Cat doors.....

[Ralph]

I'm a dog person myself but my daughter started bawling her eyes out when I told her she couldn't have a cat........so I wound up giving in.

I'd like to get one of those cat-sized doors designed to go through the wall of the house---no electronics or anything like that..

My one concern was---it'll let the cat in & out----but will anything else decide it wants to come in???

Squirrels-oppossums-rats--suicidal mice---other cats---------


Any body have any experience with these things.........Thx....

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by Ralph
Any body have any experience with these things.........Thx.... No, but I have experience with animals getting into my house.

Used to have a house with a wood stove in the basement. Opened it up one day to find a dove inside. It had apparently flown down the metal chimney and suffocated in the stove.

A couple of years ago, a neighbor informed me there was a raccoon on my roof. I went outside, had a look, and saw the bugger climbing out of my chimney. I went and got a chimney cap (ascertained that the beastie had been spotted walking down the street, so I knew I wasn't caging him in).

So if a chimney isn't enough to keep birds and raccoons out, do you think a swinging door at ground level would?

Just come to terms with the idea that if you get a cat, it'll be on the wrong side of every door. We have two.

"Nature: Anything you would try to kill if it got into your house." Dave Barry.

[Bikewer]

You may find that kitty enjoys bringing little friends home, though.

Like, not-quite-dead little friends, that kitty then decides to dismember and devour on your favorite rug....

[RSLancastr]

Yes. Neighborhood cats, small dogs, and very small children (who will then unlock the door for their fellow thieves).

I know yoiu said "no electro nics, but I seem to recall there are pet doors which come with an electronic collar for your pet, and will only open when that collar is in close proximity to the door. Of course, cats are notorious for losing their collars.

[Mr. Skinny]

I used to have a double set of dog doors. One door from the kitchen to the attached garage, and one door out the back of the garage into the back yard (garden). I had to cut through brick to make the hole, but it was worth it.

I bought a type of hinged door that had magnets in the frame to hold it shut against smaller animals. I'm sure a racoon or opossum could have gotten through them, but my German Shepherd and Golden Retriever on the other side of the door wouldn't have greeted them very well. :D

[Bikewer]

I actually saw a bit on techtv once where a guy had built a door that allowed kitty to enter, but not if she was carrying prey.

Thing had a photo-sensor that "read" the kitty's profile. If it was normal, the door would open. If she had something in her mouth, it wouldn't.

[Eos of the Eons]

I've read that cats can live indoors and live perfectly happy and healthy running around the house. Some cats never see outdoors.

This is just something I read. I personally know nothing about kitties.

[Gregory]

Originally posted by Eos of the Eons
I've read that cats can live indoors and live perfectly happy and healthy running around the house. Some cats never see outdoors.

This is just something I read. I personally know nothing about kitties.

It's true; my family had four cats, and only one of them even wanted to go outside.

[Segnosaur]

Originally posted by Gregory


It's true; my family had four cats, and only one of them even wanted to go outside.

My cat's a totally indoor cat too.

In fact, cats tend to live longer (and healtier) if they don't go outside... fewer dangers (cars running them over, dogs chasing them), and fewer diseases to catch. (In fact, my vet doesn't even vaccinate against all diseases if the cat doesn't go outside.)

[The Don]

On the other hand, my sister in law's cats are deranged because not having access to the oustide world has made them very bored indeed.

Our cats have "access on request", no kitty doors but if the cat turns up when called they are allowed back in on request. They also have access to an insulated box in the shed to sleep in should the weather get inclement and access to the house is not possible.

[Beancounter]

Ralph

One thing you must understand with cats is that the house is no longer yours. Therefore the cat will use a cat door if it wants to, otherwise it may just decide to strip the paint off the inside of your front and back doors whilst waiting for you to let it out.

Also you must be prepared for shredded furniture (they particularly like leather couches), dead things in the house and permanently scratched appendages.

Finally don't, what ever you do, p!ss the cat off - it will get you back in kind. And it smells terrible, particularly if your cat is a male.

