A Story's Origins

It's rather interesting the paths that your mind takes when writing.
Some stories' beginnings are so different from where the story ends up in the end.
To the point where you can't really tell how your thought process got from point a to point d. You just know it started there and ended up over here.

For example.

I was playing around with an image I'd seen at work, where a hamster had been slowly loosing his hair (plucking it after a while.) And me wanting to do a story based on this image.

So I played around with it.

At one point going along the lines of 'What if it was a more humanistic hamster?'

After that point? I have no idea what sparked what...

But now the story has morphed to a more 'survival of the fittest' type of story.
Where an individual is placed in a 'gladiator pits' of sorts and has to survive, and ends up doing just that, through an unexpected means. (possibly the story was influenced a bit by Danny Phantom as I've been watching it recently.)

But how I got from 'Hamster...to 'human fighting for life..." Not quite positive. O.o

It's strange.
And if this story ever becomes an actual published book.....
My readers are probably not going to be satisfied with this answer. lol.

But really, thoughts just kinda...jump all over the place for me. Seeing something can spark something else without me always realizing (or remembering) that this is what sparked it.

-Sarnic Dirchi