Building the new cage. Thanks, Mary!

Well, our newest cage, donated by Mary (adopter of the buff kittens), arrived last week, and normally I would not be able to wait to break it out and put it together. But the sniffly sneezes had still not gone away, and there is nothing worse sniffling around during a project, so the cage remained in boxes until yesterday.


Looks pretty simple, huh? And it is...the second time you put one together. There was about a ten minute swearing fest with the first cage until the lightbulb went on. This cage was a breeze now that I knew how everything connected.



They use these nifty clamps. These things drew about five minutes of the swearing fest on the first cage, but now I love them:



So does Dude. EVERYthing's a toy...give it back, you brat!




Here, have a close-up of Sir Brattiness:





The floor (and floor dividers on a multi-cat cage) is the reason you can't really make these yourself. This is one solid molded piece, and it's worth it. There are no little ridges for cat litter to get stuck in. No lips, no grooves---very easy to clean. Towels slide on it, but you have to pay a price somewhere.


However I am fairly certain the wire on top will not hold up the the usual free-roaming kitten lounging, so I have a piece of thin paneling up there for support. And now Annie the feral has a cage she can get some exercise in, until I have the stall in the barn below turned into a cat run for her introduction back to real free-roaming barn cat life (here on our property).



Having this new huge cage meant I had to do some rearranging. The second one is still downstairs with Thomas living in it (due to his continuing tiny sniffle that I don't want these kittens to catch). Once he's adopted, that will come up here.

This is so wonderful. Annie immediately forsook the cat den she ALWAYS hides in to hang out on the highest shelf instead, out in the open. She has been becoming steadily braver, and I've been giving her lots of treat. She's not particularly driven wild by treats or catnip. She's just a kibble sort of cat. She parks her butt when I open the door to clean her new cage and doesn't try to bolt, or hide.