The cat door

I hope you all had a lovely weekend! 

It seems like I often write about our cats on Mondays, so I guess I will continue with this tradition. 

We have two cats and they are both pedigrees and the first time they were let outside (on a leash), the female hid under a bush for two hours straight, too scared to go outside. She got more used to it with every time we went outside, but she was still kind of shy.

We were kind of curious to see what it would be like when we moved to the house and let the cats out. The house is far from any big road and not many other houses around, so we figure it is safe enough. There are foxes, but we feel that hopefully the cats can defend themselves and it is worth taking the risk for giving them the opportunity of being free and following their instincts. And it honestly seem like the right decision, because this scared little indoor cat has turned into a real rural cat and she now brings home countless of mice for us.

She usually goes out in the morning and take a look at her territory, then she wants back in again to have some food, before going out again, and back inside. She has been jumping on the door handle every time (which has left us with a scratched door, but that is another issue). Anybody that has a cat knows that the cat always wants to be on the other side of the door.

We had planned for a cat door for a long time, but we have had a third cat that was blind and we did not figure out a good way to let two cats out but not the third. Very sadly, the blind cat died earlier this year (he was my baby and I am still devastated by grief).

(My beloved angel cat)

Either way, we finally had enough of running to the door to open it for our female cat, and so the other day we bought and installed a cat door. Our male cat is very content, because he loves lying in the sun room and he does not seem to mind the new door, but our female is not so happy about it. She usually stands before it, hoping that somebody will come and open the door instead. .

Installing it was easy, basically there was a template in the instruction folder that we just held to the door, drilled two holes and sawed between. Then we (or Darling rather) added the plastic parts, attached the "flap" and it was all set.

We put it onto the sun room, because that means that if we in get another handicapped cat in the future (quite likely) we can easily shut the doors to the sun room and the cats can be outside, but not in the garden. (At that point we would probably have to figure out a solution so that the female can go outside, but we will have to worry about that later.)

And best of all - we no longer have to feel bad that we are not home when the sun is shining, because the cats are free to go out whenever they want. And so far we have not had neither any other cat visiting or woken up to a mouse-eating-feast in the bed (although that last thing is bound to happen sooner or later).

(Linking up to Debbiedoos Pet Party - more link parties can be found in the sidebar)