NIC cage soft flooring for buns that chew?

[tiff]

Hey everyone, I'm planning to build a NIC cage for my bun, but I am having no luck coming up with flooring ideas.

My bun is a major chewer. She chews almost anything I put inside her cage. I want her to have comfortable flooring at least on her shelves, but I think she'll likely chew carpet, and although she's litter trained she poops and pees on fleece. What are my other options here?

:dutch :hearts:

 

[Azerane]

A lot of bunnies like to pee on soft things so that's not unusual. Is there any particular reason that you want the flooring to be soft? I wouldn't go with carpet, Bandit goes right for that as well. You might be able to use stick-down vinyl flooring, but instead of putting it straight onto plywood, using an underlay to make it a bit spongy. That way it's waterproof, but not hard. Foam or rubber mats are another option, but if they've got joining edges or knobbly bits they're likely to get chewed too. Otherwise, you could put bedding or hay through the cage, but that confuses litter habits too.

 

[pani]

My buns are on carpet right now and they chew it. Pluck little bits out of the carpet and eat it up! :duck: Not recommended, especially if you have a chewy bun. Plus, now my carpet's all mucked up.

 

[tiff]

A lot of bunnies like to pee on soft things so that's not unusual. Is there any particular reason that you want the flooring to be soft? I wouldn't go with carpet, Bandit goes right for that as well. You might be able to use stick-down vinyl flooring, but instead of putting it straight onto plywood, using an underlay to make it a bit spongy. That way it's waterproof, but not hard. Foam or rubber mats are another option, but if they've got joining edges or knobbly bits they're likely to get chewed too. Otherwise, you could put bedding or hay through the cage, but that confuses litter habits too.

I wanted something soft to avoid sore hocks. I'm just worried that vinyl would be too slippery? Maybe I can find a slip resistant vinyl and stick it over foam. Thanks for the tips.

 

[tiff]

I ended up going with carpet. I had let her run around in a little cardboard&carpet cat condo I had built before and remembered that she hadn't bothered with the carpet in that, so I figured I'd give her a chance on carpet. And she's doing great! I'm half surprised but mostly proud of her :3 She's been in her cage for 2 days now and hasn't nipped at the carpet or gone to the bathroom on it at all! So I'm still just keeping an eye out and making sure she has lots of cardboard and stuff to chew on. But so far so good! She seems to love her new home, which I knew she would because I built her a big top shelf since I know she loves to be up high, and she spends almost all of her time up there :3

 

[Azerane]

I'm so glad it's worked out. I put a single square of carpet down on one of bandit's steps and he was chewing on it within hours, so it definitely didn't work for me Cage looks great, have you double-layered the grids in some places? Your cat looks very interested