I have been wanting to do this task since I first saw it. The idea that popped into my head was reading Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar while modifying it to fit the animal, so I could feed the animal as I read. Lots of animals very small attention spans for human interaction, and food always seems to help that.

I have a dwarf hamster named Winnie. I've owned her for a little more than a week. She's still a baby, though she's growing pretty quickly. I thought she might like some storytime. With food! (As a note: I took a couple pictures of the book. I'm not trying to redistribute it illegally. I'm pretty sure fair use will let me show its cover and a page inside it, but if it doesn't, I'll happily take it down.)

First, I prepared the food. I'll list it when I get to that part in the book:



Then I grabbed some food for me. I'm a very hungry person! (It's olive oil with basil, black pepper, and garlic in it, with bread to dip in it.)



I went over to her habitat (which I can't wait to expand):



I let her crawl onto my hand. She's very people-friendly, I think because I got her so young (before she was able to develop a fear of people). I took her to her Shoebox of Storytime, and I put her hamster potty in it in case she needed to use the facilities. Winnie is mostly potty trained. It's pretty awesome.



I let her get comfortable in the Shoebox of Storytime, then I began to read:



When I got to the page describing the foods the caterpillar ate,



I fed Winnie a piece of grape tomato for Monday:



Two pieces of baby corn for Tuesday:



Three pieces of bamboo shoot for Wednesday, four pieces of tofu for Thursday, and five pieces of water chestnut for Friday. (Interruption of story: I didn't let her eat all of this, as it probably would have made her sick (just like the VHCaterpillar!), but I let her take nibbles of everything. She was very attentive, and she seemed to get more and more excited as time went on.)

And on SATURDAY, she had:



A corn kernel, a pumpkin seed, some green pepper, an unidentifiable seed, a food pellet, a food patty, a carrot treat, a dried piece of banana, some cheddar cheese, a green pea, and a piece of toast. By the end, she would have had a bellyache (were it not for my finishing the story before she could actually eat everything). She ate some pea pod to help soothe that non-existent bellyache, and she found herself a cocoon of a toilet paper roll:



A few moments later, she emerged from her cocoon:



And she was a beautiful hamsterfly!



Analysis

Winnie seemed to enjoy the food. She responds well to my voice, so I'm guessing this helped build trust. Afterwards, we spent a bit more quality time together. Storytime was a success, so I'm saving the Shoebox of Storytime, and I'm thinking my next book may be something along the lines of Goodnight, Moon with interaction as stuff is being good-nighted. Or maybe I'll re-read this and see if she learns that it means food, sort of like kids come to expect certain words even when they don't know how to read. "Those sounds plus this box means food! Yay!" would be a neat end-result.