I'm thirteen years old and I've been looking to get a pet aside from a dog since I could walk. A couple years ago I ended up with a betta who I still have and of course I love him, he just wasn't the type of pet I was looking for. I've been bugging my mom to get either a rabbit or a guinea pig since I was about ten and finally I'm on the hamster track. I've done so much research that I could talk for hours about everything I learned and my parents are fully aware of this. My betta, Cooper, is doing pretty good and when it comes to him my mom is a major pushover, but my dad's as stubborn as a brick.

It's your typical 'put the fish in a bowl' scenario and 'if you get a hamster that twenty-gallon tank in the garage will be good enough.' Cooper is not in a bowl, so don't worry about that and is living happily in a heated and filtered five gallon. My mom has made up all of these excuses as to why I can't get a hamster since last summer after she kept promising me one. Her latest promise is once my new room (which is giant!) is finished I can get a hamster, but we don't have space downstairs to house one and I'll be living in the attic basically where there's plenty of space for a large enough hamster cage. The only problem with this is is that I only have a twenty-gallon tank in the garage, I'm not putting a hamster in a Krittertail, my mom thinks that bin cages defeat the purpose of being able to see your hamster, and an Ikea Detolf is 'too big' to house a hamster.

I have about four hundred dollars sitting around from birthdays, Christmas, and various other holidays so I'm clearly financially prepared to take on a hamster. I'm not sure how to show my parents that I'd be a responsible pet owner, since my dad seems to take care of Cooper most of the time, or so he says. I desperately need a little creature that I can actually call my own pet and can hold and such but isn't treated by my parents like an ornament. I may even gain some respect from my dad if I show that I can actually take care of an animal on my own accord.

I really love animals and the fact that I've only ever had the same two, old dogs for my entire life and a fish really hurts, especially since I know that I can take phenomenal care of a hamster as well as juggle school and everything else that I'm needed for. I guess the question is, how do I convince my parents to let me purchase an Ikea Detolf and convince them that I can own a hamster?