Hamster tanks and taming bins?

[strandedinaber]

Oops, sorry cypher, I didn't realise anyone had responded to this! I don't have a small pet carrier but think I need to get hold of one. For now the cage is okay, so I'm going to put it off as long as I can. Mostly because if I clean out her cage I'd have to disrupt her hoard. And even if I replace it all in the same place, she'll know it's been messed with and that will just upset her even more. Thank you so much for your comments. I was so worried I'd done something horribly wrong that would be obvious to an experienced hamster owner, but I think she's just an unnaturally nervous hamster. I wonder if it's something to do with the fact that she was attacked by her sister at about 12 weeks old, hence her being rehomed with me.

I thought I'd try something new today. I was away on Saturday and Sunday night, and when I came back today, I spoke to her (well, to the cage, she was hiding in the house) as usual. What was surprising was that she actually came out and crept up to the corner of the cage where I was. I noticed that she'd taken all the food I'd put out, and put it into her hoard, so I put the cage on the floor and took the lid off, which is what I usually do when I'm trying to convince her to come out. I then put more food in her bowl and kinda coaxed her over to the bowl with sunflower seeds, and sat there and talked to her while she was filling up her pouches and dashing back into the house to put it all into her hoard. She did that twice, and then I put the lid back on and let her carry on - didn't try and interfere with her at all, I just spoke to her while she was out.

So it doesn't sound like a big deal, but actually me being sat there (with the lid off) and her carrying on anyway was pretty impressive for her. I've decided I'm going to go back to the absolute basics, and make sure she's always around when I fill up the bowl and try and do the same thing every time. Hopefully then, she'll start to realise that I'm a) not going to interfere with her if she doesn't want me to; b) I'm really not that scary and c) I am the person who takes care of her/makes sure she has enough to eat.