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Originally Posted by Serendipity7000
Yes it does sound like stressed behaviour. Has anything happened recently, or any changes, that could have stressed her? Sometimes a cage clean can do get them stressed and want to scent mark everything. Best to just do partial cleans (ie don't clean everything at the same time so something always smells familiar - eg substrate one week, wheel a different week, any toys a different week again etc - and don't overclean so substrate can be left a few weeks and just "spot cleaned" if necessary - if it's at least 4" deep).
The other thing is they are highly sensitive to scents so nothing perfumed should be used when cleaning as this could drive them a bit crazy and be very unpleasant - best to just use warm soapy water and rinse well (eg plain washing up liquid in water and not lemon scented etc). Disinfecting isn't necessary unless there's been illness or disease).
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Since she's only been here about 8 days, I haven't done any cleaning at all yet, to allow her to establish her scent. But the plan for the future, as with my other hamsters, is only removing particularly nasty bedding when needed, and a "full clean" once a month, but placing some of the old scented bedding back into the the cleaned enclosure.
As for scents, again, I haven't cleaned anything yet, and nothing was sprayed in the room or anything. (When I do clean I generally just rinse with water.)
Nothing new really happened either. I gave her a new hide a few hours prior, but she had already explored it and seemed to like it. The moment she started going berserk was shortly after me and my sister fed her and Miko, but I don't see why that would bother her since I have my hands in the cage and feed her regularly.