Cookie (with an 'ie'), our pet hamster hasn't been well the past week.

She's 'baby' Cookie because in human years, you're still a baby at 2.
At age 2 for a hamster you're old age, but I don't want to think of our baby like that!!

Normally she's perky, up and about her cage, having a good old sniff at passing people, gnaw at her cage bars, having a run on her wheel or performing gymnastics on her ceiling. Recently she hasn't been moving too quickly.

Its hard to tell what's wrong with her. Is she ill? Hibernating? Or did she fall and hurt herself?

She's just lying in her cotton-padded yellow plastic house and not moving much. When she does, she has a limp, but its hard to see which paw she's having trouble with.

She finds it hard to move about her cage. The other day I found her slumped over her food bowl and using her mouth to scoop up any food she could into her pouches while her front paws lay limp.
When she saw me she perked up a bit, but she tried getting in through the small window of her house, her footpaws kept failing her so I had to scoop her up and put her in herself.

She felt a bit stiff, like her spine is hardened into that position, but her paws didn't make a scramble for terra firma as they normally do when you pick her up.


I wonder what she thinks? Can she think?
Its only her that knows what's wrong with her.

When I come along and stroke her, is she thinking "fack off, what you doing, let me be!" or does she appreciate me lifting her about so she can drink and eat?
Perhaps she feels like those sad scenes on TV when good-hearted people try helping an OAP, but they resist help, they just want to do it themselves? And I'm the interfering human trying to help a rodent because we're the superior species (humans always interfere: We found a hedgehog in our garden so we gave it some milk! - do hedgehogs dine on milk if it wasn't for human interference?!).

Well, she served her time in her more active days giving us lots of attention and performing for us, so now its our turn to spend lots of attention on her.

While in the living room we keep a vigil over her.

Baby Cookie