Ginger rides again ... ?

The weirdest thing happened when we arrived back home from our New Year holiday last night ... we've been to Northumbria (which was great and more of which later) with a regular gang of friends plus we had a visit from the (former) owners of Ginger who featured to popular acclaim some weeks ago on these pages ... I didn't make a formal announcement at the time ... but sadly Ginger passed away a shortly after his Blog debut.

Anyway back to last night, we got home about 1.00 am having collected our cats from an unplanned (on their part) holiday at my Mum's, let them out their baskets and were pleased to see how quickly they reverted to their old selves. So quickly that I became instantly convinced we had mice, as they paced the patch of floor by the washing machine. Moments later I heard Tim sigh and shout out that Liquor had already caught a mouse ... No it's a mole ... No it's a ... HAMSTER!?

Near to hysteria I scrabbled to keep the cats back and control Tim's rather over zealous 'spade-capture-technique' (he had thought it was dead) and we got the poor thing into a box. Now the question is where did it come from and what do we do with it?

Could it be an escapee Christmas gift from the flat next door & how did it get in? I did wonder if kids had shoved it through the letter box, or worse still flipped it over the back wall from the estate ... but these seem unlikely.

Despite the ordeal it's happily tucked into Christmas nuts, but sadly (as you can see) not ready for a Ginger-style photo call as yet ...