Still can’t get Peanut interested in coming out of her cage. She’s got a huge bug up her butt. If she knows we’re awake, she doesn’t come out at all. She waits until we’re upstairs sleeping, then we hear her wheel going. Seeing as how we didn’t go to bed until 1 am last night, and she’s awake by 9 pm at the latest, I’m taking that personally. I just now tried to get her to come out by showing her the elevator which she would always climb into so I could lift her out, and she looked it over and then ran back into her den. I’m going to check her cage to make sure she’s not sick and I’m thinking about getting rid of the den temporarily. I don’t know, maybe that’s mean, but I’d like to get a removable den (this one is snapped into the cage and supports the wheel too) and wheel so I can control how much she hides from us. I don’t want to just give up and accept that I’m there to feed her and clean her cage and that’s it. That doesn’t seem like any fun for either one of us, so somehow I am going to get her out of her antisocial mood. One thing I read was to give treats outside the cage, so I’m only going to give them to her when she is out playing to encourage her to come out and play. We’ll see how that goes. It’s just so weird how she changed. I never had her out of her cage so long she’d become exhausted, so I’m not sure why she stopped enjoying it. Hamsters are weird. I can’t wait to get a cat.
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That’s disappointing! It’s so strange that her behavior changed. I’m wondernig, have the kids been around her at all? I feel bad for suggesting this, but could one of them done something to hurt or scare her one day, and maybe that’s why she started hiding in her den?
Yes, the kids were around her around the time her weird behavior started. However, I can’t think of why that would have anything to do with it since I supervised them the entire time. The first night they just talked to her softly while she was in her cage so she could used to their smell and the sound of their voices. The second night all they did was watch her play in her playpen or run in her ball. They briefly petted her while she was in my hand, but that was it. I explained to them that she needs to get used to them first before they can hold her or have her out to play for too long. So unless their mere presence was enough to freak her out for a week, I can’t understand her sudden personality change.
I did end up taking her out yesterday but you should have seen how she was running around all freaked out at first. She eventually calmed down and I put some treats in her playpen to make it an enjoyable experience for her. I’m going to do that every night to see if I can get her back to “normal” again. The kids are coming over Tuesday and will be with us until Sunday so hopefully that doesn’t set back the process. I already told them that they can’t play with her every night not just because she seems to get really scared, but also because she’s been getting up later and later and they need to get to bed earlier. So we’ll see how that goes!