I feel like such a bad pet owner. I love my chinchilla but I am sitting here at my computer and I can't help but feel guilty.

It all started when I got a new cage some months back. Bubba (the chinchilla) was outgrowing his two shelf cage and I wasn't able to get him out to play as often as I thought he needed, so I went down to PetCo and bought him a new "condo". It has six levels and plenty of room for him to run and jump to his hearts content. The only problem with this fantastic cage is that it is close to impossible to truly clean. It's tall and the cage doors are at akward places and the bottom of the cage can only be scrubbed out by taking the whole top part of the cage out. It's completely inconvienent. So every week (if I was able) I would vacume out the shelves of the cage and every couple of weeks I would scoop out the bedding from the bottom and replace it.
It probably has only gotten one good scrubbing since Bubba has moved in. Needless to say it has become a problem. In the proccess Bubba has developed a fungus and it won't go away easily. It sounds so gross and yes, it is. luckily he doesn't look any worse for the wear but as a animal lover I have to do something about it. (I also don't need to deal with skin fungus right now.)

Tonight was the time to take action and so I put Bubba in his play area and I set to work. I had to bring out his smaller but easier to clean cage and get it all ready for him to move back into.
I finally finished the ordeal and caught him to put him in his new "old" house. All he could do was hop around and try to find a way out. He has grown so much and it feels really crowded for him. I just feel awful seeing him hop around and not be able to have very much room.
*sigh*
I guess we'll see how the arrangement works out.