Looking for a Lost Guinea-Pig at Daybreak was begun during Pruden's residency as Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago (1975). The arresting title of this piece is explained in the composer's programme note: The disappearance of a family pet gave rise to this impressionistic piano piece. Following a long and fruitless search one day the composer went early into the garden next morning to try again, but became caught up in the breaking of an especially glorious day on the Brooklyn hills of Wellington where he lived. The reawakening of the natural and human world, the variety of early morning sounds – many of them small and distant – from the city and harbour, all have found their correlatives in the music. The guinea-pig was eventually safely found, and its squeal of alarm is retained as the opening of the piece.