get out of my litterbox!

[mjc]

Hey everyone,

Im new to this forum. I have a male albino rex named Toby and a female calico colored lionhead named Poppy.  Poppy is the dominant bun while Toby is submissive.  We are on day 14 of bonding so far and things have been going well. They have gotten to the point where they are comfortable spending all day together and I would like to let them spend the night together. The area where im doing the bonding is right near my bed. Since the area is all unneutral, we’ve been doing bonding on a card table (neither of them are interested in jumping off).

My question is this:  Toby usually likes to spend most of his time in the littlerbox and Poppy occasionally will nip at him to move or get out of the box. Toby however is reluctant to move and sometimes just wont despite Poppy’s nippings. This aggrivates Poppy and her aggression gets worse. Toby will grunt and stomp and shuffle to another end of the box but still wont get out when Poppy is trying to move him out. When poppy is really pissed and angry, then Toby will get out but at this point both Poppy and Toby are pretty upset and need intervention to calm Poppy down. After a few minutes after an intervention, all resumes normally.  Im not sure whether adding another litter box would help or hurt. I think that most of Poppy’s dominance nippy issues are cause of Toby not getting out of the box. Other than that, they are doing well, grooming each other and eveything. Most of the time they are fine sharing the box and once they have a scuffle i just calm them down for a bit. What do you guys recommend to ge tthem to the next level?

-Mary

[Karla]

It sounds like they get on most of the time in the litter box but sometimes Poppy just wants Toby out? If it were me, I would add another litterbox and see how it goes.

Do you see any reason to why Poppy sometimes wants Toby out? Is it when she needs to go to the toilet?

Perhaps Toby is afraid to leave the litter box?

[Deleted User]

Adding another litterbox will never hurt. You can’t know unless you try. It may help.

[mjc]

Thanks for the advice. I just put another box on the table and poppy was a little nippy at first but is calm now. it seems like Poppy always knows when im not looking and then acts up. I dont think theres any reason why she wants him out. I think that she is just being dominant and aggressive. I think Toby might be afraid, but also theres not a lot of room to move around. Theres just no other neutral spots to do bonding.

I’ll let you guys know if the additional box helps. right now it seems some what the same.

[Beka27]

Have you tried using the bathtub or bathroom? That’s typically a neutral space. So do your rabbits have free roam of the house, or they split the house? Most houses have at least SOMEWHERE that no bunnies have been before.

[Lintini]

When my boys were fighting I added another litter box and a hidey igloo house. Between the house and the extra litterbox, all is well now in bink brother land.

[mjc]

hey so they are getting along now on the card table with one litterbox. It took a couple of car rides but they have calmed down. The next step is to collapse the card table as a neutral space and then eventually im going to move them onto a new rug for their permanent habitat. We’ll see. Now they can spend all night and day on the table and not fight, but when i collapse the table, Poppy gets territorial. I think it might just take some time and patience. thanks for the advice.

[jerseygirl]

This sounds promising! I’m curious, they will just stay on the card table day and night and it has no fencing around it?

I’m wondering if you could add another table, fence it all and have this as a cementing habitat? Moving to new spaces can sometimes cause a small setback. Sometimes it is working out what the triggers are (like the litterbox was this time) adapt the habitat until peace reigns. If you move them to the new space early in the day, you have more time to settle them there so they can continue on there thru the night and so on.

Good luck!

[Michelle&Lolli]

Just and FYI – When I got Eddie and Lolli bonded, Eddie was still very dominant and bossy towards her and would chase her out of the litter box all the time. And away from the water bottle. It was never so bad that she wasn’t able to use either though. Basically Eddie was just a bossy bully and tried to boss ME around. lol But I just wanted to let you know that Poppy may still boss him out of the litterbox after you get them bonded.

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