Good luck.

[richardm]

You can get cat flaps with a simple magnetic latch - your cat wears a small magnet on her collar to open it, and other beasties don't have that, so can't get in. The "keys" used to be massive, and inch-and-a-half or more long, but they're now quite dinky, no bigger than a bell:

http://www.catflaps.com/media/REL400EFS.jpg

- incidentally, the magnetic ones don't require batteries to work, so there's no chance your cat will be locked out. Or in. Make sure you get an elasticated or breakaway collar for her.

Even without that, most cat flaps I've seen have at least a magnet to stop it blowing open. That seems to be enough to put off most animals - not your neighbour's cat, though, who knows how they work!

Edited to add: Speaking of collars, our cat always used to wear a flea collar. We noticed that it was starting to rub her fur away, so started taking it off in the evenings when she was in for the night, and putting it back on before she went out in the morning.

At one point, she started to be a bit of a pest with the birds, so we put a bell on her collar. And this was a really bright sounding bell - it got on my nerves, so it must have driven her round the twist. But, no more birds came in.

One morning, I came downstairs and she was keen to go out. I looked to the bench for the collar - no collar. We hunted high and low for it to no avail. We could only assume that she'd got fed up of the bell, and hidden it.

Her cunning went beyond this, though. We've since completely replaced the kitchen where she slept, and still no collar in evidence. We guess that she must have retrieved the collar from its hiding place, and quietly dropped it in a ditch somewhere :D

[Ralph]

Originally posted by Beancounter
Ralph

One thing you must understand with cats is that the house is no longer yours. Therefore the cat will use a cat door if it wants to, otherwise it may just decide to strip the paint off the inside of your front and back doors whilst waiting for you to let it out.

Also you must be prepared for shredded furniture (they particularly like leather couches), dead things in the house and permanently scratched appendages.

Finally don't, what ever you do, p!ss the cat off - it will get you back in kind. And it smells terrible, particularly if your cat is a male.

Good luck.

Lots of dead birds & mice in the yard but so far he hasn't dragged anything into the house.

We have the usual cat routine for him of sleeping around the house during the day and letting him out at night.

The problem comes from the fact that he usually decides e wants to come back in.......at about 2-3 A.M. He decided he could accomplish this by jumpinp up on the roof and meowing outside our bedroom window. Really loudly-----over and over again...


I have to admit--spraying a cat with a garden hose is fun.

Anyway--he's learned not to do that. His latest trick now that it's warm & the windows are open is to pry open the windowscreens.

At first he just bent the frame of the screen without damaging anything. We put some wood blocks in to stop that and he decided to just tear open the screen.......



As I said---I'm a dog person. Give me a hairy,goofy,farting,bad-breathed, shamelessly begging, always glad to see you golden retreiver over a cat any day of the week......

[Rolfe]

This is typical. Cats aren't nocturnal, as is often stated - they're crepuscular. They like to hunt in the half-light of dawn or dusk. If they can get back into the nest once true night has set in, they will. Where I used to live, my bedroom was on the ground floor and had French windows to the garden. The sainted Rolfe just arrived when he liked and miaowed until I woke up and let him in out of sheer self-preservation. I sometimes left the bathrooom window open if I wanted not to be disturbed.

Now my bedroom is upstairs, and Caramel hasn't figured a way of waking me from that distance. He has found a warm and dry spot under a camellia bush in the corner by the back door, and sleeps there if he can't get in. Or maybe I'll leave a window open.

If your cat hasn't got a way to get back in, it's a good idea to provide a safe accessible nest outside, maybe in a shed or garage. Otherwise roaming at night tends to get people squashed by cars.

Rolfe.

[Ralph]

Originally posted by Rolfe
This is typical. Cats aren't nocturnal, as is often stated - they're crepuscular. They like to hunt in the half-light of dawn or dusk. If they can get back into the nest once true night has set in, they will. Where I used to live, my bedroom was on the ground floor and had French windows to the garden. The sainted Rolfe just arrived when he liked and miaowed until I woke up and let him in out of sheer self-preservation. I sometimes left the bathrooom window open if I wanted not to be disturbed.

