Question:
Robert and I are planning on redesigning the inside of Buddy's cage to make room for his new hammock. We are planning on adding and/or removing shelves, maybe removing the ramp and maybe making a new house. I know that Robert has a bunch of crazy ideas for what he would like to do, but I wanted to see if you guys have any ideas.

Here is a picture of Buddy's cage right after it was built. The inside is pretty much the same except that there is now a flying saucer wheel on the back wall and the ramp has been moved to the front of the cage.






Hmm...that isn't the best picture of the shelves inside the cage...I have better ones at home, but I'm at work right now, so I'll have to wait until I get home to post them. I would still appreciate any ideas though.


Answer:
Here's a better picture of our shelf layout:



Any new layout suggestions?


Answer:
I would definitely add some more surface area by adding deeper shelves. That will give him more running room. My guys do laps around their middle floor. Then you could hang the hammock on the bottom side of one shelf and also have a shelf below (in case he falls). What about adding a staircase? It would be fairly easy to do using dowels and non-toxic wood glue. You could use the bottom side of the stairs to hang chew toys even.


Answer:
That kind of sounds like what Robert wants to do. He was thinking about adding on to the top shelf on the right hand side of the wall. I thought that it would be better for him to have more smaller shelves to jump on rather than bigger ones to run on...maybe we could do a combo of the two...

How exactly would you make a staircase with dowels? I remember seeing someone make one with pvc pipes and dowels...


Answer:
The staircase is pretty straight forward. Grap some 1" X 4" pine and cut it into pieces for the flat part of the stair and the vertical part. There are actual dowel sets that you can buy that include the fluted dowels, drill bit, and a rubber guide to put on your drill bit so that you don't drill the hole too deep. For everything you need to know about dowels, see this site. I would use 2-3 dowels at each joint. For the most strength, I would drill into the butt-end of the vertical piece and then into the bottom side of the horizontal part (so that the dowels are running vertical). Make sure you don't put the dowels too close to the edge, otherwise, Buddy might chew into them while he's re-shaping the stairs.

I could try to draw a picture if I'm not making sense.


Answer:
I sort of understand...I'll show the instructions to Robert - he'll be doing all of the building.

I'm not quite sure what I could attach a staircase to though because I have a pullout pan on the bottom of my cage...


Answer:
You could probably screw it into the lowest shelf and then use an L-bracket for the top of the staircase.