Worlds most irritating rat cage (Ferplast Jenny Rat Cage With Accessories)

Member Name: RattieFink

Product:	Ferplast Jenny Rat Cage With Accessories
Date:	24/03/09 (184 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Big

Disadvantages: Everything else.

The Jenny is a spacious cage designed for ratties, however I think its safe to say although your ratties will love it, YOU wont!!!

The Jenny is a large, squareish cage that comes with a greenish or grey base, wire top with narrow bar spacing (1.4mm), two plastic shelves and two large tubes for your ratties to climb through. it is a fantastic size for a pair of rats, 80cmX50cmX80cm, although technically you could have up to four ratties in it. The shelves and tubes provided extra interest however thats just about where the good points of this cage end.

Firstly, its very innaccessible. It has a large door on top but the doors in the sides are tiny, making accessing the inside of the cage very difficult...if you want to wipe the shelves down every day or two its very difficult unless you are located near the top, if you want to pick up your rats and they are on the bottom you need to angle your arm right in and perform double jointed moves to get at them (which is not brilliant if you have nervous ratties), and when cleaning the bars of the cage you need to remove the base, turn the cage upside down and bend right into the cage...a nightmare if you are less mobile or short like myself.

Although the bar spacing is narrow making this cage suitable for even the littlest of rat babies, the bars are not coated which is a big no-no when it comes to ratties...they pee all over the bars sometimes, and cleaning the bars weekly with a cloth will eventually result in dirty, rusted and degraded bars. I have actually heard of the bars snapping on these, which is clearly very dangerous. For having such a high RRP, this is NOT a cage that will stand the test of time.

Also, the long tube that is supposed to reach from the top shelf to the bottom is actually quite dangerous for little ratties. It has a very smooth surface and my rat assumed she would be capable of climbing along the top and fell off...and this cage is tall so she had quite a fall. The shelf size is so small that it allows rats to fall off the top shelf quite easily, and also provides less floor space than larger shelves would.

Ah, the shelves. They are difficult to fix back on to say the least, they have to be screwed in and no matter whether the wire part of the cage is right way up or upside down, its very difficult to do this unless you have two people...one to hold the shelves and one to screw them in. The shelves also have lines etched on them, and for some reason, little square holes which are IMPOSSIBLE to clean out and thus end up full of disgusting looking, uncleanable stuff.

For the price it is, I feel the Jenny rat cage is a bit of a rip off, its very cheaply made and clearly no thought has gone into ease of access and cleaning. The RRP is £154.99, although it can be bought for £99, but personally I'd go for the Freddy 2 max instead, which is the same size but with bigger doors and coated bars...much better.

Another downside to this is that it isnt really suitable for anything other than rats...chinchillas and degus will chew their way out of this in about five minutes, so its not a very versatile cage.

This is the rat cage you are likely to see on sale at Pets at Home but I would save your money and consider a different cage, this one is the biggest pain in the bum!

Summary: Not worth the money!