Now my bedroom is upstairs, and Caramel hasn't figured a way of waking me from that distance. He has found a warm and dry spot under a camellia bush in the corner by the back door, and sleeps there if he can't get in. Or maybe I'll leave a window open.

If your cat hasn't got a way to get back in, it's a good idea to provide a safe accessible nest outside, maybe in a shed or garage. Otherwise roaming at night tends to get people squashed by cars.

Rolfe.

I have a nice outdoor shed he'd be more than welcome to use.

Other than providing an entrance for him----how do you make it attractive to him (he's a neutered male). What's the equivalent of a fireplace,nice view, and a pool table for a cat???

[JSFolk]

For you folks interested in technological overkill, here's the electronic cat door mentioned earlier...

http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/flo_control.htm

[Timble]

Originally posted by richardm


You can get cat flaps with a simple magnetic latch - your cat wears a small magnet on her collar to open it, and other beasties don't have that, so can't get in. The "keys" used to be massive, and inch-and-a-half or more long, but they're now quite dinky, no bigger than a bell:



It's probably an urban legend, but there's the story of someone who came home to a pitfully mewling kitty that was stuck to the 'fridge door by the magnet on its collar...;)

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Ralph
I have a nice outdoor shed he'd be more than welcome to use.

Other than providing an entrance for him----how do you make it attractive to him (he's a neutered male). What's the equivalent of a fireplace,nice view, and a pool table for a cat??? Has it got an electricity supply? Because the absolute never-fails lure for a cat on a chilly night is a cat-sized electric blanket. Rolfe's infallible tip for making your cat sleep where you want him to sleep.

Rolfe.

[The Don]

Talk about spoiled kitties, electric blanket indeed. When 'us cat were a kitten 'ee 'ad to make do wi' a cardboard box and a strip of old blanket, and thowt 'imself lucky !!

[garys_2k]

Originally posted by The Don
Talk about spoiled kitties, electric blanket indeed. When 'us cat were a kitten 'ee 'ad to make do wi' a cardboard box and a strip of old blanket, and thowt 'imself lucky !!
You had a blanket? What luck! We had to make do with a scrap of burlap and a bare concrete floor.

[BPSCG]

Originally posted by JSFolk
For you folks interested in technological overkill, here's the electronic cat door mentioned earlier...

http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/flo_control.htm Well, we're not so advanced at our house. Bluto goes out when he wants to go out and we feel like letting him out. He comes in when he wants to come in and we happen to think to check the door.

System's a little primitive, but very inexpensive. Plus it even works when a power outage has knocked out our computers.

[gnome]

Originally posted by garys_2k

You had a blanket? What luck! We had to make do with a scrap of burlap and a bare concrete floor.

You had a FLOOR? We used to have to dangle over a pit, tied up on each end. I'd hang there at night dreaming of a floor, even a bumpy one...

[evildave]

My experience with cat doors:

Yes, other cats come in.
Racoons come in.
Even dogs will stick their faces in.

But that's not all!

Your cat will bring in his newfound victims to play with.

In my case, that was:
Frogs (mostly alive)
Interesting (to a cat) bugs (alive/dead)
Lizards (mostly dead)
BIG lizards (One survived for a while in the house)
Birds (mostly gruesomely dead)
Mice (mostly alive)
Kangaroo rats (mostly alive)
Rats (alive)
Bats (alive)
Gophers (alive, though sometimes to be eaten right in front of me)
Snakes (alive)
Squirrels (alive)

Some were alive, and loose (a mouse in a messy closet is a very hard thing to get). Some were alive and trapped. Some were "alive", but fading fast, some were dead, and some were in thousands of pieces (i.e. birds).

But WAIT, it gets BETTER!

