Please help! We recently took our male chinchilla to the vet, and now that he's back, his girlfriend won't let him back into the pair's cage. In fact, she is incredibly aggressive toward him!
Izzy is a white male, and Mazzy is a grey female. Both were purchased from the same breeder at the same time. They normally love each other: they sleep in a spooning position, eat from the same bowl, and generally do everything together. Izzy has been sick in the past -- we took him to the vet twice in 2008, once for neutering and once because he had a stomach problem -- and Mazzy easily let him back into the cage upon his return.
This time, however, she chases him and nips at his face. We've tried holding each chincilla and slowly placing them closer together, but she lunges as soon as she is close enough. Last night, she even bit me (hard -- the first time she has ever bit hard enough to break the skin) when I stopped her from attacking Izzy during an attempted shared playtime.
We currently have Izzy in a smaller cage and Mazzy in the regular cage. Both cages are sitting beside each other in an attempt to re-familiarize Mazzy with her old boyfriend. Izzy seems to still enjoy Mazzy, but she remains aggressive and mirrors his movements in her own cage. If he climbs his ramp and goes onto the top level on his cage, for example, she'll do the same in hers, all the while trying to push her little nose out of the bars in order to bite him.
Please help! These chinchillas are a joy the lives of my fiance and I, and we want them to love each other again. We have no idea what to do. This has been going on for 3 days now, and we try to reconcile their differences every evening.
