Gosh, this all takes me back to a story years ago when I had just started at university and my parents were looking after my hamster, whose cage was kept in the living room.
One evening I called home, using one of those payphones that you feed with 10 or 50p pieces and that go beep-beep (anyone remember those? It was that long ago!) Anyway, my mother answered, sounding tense. She said "I am holding your hamster in my hand because your father wants to kill it!!" (My father is the most gentle man, so???) She then explained that a few morning ago she had found the cage open in the morning, with the hamster asleep in his nest inside. So, in the evening, she said to my father "you must have forgotten to close the cage last night". He didn't think he had, but... The next morning, same thing, cage door open, hamster inside, fast asleep. So my mother says to my father "You forgot again!!" Third morning, same thing, except that my mother found some shredded newspaper while hoovering... In the evening, my parents decided to play a record - and found that sound would come out of only one speaker box!!!
My parents had one of those huge Continental display cases, that go the entire length of a wall, with the speaker boxes on either side. When I called up, they had just had the furniture company in to move the cabinet (having emptied it of all books, glasses etc), had the furnture company wait while the hifi company came and put a fresh wire on the speaker box, and had the furnture put back the cabinet - all of which cost them a couple of hundred quid!
But how did the hamster get out, as Blondes asked?
Well, it seems that what we had was an exceptionally clever as well as athletic hamster who had figured out that to open the cage door he had to suspend himself from the ceiling, and move the door sideways and up at the same time with his teeth! I watched him do this myself when I came home on vacation, except by then my parents had put an enormous heavy glass plate on top of his cage. He still tried, though, and you could almost hear him think "You b*stards!".
That next night the hamster was put in the bathroom as a precaution though and when I rang up at 9am, full of concern, my mother saids that she heard my father talking to the hamster while he was shaving, so she figured that he had been forgiven!