How long do you have?
My advice:
-refine the story, you need some sort of pay off at the end, but this one doesnt make sense at all. Get the story right and everything else will follow.
-storyboard lots
-Refine character, i dont really read the character as being a hamster, I suggest since this is your first bit of animation having the character as literally a ball with a tail and eyes. It can be surprisingly expressive and alot easier than animating a quadraped.
-Ditch the fur , it really isnt working. For this kind of anthropized story, somthing stylised really works, forget bump maps and hdri, these things are geared for photorealism, pick apart a color pallete and use the toon shaders to hand pick your color range.

I wish you luck, the first one is allways the hardest