Repairing rusty cages

I have a few cages that were given to me that have metal cage floors that are rusty to the point that some of the metal has rusted away. I'm toying with the idea of replacing the floor, but not having experience in disassembling and reassembling cages, I'm wondering if there is an easier way to fix them. I see in one of the floors, it looks like the previous owner patched one area with a new piece of 1/2" x 1" and j-clips. I'm a little nervous about doing that, though, because I'm concerned about the rusty exposed edges of the remaining wire. In order to feel like the floor is sanitary again, I'd really just love to replace it, then perhaps make some nice fleece "rugs" to cover half of the flooring so that the chin occupying that space can use the floor bust still get rest for his/her feet. I have both 1/2" x 1" and 1/2" x 1/2" hardware cloth to do the job. If this were your cage, how would you fix a rusty floor?

Bumping this up just in case y'all missed it.

Can you post pictures?

Hi Ann! I could probably do that, but I went to work on one of the cages today and was able to patch the one 4"x5" problem corner after I scrubbed the whole cage with a wire brush, let it dry in the sun, and sanded the rusty floor with an electric sander. Most of the rusty color came off and shone silver again and came out nice and smooth. The problem corner on this particular cage is also going to be covered with a nice large tile which will also serve as a cool surface for Hershey to lie down on when he's hot.

The other cage might be able to be treated the same way, and if so, any problem areas will be patched and covered with a tile or with a fleece mat. If it seems dangerous to the chin if she moves the mat, I'll see about making the mat with ties to keep it in place, or perhaps put tiles over the floor in those areas.

The cage floors and urine guards were in kind of bad shape, but having now scrubbed and sanded one cage (with its urine guards) back to shiny, smooth metal has been really encouraging. The rest of the cage is in great shape and back to nice and shiny.