The present invention relates to a storage cage for domestic animal or objects outside a shop or the like against a wall or another vertical surface and the adjacent ground surface, said storage cage comprising four separate sides in addition to said wall and ground

surface, and that the storage cage has a lockable door.

It is a known fact that for example dogs, which are left outside a shop, in a shopping centre or the like, unfortunately, because of their sometimes very high value, are a very theft-prone object. For this reason, most dog owners do not risk tying their dogs outside a shop or the like. One example, dog owners, which are forced to rest their dogs, cannot accordingly combine this with walking to the shop. This is for the simple reason that it is not allowed to bring dogs into shops, shopping malls, shopping centres or the like. Hence, the dog instead has to be left alone at home for a longer time. Neither is it possible to bring the dog in a car, when driving to the shop, with the intention of leaving the dog alone in the car while making the purchases, as this is not allowed. Hence, there is a very great need for, above all for dog owners, being able to, for shorter periods, leave their dogs in safe keeping while they make the necessary errands.

Also other objects that are especially liable to be stolen, such as perambulators, bicycles, luggage and the like not being desirable to bring into shops, are difficult to leave outside without supervision and protection.

Accordingly, the main object of the present invention is to solve, among others, the problem mentioned above by simple and efficiently functioning means in a reliable and economically working way.

Said object is achieved by means of a storage cage according to the present invention that essentially is characterized in that paired cage side walls are formed of bars that are articulately united to the common pivotably mounted beams of the cage sides and upper side, that a wall bracket including supporting beams for the storage cage is articulately connected with said frame beams by means of hinges, said storage cage being arranged to, as an integral unit, be turned around said hinges connected with the supporting beams and the wall bracket between a lowered position, forming a storage cage, and a raised collapsed position closely against the wall in question leaving the subjacent ground surface accessible.

The present invention has solved the problem by a storage cage where four limiting surfaces can be folded down and the two other ones consist of the ground surface as well as of a vertical surface that may be a house wall, planking, a fence or the like. The storage cage can be folded up and collapsed in such a way that it in the folded-up position against a wall or the like occupies a very small area of the ground surface, which is advantageous, among other things, upon cleaning.

The storage cage may be provided with a locking device that may be a mortise lock, padlock or the like. This lock can lock the storage cage in either the folded-up or the folded-down position. In the folded-down locked position, the storage cage cannot be lifted up to make it possible to steal the contained object. The storage cage is also provided with a door, through which a domestic animal can be introduced into and fetched out of the storage cage. The door may be provided with one of different types of locks available on the market. This lock may preferably be a coin-operated lock where the user, after having introduced the object that is to be protected, inserts coins to allow locking of the door and bringing the key with him. When the device is folded down against the ground, the same may, as a suggestion, have the following dimensions in mm: width 800, height 700 and depth 700 yielding a volume of about 0,4 m ³ and with a floor area of about 0,6 m ² , which is sufficient in the great majority of cases. Of course, all dimensions may be varied within very wide limits. Decisive for the size of the storage cage is nothing but the available space. In certain cases, it may be suitable to make the storage cage so large that, for example, a perambulator can be parked therein.

The invention is described below in the form of a preferred embodiment example, reference being made to the accompanying drawings, in which;

Fig. 1 shows the storage cage in the folded-down position with the door closed,

Fig. 2 shows the storage cage folded up against a wall,

Fig. 3 shows the locking state of the storage cage with the storage cage in the folded-down position,

Fig. 4 shows the storage cage having a lock and with the storage cage in the folded-up position, and Fig. 5 shows the upper side of the storac cage, a side wall as well as the front side wall.

Item numbers

1 Upper side.

2 Side wall of one short side.

3 Side wall of the opposite short side.

4 Front side wall in which a door is placed.

5 Door in the front side wall.

6 Frame that forms the upper side and provides

attachment for bars.

7 Bars in the upper side.

8 Part of the frame in which the bars are movably

suspended .

9 Bars articulately suspended in the parts of the frame as well as articulately attached to the under beams.

10 Under beams of the side walls.

11 Supporting beams of a wall bracket.

12 The wall bracket for the supporting beams.

13 Part of the frame in which the bars are movably

suspended.

14 Hinges between the frame and at the top of the

supporting beam of the wall brackets.

15 Hinges between the under beams and the lower parts of the supporting beams of the wall bracket.

16 Frame forming the front side wall in which the door i mounted.

17 Post forming attachment for the door.

18 Frame of the door.

19 Hinges in which the door is suspended, attached to th door post.

20 Bars in the front side wall. 21 Hinges by which the frame is suspended in the front edge of the frame of the upper side.

