Escapee, what are my options?!

[marvel]

My tiniest ferret, Pip, learned today to escape her cage. My two are both free roamers aside from when I leave the house, and really that is for their (read: Pip's) safety. Noodle is older, food and sleep motivated, very chill. Pip on the other hand just turned 1 yr old, is an intense explorer, and is always finding ways to cause chaos. She has no fear, and aside from things like climbing to the top of my closet and trying to jump way higher than she should, she has also found creative places to get her head stuck.

So with that in mind, you can see why when I leave, I feel MUCH better knowing her tiny self is safe in a cage. And it isn't as if she's caged for hours on end or days--I work from home, so we're talking MAYBE on the "worst" day she has to go 8 hrs in there.

Unfortunately, today I came home from a field visit to discover her out of her cage, on top of a forbidden shelf in a house plant. I'm very fortunate that is all she did, as most of my apartment is ferret-proofed, but I didn't exactly leave it this morning with plans for a ferret to be free roaming the entirety (for example, they can get under the bathroom vanity and I definitely left the bathroom door open). Oof.

I think I figured out where she escaped from. There was a small spot behind the litter box where the bars were ever so slightly widened. I used to attached the litter box so they wouldn't shift it around, but had quit doing that and I don't know if me attaching it weakened the bars back there or she pushed them, but I'm fairly positive that's the culprit. I've since reattached the litter box and pushed the bars back together. However, I'm worried not that she knows, she may just mess with the bars again until she can get out. She cage rages, so it isn't new for her to be pawing at and mouthing at the bars, and while I have gotten that to a minimum--what better motivator to do it than freedom?!

So I'm wondering if you all have experience with this? I'm starting to think my only solution might be to build something myself if horizontal bars are no good. For reference, I use Prevue's Feisty Ferret Cage and Pip is about 1.5 lbs and extremely small. I never figured 7/8" spacing was too wide, but here we are.

[Corvidophile]

You can wrap hardware cloth around the sides of the cage secured with zip ties, they sell rolls of it at hardware stores. You’ll need metal snips to cut through it, it’ll destroy scissors quickly. I had to do that to sure up a mouse cage years ago that the bars were too far apart on for babies to be contained by. I used 1/4 inch stuff, but you can probably get away with larger spacing for ferrets (the larger the spacing, the cheaper it is)

[unclejoe]

you can get plastic hardware cloth as well. easier and safer to work with. I used it to block the bottom of my freezer

[msav]

you should be able to find Marshalls playpen extension panels and turn it side ways and zip tie it to the outside of the cage in the spot that she is getting out at.

www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/marshall-small-animal-playpen-expansion-panels-fc-225-1374969?cid=Shopping-Google-Product-1374969&gclid=Cj0KCQjwnNyUBhCZARIsAI9AYlEmebWzBmTjpa6CoyGXAQ6ThP9CRdGX2SOOLXnmf68WYmlINPvYmvQaApEAEALw_wcB