What was George Costanza doing in this scene?

In the episode, George tries to get Susan to postpone the marriage. At first, Susan freaks out and George agrees to hold the wedding on the prearranged schedule. Then later, after seeing a guy at the coffee shop deny his wife something while she was crying, George gets renewed confidence to talk to Susan again

He walks into the apartment, kind of psyches himself up a bit, and then does something really weird. He walks over to a table and drops what sounds like a bunch of marbles on the table, or crunches some potato chips in his hands and drops that. What the heck is he doing? It wasn’t normal, there was an audience laugh track associated with it too. What was he doing at the table? I thought it was nothing at first, the he simply dropped off his keys, but it sounds nothing like that.

He’s dropping hamster food into a plastic hamster cage while not really paying attention what he’s doing and instead watching Susan on the couch, as his mind is more occupied on what he’s about to say to her. I guess the haphazard way that he’s feeding a hamster (or hamsters) is supposed to warrant a laugh track.

They had a hamster??

I guess it could have been a mouse or other rodent, but it was definitely a hamster type plastic home. You can see it at about the 30 second mark in the video below.

Watch the episode here. Scene is at about 14:50.

I know! I must’ve seen that episode a hundred times before and never noticed this stuff.