Any tips on finding an escaped hamster?

[skunkboy69]

Long Live The Hamster!

 

[sparkling]

Its the fault of those silly rotostak cages that just fall apart at a whim. Our cat used to deliberately sit on the cage cos he knew that he could dislodge the links and the hampster was bound to fall out one day...don't know how that hampster managed to survive really.
He did escape several times and we found him once behind a large wardrobe at 5 in the morning when we could hear him climbing up the back of it doing some kind of death defying moutaineering maneouvre which meant he leant against the wardrobe while he also pushed against the wall. He woke us up and we were terrified some horrible monster had got intot the wardrobe!!
I just remember my husband in his boxer shorts wearing thick gardening gloves pulling everything out of the wardrobe carefully trying to see where this monster was...we eventually worked it out that the hampster was around the back!! But not before the wardrobe was emptied and we were wide awake with fear and worry.

The other time he escaped he ended up in the bathroom and we had to pull up the floor boards behind the loo to get him out.

Thank god my children are now grown up so no more hampsters.

 

[trashpony]

Its the fault of those silly rotostak cages that just fall apart at a whim. Our cat used to deliberately sit on the cage cos he knew that he could dislodge the links and the hampster was bound to fall out one day...don't know how that hampster managed to survive really.
He did escape several times and we found him once behind a large wardrobe at 5 in the morning when we could hear him climbing up the back of it doing some kind of death defying moutaineering maneouvre which meant he leant against the wardrobe while he also pushed against the wall. He woke us up and we were terrified some horrible monster had got intot the wardrobe!!
I just remember my husband in his boxer shorts wearing thick gardening gloves pulling everything out of the wardrobe carefully trying to see where this monster was...we eventually worked it out that the hampster was around the back!! But not before the wardrobe was emptied and we were wide awake with fear and worry.

The other time he escaped he ended up in the bathroom and we had to pull up the floor boards behind the loo to get him out.

Thank god my children are now grown up so no more hampsters.

Yes - that's what they've got - a rotostack! And the tube just falls out if you exert any pressure on it. I don't know what was wrong with those little cages they used to have when I was a kid. I suspect their instructions to shut the door of the room and the little piles of food my mum found in the corner of the room means it's not the first time it's escaped and that they are a bit worried about their cats getting it. Cats + hamsters = bad plan

 

[wiskey]

my friends 3rd daughter was loudly heard exclaiming to the 5th daughter that hamsters were disposeable pets. this was after having three almost identical replacements when the originals died for whatever reason. she said it wasnt worth spending ages choosing one as they never lasted.

hamster dies, daddy takes you to a petshop and gets another one.

how sad.

 

[AnnaKarpik]

Yes, I feel sorry for anyone who has a mishap with someone elses pet, or kid etc.

I recently looked after a kitten while the owners were on honeymoon. I was terrified something would go wrong, but the kitten was ok at the end of the week. However, it bullied me all week. Smashed a vase on purpose. Sweet and cuddly at times and then all scratchy and bitey and chasing me about. At one point it deliberately bit through the telephone wire to cut me off from the outside World. Everytime I dashed for the door kitty was there first with claws and teeth waiting. I was a nervous wreck by the end of the week

I kind of grew to like it by the end, but I'm sure that was merely Stockholme syndrome.

I looked after a little girl's pair of finches once. They were dead within 24 hours, no idea what happened.

 

[pembrokestephen]

My mum is looking after the neighbour's hamster. I went over with her yesterday and everything was fine. But this evening, we couldn't see it anywhere and eventually realised the tube that connects two of the pods in its extremely complex multistory hamster house had come unconnected (stupidly, it just pushes in a home, there's no clips or anything).

We had a good look around the room for it but couldn't see it anywhere. I don't think it can have got out of the room as the door is very tightly fitting and there's a wooden strip on the floor outside.

She's going to have another look for it in the morning. Any tips as to where it might be hiding or how to tempt it out???

Put food in strategically placed carrier bags. You'll hear the hamster stamping around in the bag when it goes to get the food, and you can just pick it up by the handles (the bag, not the hamster) when you've caught it.

ETA: congrats, glad it reappeared.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Our first hamster was too big to fit down the rotorstack tubes, so we took it back and exhanged it for another one, who worked out how to escape. We recon the cats finally caught it before we could after one prison break.

 

[lyra_k]

For various reasons too complicated to go into, we shut our cat into the back bathroom last night (with food, water and litter tray), meaning that there were two closed door between her and the rest of the house - the bathroom door and the guest room door. She woke me up this morning by nibbling my toes.

Finally figured out that she had opened the under-sink cupboard in the bathroom, gone in, wriggled through the back of the cupboard into the innards of the house, and emerged through the under-sink cupboard in the other bathroom, in order to be able to freak us out and get us saying our Hail Marys this morning. Quite seriously odd until we figured out how she'd escaped.

 

[Xanadu]

You say escaped, I say liberated!

Let's stop imprisoning hamsters!

 

[Loki]

Put food in strategically placed carrier bags. You'll hear the hamster stamping around in the bag when it goes to get the food, and you can just pick it up by the handles (the bag, not the hamster) when you've caught it.

Cunning, Never know I might need that one day.

WB rodent

 

[fogbat]

Those modular hamster cages have been dodgy and easily escapable for years.

My parents used to keep hamsters in a rotostak system and several of them escaped, only to end up in the cat

 

[feyr]

my pet hamster has been missing since august 1994

he lived in his cage in on the first floor of a house with no feline occupants. and managed to escape. we searched everywhere, behind the wardorbes, everwhere. floorboards were listened to,traps where set, nothing, no sightings , no sounds either she escaped from the cage, out of the room, down the stairs and out the front door , with his rucksack packed and a change of under pants or he was assasinated by a human member of the household

i put missing posters out and everything but i have come to terms with the fact he is probably dead.

 

[treefrog]

This is what we used to do when the hamster escaped.

one of my hamsters when I was a kid earned the nickname "Bonnington" after she found her way into the cavity in the walls. We'd hear her scrabbling up the living room, the bedroom and eventually caught her in the attic! Naughty Bumble...