Does anyone have any good enrichment ideas for a very adventurous Syrian?
We've had Cacao for about 2 months now and her main cage is the Hamster Heaven.
She's incredibly brave and inquisitive. She had started bar-biting a lot when she was in her cage. We've mostly managed to stop her doing that now We covered the areas where she was biting with cardboard and hanging pumice blocks and we've given her loads of out-of-cage enrichment.
She really likes burrowing, so she has a big plastic bin filled with soil and toys, which she can access whenever her cage is open. It's about half the size of her main cage. We also give her loads of free roaming time in our living room. In total, she is spending about 3 hours / day (8pm - 11pm) mostly out of her cage: either in the soil box, exploring our living room or being handled by us. She's very comfortable being handled and walking/climbing on us, but she's not very affectionate/cuddly in personality.
When she is free roaming, she likes to climb up to the windowsill and explore our houseplants, to climb up onto the sofa, and to run back and forth between different areas of the room. She also likes the dark spaces behind our bookshelves.
However, she also knows where the doors to other rooms are; and will spend ages biting at the floor and the door to try to get access to the rest of the apartment. Even when we completely block the gap under the door, she will try to destroy whatever we have blocked it off with (coasters, books, wooden batons), as well as digging at (and unravelling!
) the carpet to try and get underneath the door. She also tries extremely hard to get into the inside of our sofa -- she'll chew the boards that block her from going underneath and will try to squeeze in behind it.
It's not really feasible to give her access to the rest of the rooms because there are places that aren't safe or easy to hamster-proof (eg bathroom, behind wardrobes, kitchen). So what can we do to discourage her from damaging the doors / floor / sofa and to make her space more enriching?
Things we're currently doing:
- I've ordered a puzzle-feeder that I hope she can use on the floor
- We tried a play-pen and running in the bath, but she knows that these are just tiny enclosures and spends her whole time trying to escape. She chewed through the playpen wall in about 5 minutes.
- Her bar-biting decreased a lot when we gave her more out-of-cage time, so it is helping. She also uses her wheel more now that she has access to other things
- I've done a couple of sessions of clicker training (no exciting tricks yet, just getting used to the clicker), which I'm hoping will be something fun for her to do
- She did have a big sand bath to use outside the cage, which she loved. It's currently out-of-action because she accidentally tipped the sand into the soil container. I've ordered some new sand to replace it
What else can I do to keep her entertained? Are there some good toys she might like to use outside the cage? How can I keep her more engaged in just one room, rather than obsessed with trying to get to other places?
Any advice gratefully received! I've attached some pictures so you can see how her cage + extension connect, and how she explores and destroys our room ...