Cat Door

Cidu Bill on Dec 29th 2009

catdoor.jpg

Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, John Deering, Strange Brew, cats, comic strips, comics, humor | 20 responses so far

20 Responses to “Cat Door”

  1. Yaniv Dec 29th 2009 at 12:07 am 1

    The cat doesn’t have a catdoor by which to enter or leave the house at will. Because of that, whenever it sees the door open, it has to decide in advance if its worth going out and risking being locked out for an extended period of time. In the comic, the cat is calculating the risk value on the wall as to whether or not he should take the opportunity or stay in.

  2. Kevin A Dec 29th 2009 at 12:40 am 2

    Way back when, in the old once-a-week format, Bill let us know that he was not, at the time, a cat person nor did he know nothing about the experience. A cat will meow and ask to go out for a very long time, only to go out for a few minutes (or seconds) and be right back asking to come back in. There’s no predicting when the adventurous, or neighborhood patrolling instinct will fully engage. I’m fascinated to finally see the aspects that my cats might also have determined would predict their ultimate desire.

  3. CIDU Bill Dec 29th 2009 at 12:48 am 3

    Kevin, I suspect I’ve repeated this a number of times since the blog went daily — and I know little more about cats than I did then, other than what I’ve learned from you guys (and from accidentally taking care of a cat for a long weekend).

  4. Kevin A Dec 29th 2009 at 02:16 am 4

    Well, you’ve learned nothing from my fragile memory tonight. I realize the strip is actually commenting on how, after all that whining, a cat will sit at the open door pondering his next move for a period of time best expressed by the lady-in-question’s having pulled up a chair and made tea. It was not a time conducive to reading but if you have ever happened to experience the tableau of a woman on the telephone standing in an open door with a cat before her, taking in the scene, know now what was really happening there.

  5. mkilby Dec 29th 2009 at 03:53 am 5

    There is an excellent description of cat/door behavior in Heinlein’s “The Door into Summer”. The house in which “Pete” lived had 12 doors, which meant that in winter, Pete’s “caretaker” was forced to open every single one of those doors, in the vain hope that one of those doors would not have snow on the outside.

  6. TasmanSea Dec 29th 2009 at 08:29 am 6

    Similar to that, mkilby, the cat that I sometimes look after is supposed to stay indoors, but if the front door opens he will try to sprint out to get some outside time. But he will never try the same thing with the back door, somehow he doesn’t realize it goes to the same outside… even though he has been brought in from that outside through the back door.

  7. Rasheed Dec 29th 2009 at 10:07 am 7

    Cat doors are HORRIBLE! You do get the convience of not having to bother letting your cat in or out, but (A) other critters learn to use the door and (B) our cats bring in SO many dead “presents.”

  8. Keera Dec 29th 2009 at 01:25 pm 8

    Cats will stand in the doorway, sniffing the outdoor air, butt still indoors, while the human waits patiently for the da**ed critter to make up its mind. Now I know why it takes so long. It’s a hairy (don’t hit me!) calculation. LOL!

  9. John DiFool Dec 29th 2009 at 02:52 pm 9

    Rasheed, there’s new ones on the market which use a special collar gizmo which electronically triggers the door to unlatch (unmagnetize it or something) when your pet wants in or out, so that no sneaky interlopers (skunk, possum, raccoon, your next-door neighbor Stanley) can get in.

  10. SparkleBella Dec 29th 2009 at 03:43 pm 10

    We had a cat who went outside via the cat door, but evidently considered it a one-way portal because he always came to the sliding glass door to be let back in - scratched and cried piteously until one of us couldn’t take it any more and opened the door. Then ten minutes later, out he went again, via the cat door…. Of course, we realize he had us well trained.

  11. Mark in Boston Dec 29th 2009 at 06:55 pm 11

    I knew someone who had a dog door for her two Newfoundlands. They could go out into the fenced yard any time they wanted. It was a very big door.

  12. paperboy Dec 29th 2009 at 07:23 pm 12

    When a cat just sits at an open door, maybe it just wants to look outside.

  13. Lorraine Dec 29th 2009 at 07:27 pm 13

    I want to know how Bill “accidentally” took care of a cat for a weekend!!!

  14. Craig Dec 29th 2009 at 07:38 pm 14

    I heard of one enterprising engineer who set up a web cam outside his cat door and if the feline had anything in it’s mouth that changed it’s image/profile when scanned by the web cam and compared to a previous standard image/profile the cat door would not unlock. This was to prevent the cat from bringing home any unwanted visitors.

    One of my cats would bring in mice to play with. well at least one escaped unharmed enough to take up residency in the house and subsequently ate/ruined a lot of stuff in the kitchen (including a bag of pancake mix) as well as chewing through the water line to the refrigerator.

    I’m guessing it wanted some flapjacks for breakfast one morning. How it was going to cook them i don’t know.

  15. CIDU Bill Dec 29th 2009 at 08:23 pm 15

    Lorraine, my son volunteered to take care of a friend’s cats for a week while she and her family were on vacation, forgetting that he was going to be away for a three-day weekend. So it ended up being my job.

  16. MrKenneth Dec 29th 2009 at 11:35 pm 16

    Built a dog door once. So much snow one night the dog could not get out. Let him out front door but, being a basset hound, with head held high, only most of his head was out of the snow and could not lift his leg. Shoveled a path for him while unblocking the door. He whizzed for so long he actually switched feet mid-whiz. Had to be at least a minute. I fell into the snow laughing.

  17. Tom T. Dec 30th 2009 at 06:07 am 17

    My dad and I installed a kitty door in the basement when I was a kid. It had large windows that came almost to the ground, so we took out one pane of glass and replaced it with the kitty door, and we assembled little ramps up to it. To teach the cat how it worked, we grabbed him, and I started stuffing him through the hole so he’d pop out in the back yard. I was having the hardest time, and I thought he was fighting me somehow — and then we realized that we’d forgotten to raise the storm window, and I’d been shoving the presumably baffled cat’s face right into it.

  18. mkilby Dec 30th 2009 at 08:58 am 18

    @ Craig (14) - Last summer I witnessed our next-door neighbor’s cat chasing a mouse in their backyard. The chase ended when the mouse fell through the grill into a cellar window well. The cat stayed on sentry duty for over two hours, hoping that the mouse would be able to scale back up the wall (after he gave up, the neighbors caught and evicted the mouse from the window well).

  19. Mark in Boston Dec 30th 2009 at 05:57 pm 19

    I had a cat that had an interesting way of coming into the house: climb up the tree, down a branch, and jump from there to the screen of my 2nd-floor bedroom window, holding on with her claws, waiting for me to open the window, take out the screen, turn it around and let her jump in.

  20. mkilby Jan 4th 2010 at 07:03 am 20

    The neighbor’s cat I mentioned in (18) is capable of scaling a 6-foot sheer panel that separates our patio from theirs, and then jumps from the top edge to the neighbor’s second-storey balcony (their two teenagers won’t go downstairs to answer a “meow”, but they will open a balcony door to let the cat in).

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