22 Bars in the door.

23 Hinges that unite the lower part of the frame to the front part of the under beams.

24 The angle of the supporting beams to the ground

surface .

25 Hasp forming locking device of the door, here shown in the simplest design intended for a padlock.

26 The outwardly folded, triangular attachments of the wall bracket for the beam.

27 Lock support plate attached to the supporting beam

having a hole for a mortise lock.

28 Fastening devices that hold the lock support plate in the supporting beam.

29 Hole for a mortise lock in the lock support plate.

30 Hole for a mortise lock in the frame part of the upper side .

31 Hole for a mortise lock in the frame of the front

side .

32 Ground surface.

33 Wall against which the storage cage is attached and possible to fold up.

34 Storage cage.

The invention can be realized in several different ways while keeping the characteristics of the invention. Here, one of several variants is shown.

A storage cage 34 consists of an upper side 1 as well as two almost vertical identical side walls 2 and 3 as well as an almost vertical front wall 4 in which a door 5 is placed. The upper side 1 of the storage cage consists of a frame 6 having bars 7. The bars 7 in the upper side 1 may be replaced by a tight roof or may be supplemented with, e.g., a tarpaulin that may constitute a protection against sun, rain and snow. The bars 9 of the side walls 2, 3 of the storage cage are movably suspended in a part 8, 13 of the frame 6 of the upper part 1. The bars 9 are also movably united to an under beam 10. The under beams 10 have to be parallel to the side parts 8, 13 of the frame 6 of the upper side 1. Likewise, everywhere, the under beams 10 have to have the same distance to the frame 6. The further side wall 3 of the storage cage is mirror-invertedly constructed analogously to the front side wall 2 and has, in the side part 13 of the frame 6, movably suspended bars 9, which in their lower end are movably united to an under beam 10. By means of hinges 14 at the top, the frame 6 that forms the upper side 1 is connected with the two supporting beams 11 of a wall bracket 12. By means of hinges 15 at the bottom, the under beams 10 of the two side walls 2, 3 are connected with the supporting beams 11 of the wall bracket 12.

The wall bracket 12, which may consist of a sheet-metal plate or the like, is as wide as the storage cage 34 but may have varying height. This wall bracket 12 should be attached to a vertical or almost vertical wall 33, planking or the like. The wall bracket 12 has a part egual to the length of the storage cage as well as has two parts deflected perpendicularly and cut off in such a way that, in each end of the wall bracket 12, there is formed two congruent right-angled triangles 26 where the longest smaller sides are the two right-angled bendings of the wall bracket 12 and where the shortest smaller sides generally are parallel to the ground surface 32, and where the hypotenuses of the right-angled triangles are united to a respective supporting beam 11. The length of the shortest smaller side that lies against the ground surface 32 determines how large angle 24 the supporting beams 11 have to the ground surface 32. The size of this angle 24 to the ground surface 32 is determined by the number of bars 9 present well as how wide these bars 9 are. The angle 24 should be adapted so that the frame 6 of the upper side 1, upon raising against a wall 33, will end up parallel to the wall 33 to the extent possible. A

practical angle 24 that allows four to five bars 9 having a width that provides a sufficient strength should produce an inclination of between 55° and 70°. Conversely, the angle 24 of the inclination to the ground surface 32 of the supporting beam 11 determines how many bars 9 that can be accommodated as well as how wide and sturdy these bars 9 are allowed to be. The angle 24 also determines how great part of the ground area that is occupied when the device is folded up for, for example, cleaning. By doing a parallel displacement of the supporting beams 11 out from the wall 33 in which the wall bracket 12 is secured, the upper side 1 can, upon raising of the storage cage 34, be brought further inward toward the wall 33 so that all bars 9 together with the front side wall 4 lie parallel to the supporting beams 11. The part of the wall bracket 12 that sticks up above the upper side 1 of the storage cage can then be removed. The parallel displacement of the

supporting beams 11 should only be allowed to take place so much that the bars 9 and the front side wall 4 can lie parallel to the supporting beams 11.

The front side 4 of the storage cage consists of a frame 16 in which a door 5 is placed. The door 5 that is smaller than the frame 16 is suspended in a door post 17. The door post 17 extends between the two horizontal sides of the frame 16. The placement of the door post 17 is determined by how wide door 5 it is desired to provide the storage cage with. The door 5 consists of a frame 18 that is suspended in a door post 17 by means of hinges 19. The front side 4 of the frame 16 is provided with bars 20 that cover the part of the frame 16 that is not the place for the door 5. The frame 18 of the door 5 is provided with bars 22. The upper horizontal part of the frame 16 is suspended in the front part of the frame 6 of the upper side 1 by means of the hinges 21. The lower horizontal part of the frame 16 is united to the front ends of the two under beams 10 by means of the hinges 23.

