Build A Cage (or Room to Run on a Shoestring)
Play the movie HERE.
You can give your cats three times the space for the same cost as using chain link by using cattle panels. These panels are 8 feet high and 20 feet long, with four inch openings and are made of 6 gauge, galvanized steel. For twice the money you can get them double galvanized. The biggest benefit is that by using cattle panels you can think creatively in the formation of your cage and are not limited to straight lines. The uses and combinations of cattle panels are limited only by your imagination. These panels far exceed strength requirements for large carnivores and yet are flexible enough to be easily maneuvered into the desired shape of the cage. We buy our panels from Bob Barker at 319-293-3548; however, there is a minimum order of 150 panels at a cost of $45 each as of 1/1/05. The panels are assembled by using 9 gauge galvanized hog rings that are obtainable at a local farm supply store.
Depending
on your needs, some of these steps can be eliminated. We are in a low area and
before each cage is built, we bring in tons of fill dirt to raise the floor
level of the cage. Many germs and parasites that live in the soil are fairly
innocuous when it is dry, but become dangerous to the cats when rain pools in
the cage. We are subject to extreme heat and for that reason we bury the dens in
the dirt to keep them cool. This would work in reverse in very cold climates. We
dump the dirt and spread it, then position the big plastic dog houses. The dog
houses have had holes drilled in the floors so that they can be sprayed clean.
We plant a pipe at the door to the dog house because after the dirt is dumped,
we want to be able to dig out to the door. You can see the opening in the photo
to the right. We then cover the entire dog house with dirt and let it settle
while we build the cage. We will dig the hole to the door out later and
landscape around the opening so that the cat's running up and down the hill
doesn't erode the façade. We have a stock pile of trees that were uprooted when
the nearby mall was built and we drop one on its side in the center of the cage
area. Anything you will be putting in the cage that 
is too big to fit through
the door, needs to go inside now. The photo above left is the back side of a
den mound and you can see the cougar on top of the mound. This den is 8 feet by
ten feet underground and is far larger than needed.
At right is the opening to the underground den and by landscaping and digging a tunnel back to the opening, the cat has a naturally safe place to live.
Our cages are built into the existing terrain to the greatest extent possible. Before you begin, lay the panel on the ground and cut it into two 8' x 9'8” sections. You now have the starting point for a cage that will be 9'8” tall.
First piece of cattle
panel: Two men can easily walk the panel into place. The horizontal bars should
be on the outside of each piece. This makes it easier to bend the panels into a
peanut shape and you will be bending with the welds and not against them. This
will extend the life of your cage and make your job much easier. A shovel
propped against one end and a rake propped up against the other is sufficient to
hold this piece in place until you bring the second panel.
The second panel is brought
into place with the horizontal wires on the outside and is overlapped to the
first piece by one square (4 inches). This is hog ringed into place. A hog ring
is a 9 gauge "C" shaped piece of metal that can be squeezed into an
"O" with a special pair of hog ring pliers. The second piece is curved
into the general direction that you want your cage to go. We will drag it into
the exact shape after we have come full circle. The third, fourth and fifth
panels are hooked together similarly, continuing in the general circular path.
You only need to put a few rings in to steady the walls at this point.
You may have to 
pull and
push to bring the fifth piece back to the end of the first panel and it may come
at a sharp angle, but that's okay. Overlap the four inches just like before and
ring the far end of the last panel to the inside of the second vertical row of
the first panel. Once that is secure, then you can put some serious pressure on
the wall to pull it out into a gentle curve, rather than a point and then ring
the outside vertical of the first panel to the second vertical row of the fifth
(or last) panel. Now you have a free standing circle. The red pliers in the
photo at right are commonly called fence pliers and have a special head that
makes it easy to un-ring a hog ring if it turns out to be placed wrong.
Push
and pull to shape it into a peanut or kidney shape. The object of this is to
make sure that at no point in your cage that you cannot reach across the top to
the other side in 20 feet or less. The reason for this is that the panels only
come in lengths of up to 20 feet. The longest support "bridge" that
you will be able to fashion will then only be 20 feet. ( Patching them together
doesn't work very well. ) Use a tape measurer to check all intervals to be sure
that you will be able to span in 20 feet or less. You could make the cage
literally hundreds of feet long, but only 20 feet wide. From the air it will
look like a fat, silver snake. The smallest we have ever built used four panels
on the ground level and even that small it won't tip over. The larger the cage,
the more stable, provided again, that you do not exceed 20 feet across.
There is a way to make the cages more than 20 feet wide by creating a juncture of 20 foot wide supported walls and then cutting out the bottom for the cats to have the benefit of the entire area, but this takes a familiarity with the process.
