dugdale@camlot.DEC (Susan Dugdale CSSE MKO1-2/K13 264-4824) (02/19/86)
I once lived in a house where we had a minimum of 4 cats at any one time. We had two different catdoors over time, both homemade. Neither one of them was the least bit energy efficient -- something I would consider fairly important these days. The first catdoor was in the upstairs bathroom window. The cats would climb a tree by the garage, go over the roof, and along a ledge to the window. Cats and very young kittens are amazingly good a figuring this sort of thing out and it caused very few problems with stray animals, etc. Although, we did worry about the navigation problems in icy weather and I do remember at least one late night catfight that ended in a splash (swimming pool located just below). For some reason (presumably because my roommates who used the upstairs bathroom got tired of the winter drafts), we moved the catdoor to a downstairs door. The problems began immediately. We got very few strange animals entering the house of their own accord. However, the hunters carried in anything they could catch -- dead or alive. Every cat owner has at one time or another has dealt with the occasional mouse corpse. That is nothing compared to dealing with live, frightened, and sometimes wounded birds (flying around the living room), rabbits (hiding under your dresser), snakes (in the bathroom when you are in the shower), chipmunks (behind the washing machine), moles (under the sofa), and squirrels (all over the house and madder than hell). I now have only one cat and he after ten years has learned to live with my schedule. Never again will I devote half the night to chasing live wild animals around my house with a broom. No more petdoors. Susan ...decwrl!dec-rhea!camlot!dugdale dugdale%camlot.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig) (02/20/86)
My parents had a raccoon come in through their cat door. The door leads into the kitchen. The raccoon opened all the kitchen cabinets, took out everything that wasn't in a can, opened all the boxes, washed much of the stuff in the toilet, and ate it.