Keep us updated. Our hamster Cinnamon is
very similar. He is very sweet and gentle when we have him out, but absolutely prefers to not be interacted with. He is usually awake around 9PM when we are changing out his food and getting ready for bed, but he will stay hiding except to occasionally poke his nose out if he wants to check out his food refreshment right away- and that's only sometimes. If I want to try handling him I will try to lure him out with food, but I have to move slowly and it doesn't always work. If it does, we might put him in his playpen, but if it's at night he will explore for a bit and then hunker down. Back in his enclosure, if we stay up reading until midnight, he will wait until our light is off to come out. Sometimes if we are around and can lure him out in the afternoon on a weekend he will active in his play area for a longer period of time and be more active in general outside of his cage, but I've had to come to terms with the fact that he's happy having a very solitary life
I did buy a camera that I used with him in the early days. I was able to see that he was pretty active for about 5 hours a night- mostly on his wheel or collecting food. Then after awhile I stopped using it because I could trust that he was active, and his fresh food is always gone in the morning. I still hook it up if I'm traveling and he's just being fed by a neighbor once a day. I like being able to check in on the camera then, to see that he was active at night. It's tough to adjust to- my husband always says, "I don't even want to handle him; I just want to see him moving around!" But using some of the advice that Maz and others posted above, we've been able to find a nice routine where we do get brief interactions a few times a week. I try to maximize them and take some nice videos and photos then, even though I have to be careful with that, too- I swear Cinnamon does not like the look of my phone!
He is very gorgeous by the way.
