I'm very new to hamster owning.
I have a female Syrian of unknown age. I used aspen wood for the bedding, and initially tried using paper bedding for the litterbox. She dug in it, and it dissapeared, so I began using actual bet litter instead. I began giving her some paper bedding, which would soon dissapear - I assumed she was bringing it into her hut to sleep in. I did this for a couple weeks, using both store-bought brown paper bedding and torn up toilet paper. A few days ago, I saw her eating up some strand of something, which upon closer inspection, was a strand of toilet paper. I removed what I saw remaining, and lifted the but to see if there was any paper under it - there wasn't.
She had eaten the five handfuls total of paper bedding I'd put in the cage.
What can I do to stop this? What can I give it for bedding now that I know it'll eat paper? Why does it do this?
My only theory is that I have all the hamster supplies in one drawer, meaning the package of open bedding is in the same drawer as the food, but this doesn't explain the toilet paper. She has shown other behavior like this, chewing on the plastic toys, using the wooden chews as a kind of bedding and stuffing the hutch with them, and while it seems litter trained, it only uses the wheel as such even when a litterbox is placed next to it and I move any waste there. Are these connected events? Any information would help!