The Furniture

From top left, clockwise.

• The top white basket is a Slide N' Stack RubberMaid basket. I filled it with litter, and they like to sit in it and use it as an upper-floor litter box.

• The white bird dish is an upstairs waterbowl. There's usually a hammock here too, but it was being washed at the time.

• Roll-a-Nest that is over a year old. They've nearly destroyed the bottom of it, but it still holds together, somehow. They like it under the stair/ramp, and is their favorite sleeping spot.

• Hanging in the middle is their Critter Kabob, where they have some wood chews and often fresh vegetables

• Their Hokie-fleece hammock, with the college VT symbol emblazoned. Instructions for making it are at Building a Hammock

Cage-Building

The playpen is in sections a bit bigger than a standard sheet of paper, and come interlocked as eight peices. I removed two peices from each set to use as shelving/ramps, and had the remaining six form a rectangle. I had to bend a few peices to shape the rectangle to fit the bottom and shape I wanted.

I connected multiple levels with zip-ties, and where I wanted a shelf, I lay one of the extra peices flat along the edges of the frame and ziptied it in place along atleast two edges.

The roof is just the lid to the container that serves as the bottom. It's heavy enough to stay in place, though with pushing, they could probably lift it--so, if necessary, leave something heavy on top to keep it weighted down.

To latch the doors closed, I used picture-hanger hooks. The loop-end can be opened and then closed with pliers to fit onto the cage frame, leaving the hook out to catch the door and hold it closed, as shown (both wire sections are blue).

Hammocks

Here is a lidless downward view of the cage at one point in time, showing the "4th floor" and its hammocks (with Kaly serving as the lovely model!). The corner hammock is an old washcloth folded diagonally and saftey-pinned up, with a dowel rod inserted lengthwise as a support and braced against the sides of the cage. The blue hammock is store-bought.

A hanging bucket to the right is just visible and is Ceres' preferred sleeping spot. This did not last long... it is now sitting on the floor of the middle level (see top pic) with a ziptie securing it to the side of the cage. It can hang with zipties or S-hooks too... but Ceres seems to prefer this bucket on the floor, lol! See Tale: Rearrangement!

Ramps and Shelves

I like to cover some of the inside ramps with saftey-pinned-up washclothes to be easier on the girls' feet (considering they will jump down the ramps from the shelves, as Ceres is showing). The petplaypen comes with latches on one end of each panel, so they easily connect to a shelf or the wall of the cage.

Bird ladders can also be used to form ramps.

The floors are covered with vinyl placemats, cheap and chewable and much better on a rat's feet than straight wire! Wire can cause sprains and also bumblefoot, so covering any wire flooring is best!

The great thing about this wire is how easy it is to bend--as shown here, it can be bent to form a step which can lead both up and have a space to sleep underneath. They love having their nestball under the stair here.

Multiple shelves can combine to form a full new level in the cage, ziptieing them together in the center, and having each shelf panel resting on atleast two walls each.