Hi all –

My 2.5 year old lionhead has been chewing incessantly recently, and I don’t know why!  I’ve seen many posts about this of course, but the usual causes of boredom and confinement don’t seem to apply.  He’s always been a chewer (and eater… he chews/eats any and all wood, cardboard, paper) – but not to this extent.

It doesn’t help that we recently moved into a new place and now share my bedroom…. so being woken up at 5, 6am to him chewing violently on his cage bars for no reason is not fun.

Some background:
He is neutered.  
He has the run of the entire room all day long – maybe he’s too spoiled, but he has too much energy to be confined to a cage.  His cage BTW, is a large 2 story unit, hacked from an Ikea shelving unit, connected with tunnels (I attached a pic).   He recently has taken to chewing on the 2nd story bars – and it’s not because he’s locked in his cage, he hops in himself and goes purposefully to the 2nd story just to chew on the bars.

I have been trying to close him in the cage at night to get into the routine, but then he’ll start chewing super early in the morning.  You would think this would be to let him out, but even when I open the cage doors, sometimes he won’t leave, or he’ll hop right back in and continue chewing.

He also chews on the untreated wood futon that has basically become one of his many chew toys (along w toilet paper rolls, wood blocks, etc).  I have also recently tried to give him a dig box but he doesn’t seem to have much interest (tho he does like to dig/ push my duvet…)

are there any other reasons other than confinement and boredom that would make him chew so much recently??
and any other suggestions of what I might be able to do?

thanks!