Apologies for my continuing obsession with catflaps. I’ve just remembered that Sir Isaac Newton was once ridiculed for having cut two adjacent catflaps in his door: one large one for his large cat and another, smaller one for his small cat….
Today’s invention addresses several issues with existing commercial designs.
- They are noisy: everyone in my household knows when our cat enters and leaves home in the early hours.
- They are draughty: that flapping two-way gate thing with the magnetic strip is just awful.
So, here is yet another alternative (and one that I’m determined to actually implement).
Make two standard cat-size apertures and insert the outer frame of a standard cat flap into each (Having removed the damn flap from both).
Insert into each aperture the top half of a leg of a pair of old trousers, so that the leg forms a tunnel around the entry. One tunnel should point inwards, the other outwards (a good idea would be to use some waterproofing spray on the leg which lies outside). The cat in question can use one tunnel for entry and the other for exit. Since the material naturally falls closed over the hole in each case -draughts are eliminated as is that dreadful 2am crashing noise.
Training the cat to use these is just a matter of holding the tunnel open a little for a while with a plate of food on either side (I hope).
Obviously the trousers are replaceable, since they also act as fur cleaners, thereby removing the need for all that vacuum cleaner hacking discussed below.
