Project: Cat Door

We finally put in a cat door for Llyr that will allow him to go into the garage whenever he wants. This will not solve all our problems of Llyr whining to go outside, but perhaps it will cut down the annoyance a little since now he can go out there (sometimes a satisfactory second option) on his own. Though each cat door is different and should come with its own instructions, I'll show you the process I went through to put ours in, as well as pictures of Llyr using it soon after it was installed. He is a smart kitty. 

We bought a small, cheap-ish cat door ($20) from Lowe's. There were a few options. I liked that this door had just a tiny bit of space around the door so it would swing open and closed easier. One of the models at Lowe's had a door that touched at the point where the magnet is placed to keep it closed, and it was harder to push open. I also liked that this one was pretty low-profile. There was another one that had edges that were really thin and bevelled to the door and a lock that could be made to allow the cat 4 different access ways ... but then I decided that simple was better and this one was smaller and would take up less room overall on the door, even though it sticks out from the door a half inch or so. 

There was a paper provided that had steps for installing the door. I thought this was really smart: the paper itself is what you trace around to cut the hole. I still measured a bit though. I measured roughly how far below the top of the door the hole would be, so I could make the top of the door line up with the bottom edge of the bevelled panel of the door. I really disliked that all the example pictures at Lowe's had the door cutting right through the panel - that just looks tacky. Luckily, our door was small enough that it could fit below the panel.

Measuring for placement.

Ready to trace for the hole. See the instructions?

It is light but you can sort of see my tracing.

 I used the same trick to cut out this hole in the door as I did when cutting the hole for the front of kitty's litter box.  I drilled out holes at the corner and used my jigsaw to cut it out. This was tricky because the door is hollow, so I had to keep drilling and get through both layers, then I had to basically do all the cutting with the door open because it was so near the floor the jigsaw wouldn't easily cut otherwise, and also the door wanted to shake a lot while I was cutting.

Drilled holes through both sides of door.

During jigsaw-ing. It made a mess of the paint.

After jigsaw-ing.

I tried placing the pieces on to test the cutting and see if Llyr would go through it. He was unsure what to do at first, but knew that he could push on the door. After a while of my lifting the door up and calling to him, he finally went through once with my help. Then I went back to affixing the door.

Another point I should mention is that it worked really well for us to put the door so close to the floor on this side because there is a step on the other side of the door. So, when Llyr is coming in from the garage, the door is at a great height. When he is going out into the garage, the door probably seems low when he first starts to go through, but then he steps on the garage step and can get down. If the garage floor was level with our kitchen/living room floor, my plan to put the door really low and miss the door panel would have made it so that Llyr had to crawl through, which would not have been as ideal.

I screwed on the front side of the door after peeling off a lot of the paint. The jigsaw really scraped it up a lot, so I decided I'd just paint over that area again with leftover paint. This door does not hold the paint we used very well - I'm not sure if it is the door or the paint (which makes an almost laytex-like layer) that is to blame. The back piece of the cat door (which is laying beside my in the previous picture) just had double-sided stickers to attach it to the back. Actually, this cat door was really simple to attach. Some of the others were adjustable to the door thickness but had a plastic part that went inside to cover the exposed door. That was neat, but then you had to cut that down to make it fit your door, which would have been a lot more work. When our cat door is open, you can see inside the hollow door. I could stuff or cover that somehow I guess if I wanted to, but I'm not too worried about it. I guess the worst part is that in the garage that hole is not covered, so bugs could possibly get inside the door, so I may try stuffing it up with something to prevent that.

Door attached, paint removed.

After repainting.

Kitty learning to use the door.

Success! Smart kitty!

And now, we'll never have to deal with this again:

He usually isn't that dramatic about getting in the garage, but this was just after we'd had the garage repoured and he hadn't gotten to go out there for a couple days. He was having withdrawals.