After years of my parents telling me I wasn't allowed another pet after I didn't take care of my budgie when I was 9, as soon as I moved out several months ago I decided that I wanted a pet as soon as possible. The rules of my contract for my flat are that I was not allowed any pets whatever. However, I decided I could probably get away with something small in a cage.

I was having difficulty deciding between some kind of rodent, bird or fish (although having said this I have managed to kill about 15 tropical fish previously, so that was probably not the best idea). Anyway, I decided to just look around Pets At Home and see what they had. It was upon this trip where the Pink Palace caught my eye. Made by Rotastak (owned by Armitage), the Pink Palace is a cage made for either mice, hamsters or gerbils. I decided there and then that I was having this cage, and that I would get a pair ( what I would later find out to be a breeding pair) of gerbils.

Rotastak do a very large variety of different cages, all designed for small rodents. In the shop, you buy just the basic cage. Mine, the Pink Palace, has 3 different levels, a large basic empty one, with just the water bottle. The middle one is around half the size of the bottom one, complete with a wheel for the gerbils to run on, and the top level, which is quite small, is designed as an "attic bedroom".

Throught these levels there are tubes allowing the gerbls to get from one level to another, and attached to the front of the cage is a 'loop-the-loop' tube which also allows the gerbils to get to each level. It's also glittery and pink, which is clearly why I chose it!!

Rotastak cages are very easy to clean, almost everything is detachable in some shape or form, though getting hol of the damn gerbils can sometimes prove to be difficult when they hide in the middle of a tube!

On top of the basic cage, Rotastak have made available lots of other parts that you can add to your cage. This includes room extensions, carry boxes, 'burrow basements', dining rooms, extra pods and extra tubes and tunnels. This means that you can make your cage as large as you want.

Rotastak cages are designed to keep you and your pet happy. Not only does it amuse the owner by watching their pets do loop-the-loops and run round on wheels, it keeps the pet entertained too, which is vital. They are also supposed to recreate their natural environment, I am not entirely sure why this is though, as I have never lived as a gerbil, hamster or mouse. I'll just thake their word for it.

The cage's measurements are as follows;

Height : 53cm
Width : 48cm
Depth : 58cm

For £54.99 the Pink Palace is certainly not cheap. But if you paid this price (which I didn't, I decided to take the ebay option for around £30!) you would expect this Pink Palace to be comepletely rodent proof.

However, since I purchased this cage around the end of September, much damage has already been sustained to this cage. The plastic food bowl provided had been completely chewed up and vanished within a few months. But I can deal with this, food bowls aren't expensive. Rotastak do try to take care of chewing problems by providing metal rinds to fix on all ends of tunnels so that they cannot chew their way out. However, after going out last week for a night out, I returned home at around 2am, only to find that one of the tubes leading outside of the cage and back into it again (see picture), had a great big hole in where those pesky little animals had chewed through. I have to give it to them though, all the time they were scratching at it endlessly, and we were just calling them stupid because we thought they would never get out, they were thinking how stupid WE were. And they were right. Pulling fridges out, pulling washing machines out, pulling the fronts of cupboards off, and eventually having to pull the front of the bath off to get the damn things out at 2.30am is not something you want to be doing!

Still fuming the next morning I decided to ring Rotastak and complain, however they don't seem to answer their phones. A few days later, I have still not managed to get through to them.

However, they do sell spare parts if anything does get broken, so it's not like I have to buy a new cage, but I am hoping that they will take responsibility for this and send me spare parts free of charge. For now, I'm having to make do with a hell of a lot of masking tape and heavy items leaning against the cage until I get it fixed!

Rotastak also claim that such cages are notr suitable for breeding. However after apparently being supplied with 2 males by Pets At Home, I ended up with 7 new additions to my cage which all lived and eventually ended up supplied to various unsuspecting members of my family!!

Having said all of this, I still would not swop my Pink Palace. It is a hugely entertaining cage, and is perfect for any girly girl!!!

Thanks for reading.