[Letty]

So my female Syrian hamster seems terrified of her excersize ball and/or playpen. I got her out of her cage for the first time today (I’ve had her for 5 days) so I could give her cage a little spot clean. I used her excersize ball to move her from her cage, waited until she was active and put some treats in the ball to let her get in on her own, put the door on the ball and moved her to her playpen. She started squealing when she was in there so I immediately let her out into the playpen (large plastic storage box), put her cage toys, wheel and nesting box in along with a big handful of substrate from her cage, and popped the lid on (plenty of ventilation). She seemed to calm down a bit and ran on her wheel whilst I was cleaning her cage, but started squealing again when I went to move her ball out. When I went to catch her and put her back she started squealing again and ran on her wheel ( like she was trying to run away). She did take a treat from my fingers and seemed happy enough to sniff my hand a bit. Ended up using the box I bought her home from the pet store in to move her back to her cage, and although she was scuttling around the box a lot she didn’t seem as stressed and was ok with me putting her toys back in the cage, again she was ok with sniffing my hand. Im not sure if she was scared of the ball, the playpen or me? She’s back in her cage now and acting normally. What can I do to make this less stressful for her as I obviously can’t just leave her in her cage all the time! Any tips would be great!