Your cat will tend to want to go out at all hours, and may get lost and never found again, run over and never found again, eaten and never found again, murdered and never found again, or worse than any of the above, killed AND found by you.

My recommendation: GET TWO CATS. They will keep each other company when you're away. Get a litter box with tall sides (or enclsed) that comes with three pans; one a sifting pan. Spend the extra money. It's worth it. These are very easy to clean. Get an anti-track pad. There will be less mess.

Keep your kitty INSIDE.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I vote inside, too.

We can close doors and keep our cats in the kitchen/sunroom/living room. Only problem is that the kitty litter is halfway down the cellar stairs, on a special landing built specifically for the purpose. To allow the cats in there when the doors are closed, we designed a small opening in the living room wall, the one that is common with the stairwell. The cats can walk through the opening onto the first stair tread, then down to the landing. The little opening is framed and has corner blocks, just like the rest of the doors and windows in the house.

~~ Paul

[toddjh]

I found my first cat as a stray who was obviously doing very badly on her own. Her hair was falling off, you could see her ribs, and she could barely hold down any food.

Needless to say, she knows she has it pretty damn good now, and the first thing she does when you open the front door is go hide under the bed. :)

All of my cats (and my parents') have been indoors, and I can't say that they're unhappy about it at all. Maybe if you live in a studio apartment or something, but if you have a decent-sized place and two cats to keep each other company, they seem pretty content to me.

Jeremy

[ktesibios]

All of the cats I've been owned by over the last 20 years have been indoor dwellers; with at least one other cat and a good supply of toys they've never seemed to be suffering from boredom.

Shortly after I moved into my present apartment they pushed out the screen on an open window and hopped out onto the walkway outside. In the morning I found Feedback about 10 feet down the walkway, hiding her her head in a shrub with her furry butt sticking out. She was so frightened that as I carried her back home she left a trail of pee all the way.

Moose had gotten farther; she subsequently climbed a tree and got onto the roof, making a jolly time for me in getting her back down.

After that they never showed any sign of wanting to explore the outdoors again. They seem to have concluded that while the great outside is one big litter box, it's mighty short on food dishes. (Moose does, however, like to sit in the kitchen window and watch the cars go by on the freeway)

Feedback lived to the age of 15. Moose is 12 and still going strong. I haven't yet met an outdoor cat that made it that long.

Anyway, if you're going to let the cat out, might as well realize that it already sees you as a waiter; "doorman" isn't a great leap ;)

[Captain Trips]

Heck, that's how we got the first of three cats living with us. (You don't own a cat, you live with them or they own you.) We have a "doggy door" (magnetic strip on the bottom, doesn't work if the wind is anywhere above 3 knots) for our dog to come and go as she pleases (our backyard is completely fenced.) Well, quite often I would wake up in the morning with the neighbor's cat on my chest. He took a liking to us, and when our neighbors moved they asked if we would mind taking care of their cat for them, since he was so used to the neighborhood. (Other neighbors spoil him rotten.) They have come back to visit exactly once in the past 5 years, so he is really now our cat. Our other two cats also use the doggy door. It really does cut down on our use of cat litter. Of course, we closed it off when they were kittens, but it meant waking up when our dog had to go outside to "relieve herself."

BTW, should you keep your cat(s) indoors, I would recommend getting "Feline Pine" cat litter. It is organic, flushable, and the pine oils actually react with the ammonia in thier urine and neutralizes it. Even when it was being used by three cats several times a day, we never had "kitty box odor" to bother us. Plus, when it is used up it can go straight onto the compost heap.

Good luck, and be prepared to become some feline's favorite pet.

[TeaBag420]

Why not just use the same sort of door you use for your daughter?

[evildave]

The other recommendation for inside cats:

Get a little thing of wheatgrass on your way through the market, so they can have some fresh grass to eat. Put it next to their food. It comes in its own little pot. It lasts a couple of weeks before it needs to be replaced. This will reduce the carpet mauling and the mauling of other house plants.