ToT

I switched Mocha to Kleenmama Timothy pellets. Before, she was getting Oxbow Cavy Cuisine, which are very good pellets (in fact, one of the top 3 recommended pellet brands at Guineapigcages.com). But I noticed she was getting milky pee in her cage (aren’t I glad I switched to fleece? wouldn’t have noticed this if the cage had wood shavings), which is the body getting rid of excess calcium (if it’s smooth when dry–if it’s gritty, it’s a sign of bladder stones). If they get TOO much calcium, they could get bladder sludge, which get lead to stones.

Some owners find the milky pee to be normal, although I guess there is some debate recently at the Guinea Lynx message boards over whether or not the excess calcium is a good thing or not. So some folks are making diet adjustments when they notice that their pigs have the white pee. People noticed that their stone pigs have better luck with the Kleenmama pellets (which are considered THE best guinea pig pellets at Guineapigcages I hear). Either something to do with less calcium in the pellets or a different type of calcium. So I switched Mocha over before she could get stones (I think I might have seen some sludge in her cage sometime before her spay).

They smell really good. :O Like how a brand new bag of pellets will smell when you first open it, only these smell…fresher. Like actual animal feed fresh.

She ate most of the 1/8 cup I put in her bowl the first time. :O Later at night, she went back to her dining room to lick up the crumbs. The bowl was completely clean. You’d think Zoey (dog) would’ve somehow gotten into her cage and licked the bowl clean for her. O.o

(Day 2: she didn’t lick up the crumbs. But she does purr/burble when I give her the pellets and still eats it all up or most of it almost immediately after getting it. ^__^;;)

Update: Added images of the floorplan at the time to give a better feel of how my room was rearranged.

Happy New Year! :O I guess I could sum up the previous year in one post, but it has been pretty uneventful… Instead, I will talk about…guinea pig cages! In particular, Mocha’s cage!

Her first cage was a 2 square foot Super Pet cage, which she has been living in for the first 6-7 years of her life (can’t remember if I made the first upgrade before or after her 7th birthday). She had just enough room to sleep, eat, turn around and go to the bathroom, but not much else other than that.

(Floorplan)

For a year I think? I knew her cage was too small for her (thanks to Guineapigcages.com), but was working out a way to at least fit a 7.5 square foot cage in my room by coming up with ways to rearrange my furniture.
(Since the rest of the house is occupied by furniture that everyone uses (sofas and tables) or are rooms that no one goes in (the dining room), keeping Mocha anywhere outside of my room was out of the question. Also I pretty much live inside my room most of the day so she would get more interaction from me this way.)

Eventually, I found out how to fit a 4.5 square foot cage in my room. While it still didn’t meet the requirements for one guinea pig, it was better than what she had currently and was hoping it would work until I could find out how to find room for a 7.5 square foot cage. (The fact that I already had the material for a base laying around–an old art portfolio folder, doing absolutely nothing didn’t take anything away from me financially.)

(Floorplan)

(The pellets that are under the cage in the photo I later found out were manufactured by a company whose products had a history of having harmful affects on animals. So long, Hartz. I will not miss ye! I switched to Oxbow’s pellets soon after.)

Mocha was extremely pleased with the upgrade. Her first reaction to having so much space was to immediately go inside her igloo. And then wander out a bit, explore and go back inside pigloo. Then wander out, explore some more and head back inside pigloo.

(Also this was around when I switched to fleece, after not being able to find any softwood bedding at Petco and said store’s own brand of aspen bedding was ummm…really “spicy” smelling. Also after finding that having to buy woodshavings every other month was going to be expensive.)

After fiddling with this floor planner application for several months, I found that if I moved my bed (with was against the window at the moment) toward to the middle of the room, and move my desk and cabinet against the window, the cage and dresser could go where the desk and bookcase used to be (bookcase is now in between the closet and bathroom door).

(Floorplan)

With this layout, I would only have room for a 2×3 grid cage (7.5 square feet), but Funkymonk suggested I move the dresser right next to my cabinet against the opposite wall, which would leave more room for a bigger cage. I happily agreed to that, and was already planning a 10 square foot cage with a hayloft/upstairs dining room.

When I scavenged extra grids from around my room (shelving under my desk that I found I didn’t really need and others), I added a “dining room” to the existing cage, just to give her more running space by moving all the eating supplies into a separate section.

(Floorplan)

(No pic of this “upgrade” unfortunately, but uhh…imagine it looking like the below pic, only one grid shorter.)

When I bought more grids from Bed, Bath and Beyond, I was fricking finally able to upgrade it to a true 7.5 square foot cage, just enough for one guinea pig. I used the base from the previous setup and cut up the cardboard from the BB&B storage cube box, lined with a trash bag and covered it with a Uhaul furniture pad as a temporary setup until I could build the permanent cage.