Here
I should note that we use no support posts. If you were installing support
posts, you could dramatically alter the shapes of the cage. (Like go in straight
lines) We don't use them because cats tend to spray the posts, whereas on the
post-less cage, they spray the plants and logs, thus saving on the life
expectancy of the wire. The photo at right shows how we notch around any trees
that are inside the cage so that the cat gets the benefit of using the lower
limbs. Most of our cages are built 10 feet high to 16 feet high and have a roof.
If your animal is terrestrial and your authorities allow it you can stop at 8
feet high and install a double row of hot wire around the top. We have had no
problem in housing Servals and Caracals 
this way. We use a solar powered system
that is good for five days of total darkness because most hurricanes pass
thorough in less time than that and when we have bad weather we have no
electricity. In the photo at below and left, you can see the solar power panel
attached to the outside wall of the cage and the two rows of silver stand offs
that hold the wire near the top. Be sure to position the box to receive the
ultimate amount of sunlight through out the day. This cage is eight feet tall
and houses a Serval.
The photo at below right shows just how much enjoyment your cats will get
from having branches to snooze in. If you elect for an open top cage be sure
that the cat cannot climb a tree in the center and leap out of the cage. They
are amazing high wire artists.
Go back to your first
panel and in
the top corner notch out a square that is 8 inches by 8 inches.
Your second row will be overlapping four inches vertically and horizontally and
if you do not notch this out, you will have four rows of wire in these corners
and it is very near impossible to clamp a hog ring around all four. Your second
row will be attached from inside the cage so be careful which side is notched
out to make the seam as smooth as possible. If you
don't understand this step don't do it.
When it comes time to overlap, you will see the problem and can snip away the excess portions then.
I
f you are going to install a
second row it is critical that your bottom row is level. You can tell by looking
at the outside curve of the panel. 
If the cage is leaning in at the bottom, then
the bottom needs to be dug out until the panel is straight up and down. If the
panel is leaning out at the top, then the bottom of the panel needs to be jacked
up a bit on some rocks or sticks until it appears straight up and down.
Check
each curve and dig it out or jack it up accordingly. Once it is level, you can
cut pieces of scrap wire and hog ring it to the bottom in the areas that you
jacked up to give extra support and to fill any gaps at ground level.
Using bolt cutters, cut your
door into the cage. Keep in mind that this will be where your safety gate area
will have to go so that you allow plenty of room. Also bear in mind that you
will be carrying pet taxis through this hole and plan accordingly. We leave a
lip of 6 to 8 inches at the bottom so that the door can be better secured and we
only make the opening 56 inches tall as it gives us the most security and
stability in the door. The door will be larger than the opening, in every
direction, and will be mounted on the inside, swinging in, so that if the cat
were to throw himself against it, there is no danger of it coming through the
hole. We mount it using hog rings all the way down one side and then we fasten
it with snaps at the top, bottom and two on the side. A lock can then be
attached to insure the safety of the animal.
To bring the cage to 10
feet of height (or 12) we cut the panels lengthwise into strips. If you want the
advantage of a full 16 foot cage to encompass a tree, then use a whole panel.
The bottom corner (8 inches by 8 inches) of the first piece of the second row
should be notched out because the overlap would have caused four layers of wire
at the corner joints and this is very hard to get a hog ring around. Ladders are
strategically positioned inside the cage so that two people can carry the strips
into place and then with the horizontal wires facing out we begin at the
beginning of the first panel and continue around the circle in the same
direction as the bottom row. As each piece of the second row is attached, we
fill in all of the rings that we will be using rather than just "tacking" it together. You are already up there on a ladder and the
roofing is heavy and stressful on the top row so it needs to be secure.
Two poles, as would be
used on chain link caging, are cut to lengths of 30 feet and a hook is bent into
one end of each pipe. These will be used to lay across the roof so that the
panels for the roof can be slid into position. See below. The hooks and
the extra length are so that they don't fall out. Eleven foot pipes (for a ten
foot cage) are also cut with a notch cut across the hole in the end. These are
used to support the roof until it is ringed in place. See above. Ladders
are set up along the path the roof panel will be going. One outside the cage and
two inside at both walls.
At above left you can see the two silver poles supporting the roof while the two men ring it and the bridges in place. Vern is measuring the distance across the top for the next bridge (or brace) piece to be cut.
The
roof panel is carried overhead by two men. One climbs the outside ladder and the
roof panel is fed, hand over hand, up over the wall and then slid across the
cage on the two pipes. Once most of the weight is laying on top of the cage, the
man on the ground runs inside and up the ladder at the far wall and helps
position the wire into place. The roof should be started at one end and piece by
piece go down the length of the cage. Once it is adjusted to cover the most
space, with the least amount
of waste, it is then hog ringed into place. Later
you will come back and cut off the excess. This can be done with two people, but
three makes it much easier.
