Cats at night

We are not keen on our cats going out at night.  In practice this means that we are not keen on Saphy going out at night (Amber rarely goes out at all unless there are humans sitting outside on a warm sunny day), not because we think she would come to any harm, but because in our experience cats are way more likely to catch rodents and bring them in when it is dark outside.  Saphy has had a few mice here already, and we are not enthusiastic about chasing her catches around a huge house like this at four am.

I digress slightly, but I will never forget when our cat Schrodi, who was a devil for voles brought a very lively one in to my Mum’s room in the wee small hours and released it under the bed. The total mayhem which ensued is not easily forgotten.

Anyway, since we moved in we have been propping boxes in front of the cat flap at night, because although it locks, it is important that the cat can see that the flap is not available because otherwise it is deeply confusing suddenly not to be able to push it open.

So I made a little “door” to cover the flap.  This was a little bit more complicated than it appeared at first sight because the flap is not flush to the door (it sticks out by about 5mm), and the door itself is a cheap hollow thing.  This means that there needs to be a frame between the real door and the fake one, but you can’t easily screw this on to to the door itself.  So I made a thin frame and glued it on to the door, and then mounted magnets around it.  I then made a “door” and attached magnets to it as well.  I am very glad I decided to make this out of art board as a trial first, because I had no idea whether it would actually work, and it took a lot of trial and error to get everything positioned correctly.  But I got it to work after a few goes.  I painted it to look like an old dungeon door and stuck on some “hinges” and a “lock”.

Now I have done this I am going to make a real version from wood with some metal hinges.

I also realize looking at the picture that I am going to need to do something with the main door itself – it has had a primer coat and two coats of gloss and it still looks streaky.