Cat Door

Next on our bedroom agenda was the door. We were having problems with the dog, Chewie, wandering through the house while we were asleep and wreaking havoc, as Chewie is wont to do. (He likes to pee on stuff. The brat.)  But we couldn't keep the door closed at night because the cat, Lucy, will panic and scratch at the door all night if we lock her out, and won't be able to get to her food or litter box if we lock her in.  So we needed a way for Lucy to be able to go in and out as she pleased, but something small enough that Chewie wouldn't be able to do the same.

Enter the cat door. We found a nice, small door on Amazon that looked like it would suit our needs perfectly. We actually bought it way back in October... and couldn't decide whether we wanted to put it on the bedroom door or on the door to Lucy's food and litter box, which at the time were in separate rooms. We finally decided on the bedroom because Chewie was spending his nights in his kennel, and also spending his days in his kennel while we were at work (well - in a bigger kennel downstairs, but still), and it didn't seem right to lock him up night and day.  So to the bedroom it went.

The first step was to take off the door so we could work on it in the garage. There was no point in fighting that battle with the door still attached.

Thankfully, DJ's saw horses are still in our basement, so we were able to prop the door onto those to work. That made it much easier. We traced the inside of the cat door so we knew where we absolutely had to cut to make the hole big enough.

And then we traced around the template that came with the cat hole, which would be our outer limit for where we could cut.

Troy did the cutting, and I went inside to paint the wood white, to match the door.

Really should have thought about how I was going to do both on the same scrap of cardboard before I started.

It turned out that I had a MUCH easier task to do. When I got back downstairs, Troy was still trying to figure out how he was going to cut the door. He finally settled on his new jigsaw, which worked pretty well...

... but, well, let's just say that he needs some practice.

It's a work in progress.

This isn't a super big deal, though, because the cat door covered it up anyway. Crisis averted.

You can see in that picture that it's just sort of clamped on the door by the screws. That turned out to be a problem later, since it kept slipping back down and scraping across the carpet. We wound up having to go back and re-attach it to keep it from doing that all the time. That was some weeks later, and sadly, I have no pictures, so you're just going to have to trust me: if you're getting one of these, glue that sucker on. You'll be glad you did in the long run.

But it sure looked good when it was all done, and we were pretty confident that it was going to work. 

Success!

Lucy has no problem using it, although she doesn't rub against the brush at all, which surprised us somewhat. We were expecting to have to be constantly vacuuming cat hair off that thing, and so far, that hasn't happened. I don't mind not having to vacuum it, don't get me wrong! But I am surprised.

Chewie can't get through, which is the other good thing about it. But that doesn't stop him from wishing he could, and he has no qualms with shoving his nose through there!  

Next stop: painting. It is SO time for one of the rooms in this house to be a color other than frikking tan.  SO. TIME.