Up and over, sliding on the poles that are laying across the top.
Bracing
the roof: 
Twenty feet is too far to go without bracing. It may look okay for a while,
but then the cage will start to sag in the center and bow the walls. It is in no
danger of collapse, but looks awful and can be cured with just a few moments
effort. We cut the 20 panels into strips that are three squares (12 inches) wide
down the full length of the panel. At the end of each attached roof panel, these
are attached, perpendicular, to the roof panel and anchored to the walls at both
ends. This keeps the roof level and the walls straight.
The lockout is a multipurpose
component that serves as a feeding and watering area, a lock out area, a
removable transport cage in an emergency, an easily modified squeeze cage using
the "Cat-A-Comb". Each lockout is built to accommodate the size cat
that will be using the cage. They are easily removed and can be switched around
as needed. They are cut from the same size panel wire so that the spaces match
up. They are equipped with a water bowl (see at this end of box with white shade
lid) that is boxed in and elevated so that the cats can't urinate in their
water. The box housing the bowl should be large enough that the bowl can be
tipped over, cleaned and refilled every day. By setting the bowl down in this
box, most cats will leave it there. If you have one that is insistent on running
off with the dish, you can modify it to have a half lid inside that keeps the
bowl from coming out unless the keeper unsnaps it from outside. In the photo you
can see the white piece of slate that we use for the door, hanging from a rope
attached to a pulley. The pulley is fastened to the back of the lockout with a
snap so that the keeper can easily drop the door when the cat comes in to eat.
The vertical white pipe is the sprinkler system which runs up the side and
across the top of the cages. This can be used in the event of fire, or just to
water the cat-a-tat and cool off the cat. There is a shut off valve 4 feet off
the ground for easy use.
We use stepping stones of the slickest variety as food blocks inside so that
they are easily scrubbed and disinfected every day. The doors can be pieces of
thin cutting board in metal tracks or chain link posts covered in panel wire
(see the photo at right). Either can have a long rope attached to the top and a
pulley system so that you can shut the door while the cat is eating from a
distance away. 
At right you can see the double guillotine doors. This would be
for joining two cages together without the risk of the animals being
able to snag one another when they were separated. This would be the preferred
method for larger cats.
With small cat species we use the safety gate area as the common hall between the two adjoining cages. The doors to the individual cages can be shut from the outside before the keeper ever enters the area.
The cage at the left is a "tri-plex" and is perfect for introductions of hard to mix species.
The cage is separated into three completely separate compartments, each having
safety doors, dens, logs and landscaping. The units on the ends each have their
own separate lockouts for feeding and water. None of the cages actually shares a
wall, so you don't have to worry about bitten paws and tails, but they are close
enough that the cats get to know each other very well. Every day the center cage
is left open to one side or the other so that the cats alternated in the safe
area. When an introduction is made, it will be into this common area.
These
cages are very sturdy. We had a full grown pine tree fall and hit a chain link
cage and this cage at right. The chain link cage was entirely destroyed.
Fortunately the cat had been moved out the night before the storm. The top half
of the pine tree landed squarely on the cage at right and we had to cut it into
pieces to remove it. The damage in the one curved 4 inch space that you see is
all the damage that the cage suffered as a result of the impact. The top had
bowed, but was easily pushed back into shape. The best part is that the two cats
that share this cage were in no danger of escape or of being crushed because of
the strength of this cage design.
We utilize a lot of
concrete work in our dens and pools. Vern uses the concrete mix that you
would get at any home building supply store and mixes it one pan at a time and
applies it one handful at a time. He builds the form out of the 4 x 4 wire
and then molds diamond wire lathe (like you use for stucco) into the rock like
shapes he wants and then smoothes the concrete over this creation. He then
uses a paint brush and a can of water to smooth out the cracks. You will
need to wear gloves when handling the wet concrete as it dries out your hands
and will cause them to crack and bleed. Vern mixes each batch a slightly
different colour and patches them together to give the natural rock
effect.
Still not sure you can do it? Order the movie by calling 813 323-3263. For $30.00 including shipping and handling we will mail you a video or CD with film footage of how to build "Room to Run on a Shoestring".
For information about Our Cages, click here.
Bengali the tiger gets a new water bowl with the help of Scott Lope, Barbara Frank and a few of the volunteers and interns as Big Cat Rescue. This video is only 8 minutes long, but is about 100 MB as it is high quality film and takes 6 minutes to download with DSL. See what Bengali does in the end. Click here: http://media.libsyn.com/media/bigcatrescue/BCR3.mp4
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