Jaysus he looks mean. I think the second image here is probably the best (in terms of monkey sharpness) as there seems to have been a problem with your focus locking onto the cage instead of the monkeys eyes in the shots. But my favourite of the bunch is the third image. The pose is priceless and the monkey is just OOF enough to make the image look decent. An odd thing to say but the focus on the paws and cage works better herre than the slightly OOF monkey in the first two.
at the time i did find this hard as you say the camera kept focusing of the wire i should have tryed spot metering but i can always try again,as these chaps are only up the street.