Depending on what the storage cage is to be used for, sometimes it may be desirable with tighter bars. In order to make room for more bars 7, 9, 20 and 22, the same can be made thinner in accordance with what has been previously described. It is also easy to provide the bars 7, 9, 20 and 22 with crossing bars, which then form a grid. When the bars 9 of the sides 2 and 3 are provided with crossing bars, the same have to be movably united to each other in all points of intersection. In each point of intersection, crossing bars of the bars 7 of the upper side 1, of the bars 20 of the front side 4 as well as the bars 22 of the door 5 should be fixedly united to each other. The bars that cross the bars 9 of the sides 2 and 3 have to be mounted so that they are parallel to the under beams 10. Said crossing bars do not constitute any

obstacle when the device is to be raised against a wall or the like. In order to guarantee good stability, each point of intersection of the crossing bars intersecting the two side walls 2 and 4 should be provided with a movable joint that allows the device to be raised. Because of the expense, these movable joints may be reduced to not less than two per crossing bar. The other crossings can be loose .

In order to be able to prevent theft of an object received in the storage cage, the storage cage has to be impossible to lift up in the folded-down position without the possession of a required key. Likewise, in the folded-up position, the storage cage should also be lockable so that it is not folded down maliciously or does not constitute an obstacle when cleaning is made outside, something that almost always is done when shopping malls, shopping centres and the like are closed and there is no need for locked repositories for, for example, dogs. An easy and very inexpensive way to be able to lock the storage cage in the folded-up and folded-down position, respectively, can be realized according to the following (Fig. 3) . A lock support plate 27 is attached by one or more fastening elements 28 to the supporting beam 11, which is fixedly mounted on the wall bracket 12. The lock support plate 27 is mounted in such a way that the bars 9 that are movably journalled in the part 8 of the frame 6 of the upper side 1 as well as in the under beams 10, with or without crossing bars, freely can be brought up behind the lock support plate 27 when the storage cage is folded up. In a known way, the distance of the lock support plate 27 to the supporting beam 11 can be adjusted by spacers or the like on the fastening elements 28 between the lock support plate 27 and the supporting beam 11. The lock support plate 27 has a hole 29 into which a mortise lock available on the market can be introduced and further into a corresponding hole 30 in the part 8 of the frame 6 of the upper part 1. In Fig. 3, the lock support plate 27 is shown fastened on the supporting beam 11 of the wall bracket 12 without a mortise lock and with the storage cage in the folded-down position as well as with the hole 29 of the lock support plate 27 corresponding with the hole 30 of the frame 6, which then allows the storage cage to be locked in the folded-down position by means of a mortise lock. With the key removed, the storage cage cannot be folded up as the holes 29 and 30 are fixed to each other by the mortise lock. With the mortise lock removed, the storage cage can be folded up so that a corresponding hole 31 in the frame 16 of the front side 4 corresponds with the hole 29 of the lock support plate. In Fig. 4, the lock support plate 27 of the supporting beam 11 is shown without a mortise lock and with the storage cage in the folded-up position showing the hole 29 of the lock support plate 27 as well as, behind the same, the hole 31 on the front frame 16 of the folded-up storage cage, which then can be locked by means of a mortise lock in the folded-up position. The mortise lock can now be introduced into the hole 29 and further into the hole 31 on the frame 16 of the front side 4, whereby folding down of the storage cage is prevented. In an analogous way, a corresponding lock support plate 27 having a hole 29 can also be mounted on the supporting beam 11 of the opposite side 3 so that also the hole 29 of this side corresponds with the hole 30 in the folded-down position as well as with the hole 31 the folded-up position. With two locks, a more stable locking is obtained. On the market, there are many different types of mortise locks and other types of locks that can be used in various ways but that still give the function aimed at.

In order to protect the objects that are kept in the storage cage, also the door 5 has to be provided with some kind of lock, which in its simplest design may consist of a hasp 25 having a padlock. Most practical is to provide the door lock with some kind of coin-operated lock having key, among which there are several different variants.

Naturally, the invention is not limited to the embodiments described above and shown in the

accompanying drawings. Modifications are feasible, particularly as for the nature of the different parts, or by using an equivalent technique, without departing from the protection area of the invention, such as it is defined in the claims.