(Construction of upper deck has already begun.)

(Floorplan)

Eventually I was able to track down a local sign shop that was willing to sell an entire sheet of blank coroplast, through Guinea Pig Zone, so I was able to begin construction of the final product itself! :O

(Some modifications I made later to the ramp: added a permanent cover so it was more like a tunnel and replaced the white felt-like material with rubber shelf liner for better grip.)

(Coroplast was chosen to match the fleece. :3)

But wait! My work was not done. As it turns out, while she climbed the ramp for the first couple days, she became very reluctant to use it afterwards, which led to her not eating (which I found out due to her losing weight).

I took down the upper deck and collapsed the ramp (which is stashed between my dresser and the wall). But I thought about all the work I went through to make her a huge cage wasn’t and satisfied with just a 10 square foot cage anymore. The cage was rebuilt to be a one level cage with a 10 square foot play area/sleeping area and a separate dining room. Had to donate a bunch of items and hide others–mainly art projects in the closet to make room for the cage. The underside of the cage made great storage space.

(Since guinea pigs aren’t really climbing creatures to begin with, adding an upper deck is entirely optional. In fact, some geriatric guineas have trouble with ramps, either because of arthritis or they just kind of forget how to use them, so they live in one level cages. Mocha is not arthritic (yet, I don’t think) and I think she knows how to use a ramp pretty well (since she’ll scale it when it’s at an extremely shallow angle). She just doesn’t like having to climb at such a steep angle it seems like.)

And then, for my final (I think) upgrade, I elevated the entire cage up one more grid, not only so she’ll be higher up off the ground (and have less of “people towering over me” feeling), but mainly for more storage. Since I had a limited number of grids (even with the new set I bought from Amazon), I had to be creative with the shelving arrangement. In the end, I was able to not only come up with something stable and not wobbly, I was able to find a home for all my stuff with the new storage space. (Even big items like my 18x24in canvases or my big canvas artist portfolio.)

(Floorplan)

I really like this new cage setup SO MUCH. My room has never been this clean, ever since I first moved into it about…12 years ago. All that random junk I had laying around? No room for them, big cage moving in. Time to donate/hide them! (Elevating the cage gave me even more storage space to hide some stuff in, and even then, I still have a little more room left over for more items.) Once I figure it out, I think I will try decorating the cage (maybe adding wallpaper border around the outside or something).

So…moral of the story? Even if you have a small room like mine (11×10 ft) filled with a ton of furniture, you can at the very least, squeeze a 7.5 square foot cage in there (the minimum for two guineas). You’ll probably have to dig around and look for stuff you’re not using anymore and donate them (or throw them out if they’re non-reusable). But it will be worth it. Your guinea(s) will thank you. You, when you have less items taking up space, will thank yourself.

(This might not be a big of a deal if you don’t already have guinea pigs, but if you’re like me and found out too late that your pigs need a bigger cage, time to get cracking!)

So that cage upgrade is this. Originally, the “dining room” (where she spends a lot of time) was on the left, but because it was so close to the door, she got cold easily, even if I were to close the door completely (cold air still snuck in through the cracks). Also Muffin likes to walk in and out of my room as she pleases so I usually leave the door open just a crack for her.

I just recently raised the entire cage up another grid for more storage space (also being elevated keeps her warmer). I bought the grids from Amazon. They are the same brand of grids I found at Staples (Safco), which I like better than the Whitmor grids (the grids themselves feel more solid and thicker, the coating doesn’t chip off as easily and the connectors hold the grids in place better). You might need to use pliers squeeze the grids into the connectors and to help keep them in said connectors, use heavy duty cable ties.

In related news, we ended up bringing Mocha with us to relatives’ houses for Christmas. When guinea pigs don’t like to be alone, they really don’t like to be alone. When Funkymonk and I went hiking for a day, my mom came back late in the afternoon from work and found Mocha hunched over in her igloo like a bison, not eating or doing anything. Mom turned on my bedroom light and fed her the veggies I had packed in the fridge for her in a container and Mocha was back to her usual self (eating, running around, etc). Since guineas need to eat frequently (preferably every 1-2 hours I think it was), not eating for long periods of time is not good.

I was really surprised and kind of offended when some people actually thought the carrier I brought her in (the brown/tan picnic basket-looking thing in the lower left of the photo) is her actual cage (even more offensive in my case, since I went through all that work and time…and money to build a huge 13 square foot cage the size of my bed only to be told “you’re mean, you make her live in that tiny thing?”

I think I will bring this photo on New Year’s when we go to my grandma’s house. >:| (“No, this is not her cage. This is a carrier. THIS *takes out camera* is her cage.”)