Hello everyone! I am new to this site and wanted to firstly introduce my little darling, Lady Fluffy Butt, who we call “Lady” for short. She just turned a year in December, but we adopted her on New Years Eve from a shelter about 40 mins away from us that specializes in rabbits! Now Lady is not my first rabbit, but I am by no standard of the word an expert on bunnies. We had two Holland Lops when I was growing up, and on through college, and while I was in High School, I spoiled them but when I went away to college, my mom sort of became their ‘person’. I want to establish that these two (Cocoa and Peanut) were both girls, sisters but neither spayed. I don’t necessarily think they were bonded, though they shared space. Plenty of fur pulling, humping and chasing each other were the norm for these two. Fast forward to last year when I decided as an adult that I needed a bunny to feel like my household was complete (no kids, just me and my hubby). Princess Milkshake was spayed and an absolute ANGEL. Kisses from the first day, perfect with her litter box, adjusted super well to the noises in my home and loved to be loved on. She was curious but didn’t really have a mischievous bone in her body. Unfortunately three weeks after adopting her, Princess Milkshake developed an inoperable brain tumor and needed to be put down. Half of me never wanted to get a pet again, but after a lot of internal debating and talks with my husband, we came to adopt Lady. Now for the most part, Lady is a very good girl. She lives in our kitchen, just like Princess Milkshake did and just like Cocoa and Peanut did when I was growing up. She uses her litter box, eats her hay, and LOVES pets, I mean seriously, I can pet her for an hour no problem. But she is taking some time adjusting to our house and I know it’s the norm, but I want to help make her happy and I don’t want to be a bad bunny mom. 

When we first got Lady, we gave her two litter boxes (so she could decide which she liked best) and three little bath mat sized rugs to lay on, because she doesn’t love our tile floor. And she seemed fine like that, but that was only the first day, so it’s hard to really tell. The second day, me and my husband both had the day off so we figured we could open up the house to Lady to see how she did. BAD idea. BAD BAD BAD idea. It took an hour of me trying to lure Lady to the kitchen with treats (which she was NOT going for) and resulted in me having to try to corner her in and chase her around the house until I finally picked her up and set her in the kitchen. I know this isn’t ideal and I was so stressed it would hurt our bond, but the next day she was all wanting me to pet her and my husband and I decided it would be a LONG time before she got the whole house again. Well after having her for a week and her being so good, I wanted to expand the kitchen area for her. So we bought a big 5×7 rug that covers almost the whole kitchen. It even leads up to the baby gate we had her blocked off in and my hub and I loved it when she would come to the gate to greet us. Well, yesterday, he noticed that it looked like she had been chewing on her baby gate (which is just a super cheap one), so I threw a blanket over it, figuring if she didn’t see the lattice, she wouldn’t chew it. I worked a double yesterday (which I rarely do) so I didn’t have time to play with her lots, but got an hour and a half lunch that I could spend with her, so we laid there and she let me pet her and climbed up all over me. 

Well when I got home last night, we had an unexpected house guest, my husband’s cousin, who my husband tends to forget about the world around. So I was unsurpised when he told me he only spent a little bit of time with Lady and when I looked into the kitchen, I saw that she had scraps of her bedding spilled out around her litter boxes, had moved her litter boxes, the kitchen looked much messier than she left it AND the baby gate had cardboard covering most of it. My husband told me it was because she chewed a hole she could fit through in it and I sighed and tried to go play with her and ended up staying up a lot later than I was prepared for, just trying to quell the boredom that I figured had caused this destructive behavior. Fastforward to 4am when I woke up to my husband telling me that he had heard a noise for a few hours that he thought was the neighbors downstairs. Nope. Turns out it was Lady. There was a tiny little area of the gate that wasn’t covered by cardboard and she COMPLETELY destroyed it. She was also, once again, a nightmare to get back into her home and honestly, I am just so happy she is alive because  we have so many electrical things plugged in and I’m happy she didn’t chew any cords (on New Years Day she chewed the cord to the Christmas Tree… thank God that wasn’t plugged in). I built a barricade that was complete overkill in the kitchen since it was 4am and like no stores were open for me to go browse baby gates and took away her 5×7 carpet, leaving her with her litterbox and bath matts, fearing that I had expanded her territory too soon (I don’t remember where I read it, it was somewhere in the Peanut and Cocoa days, but I remember hearing that if you expand a bunny’s territory too fast, they can misbehave, IDK if it’s true, but my hope was to squash any more bad behavior). We had issues like this with Cocoa and Peanut, though I assumed it was because they weren’t spayed and territorial. So what I’m getting at is I don’t know what to do? Lady isn’t pissed at me for last night, she is still letting me pet her, but now I’m having major anxiety she’ll get out again. I’ve got two baby gates set up, and one of them is much more heavy duty than the previous one, but is this her way of telling me she needs more structure? Should I get her a hutch and only let her come out for play time when me and my husband are home? Do I just leave her with the bath mats and hope this setup works? Was this a one time occurrence because both of her humans were occupied and didn’t get to spend a lot of time with her yesterday? Is she lonely and acting out because of it and is this something that could be helped by trying to bond her?

I’m so sorry this is so long winded but I want to be detailed try to be the best bunny mom I can and I want to make her so happy but I legit cannot do waking up at 4am, wondering if she chewed electrical cords. 

Any and all help is much appreciated!