Hey there,
A female "friend" of mine wants me to make her a cat door and it would be great if I could impress her and do it... Anyone have a plan for something like this or know where I can find one? What we don't do for these women........
"Rick's Cabinet Shop" wrote
Those women may not like you very much after you make this cat door. From both my personal experience and hearing stories from others, you may regret this decision.
See, cats are predators. They also like to hunt at night. And since they think of their human friends as part of the family, they will bring the kill home to feed and share with the family. I have heard horror stories of multiple dead rodent bodies laying around the house when the humans got up in the morning.
I won't bother with the gory details of what I have seen or heard about. I will let your imagination do the rest. I have had to install and tear out cat doors. And it is always lots of fun to repair the door with the big hole in it.
That's true although said gifts may not, in fact, be completely dead. So you may have a live one running around the house, pursued by a very excited cat.
The "kill" is not limited to rodents either. Cats will also bring home small birds. Actually sometimes they're not that small either. My cat was unable to force a half-dead seagull through the cat flap, but he did make a very commendable effort!
Why don't you just give her a key?
The other problem is that of neighborhood cats and chipmunks etc. finding the best little chow hall in Town. They actually sell a radio controlled cat/dog door which is activated by a thing on the pet's collar. Dave
Cats are territorial--your cats unless they are major wimps should take care of keeping the neighborhood cats out of their territory. With cats in residence chipmunks should not be an issue.
I actually built one for a sliding glass door. It's an insulated box maybe a foot wide and as tall as the door. It fits in the slots that the door uses and is built the same way. To install, fit the top of the cat door into the top slot, lift, move the bottom into the lower slot and lower the cat door. Push the cat door into the vertical slot and move the slider up snug. If you need to lock the slider, use a blunt stick. The Borgs sell clear plastic flappers that you install in a hole near the bottom of the cat door. Our cats seem to like these better than the homemade wooden kind.
We remove the cat door at night (cats inside) and reinstall in the morning. We don't have a problem with varmints coming inside except when the cats carry them in. In that case put on a pair of canvas gloves and join in the chase.
mahalo, jo4hn (who has caught three live mice and a few more dead ones)
You know, you are right about the chipmunks, but, I will never forget the commotion at my house the night that an adult raccoon managed to squeeze in through the cat door. I should add, that this cat door was in the door to the basement stairs. From the basement, the cats (and raccoon) must go to _another_ cat door, set in the basement exterior door, to actually reach the outdoors. We have a 45 lb dog that sleeps in the basement and she was there at the time. (She did alert us to the raccoon's presence, but chose to not physically intervene... I am confident that had it been an adult human, she would have prevented prevented the entry quite willingly)
Did you know that an adult raccoon, when being chased by an adult male with a broom, can climb ub a window frame, sink it's paws and claws into a textured ceiling, and actually _walk_upside_down_ across said ceiling, to a point roughly in the middle of the room where the plaster bond is no longer strong enough to support it's weight? And that when the raccoon falls 10 feet to the floor while still clutching about 4 square feet of plaster, it will be apparently unharmed? And that it will then be so angry it will _charge_ at the aforesaid adult male, who will be so startled and frightened that he then jumps up in the air and cannot get out ot the way of the raccoon fast enough? (In retrospect and in fairness to myself I msut say that I'm sure the raccoon was just as startled as I was. Or maybe not.)
Sun, Oct 29, 2006, 3:21pm (EST-1) snipped-for-privacy@fellspt.charm.net doth shriek: Did you know that an adult raccoon, when being chased by an adult male with a broom,
Hmmm, you must be a city boy. I wouldn't even "dream" about chasing a racoon around a room with just a broom. I take it the racoon let you get away.
JOAT If it can't kill you, it ain't a sport.
He needs to see "Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle"!
You wouldn't have had that problem if you had installed a bug-zapper as part of the door.
:-0
Make it one way going out.
Steve
Sounds to me like the issue is neither cats nor doors but sex. Personally I'd try liquor and/or flowers before I went to the trouble of making her a cat door.
Normally I don?t like to mix woodworking and business; but in this case it is just too
good to not include my woodworking friends.
Investment & Tax Shelter:
--I have been extremely fortunate in that I have just found a real sleeper. I thought you might be interested because it looks like it will make a lot of money and with very little invested cash.
--A friend of mine is considering investing in a large cat ranch near Karmossile, Mexico. It is his purpose to start rather small with one million cats. Each cat averages about 12 kittens a year; skins can be sold for about 20 cents per white ones to 40 cents per black. This would give us
12 million cat skins per year to sell at an average of about 32 cents, making our revenue about $3,000,000 a year. This really averages out to $10,000 per day including Sundays and holidays.--A good Mexican catman can skin 50 cats a day at a wage of about $3.15. It will only take 663 men to operate the ranch so the net profit will be over $8,000 per day.
--Now the cats will be fed rats exclusively. Rats multiply four times as fast as cats. We will start a rat ranch right adjacent to our cat farm here. Here is where the first year tax break comes in. Since we will be utilizing the rats to feed the cats we can expense the entire first batch of rats purchased in 2007 If we start with one million rats at a nickel each, we will have four rats per cat per day and a whopping $60,000.00 reduction.
--The rats will be fed on the carcasses of the cats we skin during
2007 and successive years. This will give each 1/4 of a cat. You can see by this that the business is a clean operation, self-supporting and really automatic throughout. The cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat the cats and we will get the skins and the tax benefits. Incidentally, the ecologists think it is great. Al Gore wants to get this going as fast as he can.--Eventually, we hope to cross the cats with snakes. Snakes skin themselves twice a year. This will save the labor cost of skinning and will also give us a yield of two skins for one cat.
--Let me know as soon as possible if you are interested. Naturally, we want to keep this deal limited to the fewest investors possible. Time is of the essence.
For further details on this incredible investment opportunity, please contact me.
My girl friend never had raccon come through the cat door but one evening a possum walked out from behind the couch.
Did you know that an adult woman can jump up and stand on a chair? Not on the _seat_ of the chair, but on top of the back of the chair. Since it was a lazy boy chair, this had amusing consequences.
As to bringing presents, well, after I starte to feed the barn cat next door I began finding presents on the doorstep when I came home at night.
My cat used to catch crickets and spiders and drop them on my pillow, still alive, in the middle of the night.
I'm going to work that angle too, believe me..
You must be kitten.
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