This is about our beautiful new castle, which the king built for us for the price of 50 dollars in materials and 3 hours work. No wonder he is the King! It came out so well that he is willing to share his secrets with you other landholders.

The main component of the cage is the PVC-coated wire shelving that is sold in hardware and home improvement stores. There is now a new type out with 1/2 inch spacing between the "bars", and it comes up to 20 inches wide. Basically, all he did was to buy 2 sections of this 6 feet long each, cut them in half, and arrange them in a square. Since each piece is "L" shaped, the top of one "L" fastens to the bottom leg of the next "L". Maybe a look at the picture will help:

Note about cutting the shelving: Our king used a saber-saw with a metal-cutting blade. You could use a hack-saw or bolt cutters, OR you can ask your friendly Home Depot employee to cut the shelving before you leave the store.

He used plastic wire-ties (the ultimate in fasteners!) to fasten the pieces together. Now each side measures 21 inches, so the whole structure is 21 X 21 X 36.

To make the structure more secure, he also bought a piece of plastic "U channel" that is designed to hold plastic latticework (like you'd put under your porch). He used one 8 foot long piece, cut into 4 pieces so that it formed a frame work with the channel pointed down, and secured the corners with metal "L" brackets. On each of the cage "walls" leave 1/2 inch of vertical wire sticking up on the top, and the u-channel frame fits snugly over this. You can use a miter saw to cut 45 degree angles, or you can just cut it straight. Just be sure the size of the "channel" (the groove down the middle) is the same as the cage. Ours came out to 21 1/4 inches between the corner "posts", so the groove must be 21 1/4 inches between corners.

There are lots of options for the top, but he used a couple short pieces of 12-inch shelving. One he fastened down to the framework, and the other hinges off the first, so that the front half of the cage top is an opening. Wire ties work for the hinges. He also cut a door in the front down low, just to help reach things inside. It has a piece of plexiglass for the door. There is no bottom on the cage, so it just sits it in one of those plastic "mess catcher" pans, which is filled with litter.

Fact is, we love our castle so much that when we go questing in the evenings, we often return to Camelot all on our own. Although occasionally we delay until the yogurt drops are offered!

When Arnold arrived to live with us, the King decided it was time for Camelot to expand. And so it did!

The annex was built using the same construction material as the original. In this case, the King used 16-inch shelving. The front on the annex is made of two pieces, joined together (with wire ties) so that the short legs of the "L" are together in the middle. This gives the front and back piece a good rigid structure. The sides are a single piece of the 16 inch shelving. The overall dimensions are 33 by 16 inches.

The shelving used for the annex has one-inch wide "bar" spacing. Now that we are grown-up knights, we can't sqeeze through these, and it makes it easier for us to get scritches! Of course, if any young squires arrive to join our fellowship, they will have to stay in the original castle for a while.

Once again, the top is made of a framework of plastic U-channel. Across the middle of the top is a 5 inch wide piece of plywood, and two pieces of shelving hinge off of it, one opening to the left (as shown in the picture), the other opening to the right. The whole cage sits inside a plastic "sweater box" (not shown in picture).

Across the middle of the cage, inside, a piece of 12-inch wide shelving makes a middle floor, with enough room in front of it to climb up and down. If you look closely at the new picture of the original Camelot, you can see that the plastic shelves were replaced with wire "corner" shelves. All the wire shelves are then covered with plastic needlepoint canvas. This makes it very nice for ratty feet to walk on, but it also drains. Our King doesn't quite agree with our love of pee-puddles. By the way, the corner shelves AND the needlepoint canvas were fastened with wire-ties. We love those things!!

Oh--the most important part! Between the two castles runs a piece of 4-inch PVC drainpipe. Since the pipe is round, each end is capped with a "downspout" adapter. These are sold in order to run rain-gutter downspouts into the drainpipe, but here they change a circular opening into a 2 by 3 inch opening. Just cut out a few bars and it fits right in.

When we aren't spending time in Camelot, we have ANOTHER castle we can visit. This one is even more fun, since it is made out of boxes (one of our favorite things), and has lots of windows to look out. Just take a look:

A Confession

Okay, the truth is that after a couple years, we got tired of lugging this big HEAVY cage into the bathtub for scrubbings. We eventually purchased an R-695 cage from Martin's Cages. At the time, the powder coated version of this cage cost about the same as what we spent to build Camelot. (It's a little more expensive now, around $76.00) The cage is wonderful, well constructed, much easier to carry. Best of all, Martin's is a company you can feel good buying from. They support rat owner groups (like the RMCA) with donations to their events, and seem to genuinely care about make a product that is suitable for the animal. Spend the extra to get the powder coated version!