if you give a lorie a cat door

In 2015 we looked at the house we now own when it was last listed for sale. One feature we really liked was the cat door to the garage. Yay! We could put the litter boxes out there instead of in all the other weird places we’ve put them!

When we bought the house in May we saw the cat door was still there but the new owner, not having a cat, had taped it all up. We wanted to figure out how best to approach this cat door thing since we need to get in and out of the garage with the lawn mower, etc. and my cats are exclusively indoor and refuse to wear collars (seriously, that’s a whole other post). But I figured I’d at least start by untaping the door.

It looked like a giant dog (perhaps the last owner’s giant dog) had tried to eat it. Chewed edges, rough opening, barely functional. I figured I’d just replace it so I took it off and taped up the hole with cardboard since I’m a minimally functional adult and it took me like a week to get around to this.

They don’t make that cat door anymore.

So I bought another cat door.

It was too small.

So I returned it and bought another cat door.

It was ALMOST the right size but just a hair too big.

So we bought a jigsaw.

And Seth tried to widen the hole with middling success because we were too lazy to take it off the hinges and it’s a fire door so cutting through it was weird.

So he installed the cat door and it mostly fit but was a hair flimsy. It’s a four way locking door so we kept it locked.

Recently the cats have become interested in it but since we still hadn’t figured out the access to garage issue, we’ve kept it locked aside from one day where we opened it to see if Maggie might come through it. She voted no.

But then they started to paw at the door on a fairly regular basis. The other morning while I was eating breakfast, I had to yell at Maggie twice because she was full-on punching the door. But it was still locked so I didn’t worry much.

Well.

Last night SOMEONE (Maggie, it had to be Maggie) managed to punch an entire panel of the cat door out and those two little assholes spent the night frolicking in the garage.

When Seth got up this morning to give everyone breakfast/treats they showed up covered in cobwebs all like HEEEEEEEEEEEEEY what’s up, of course we were back by curfew, give us treeeeeeeeeeats.

So now it has cardboard taped over it again. It’s super classy. I can’t wait to have lots of friends over.

(pictured: small gray jerk in a paint tray because it’s trashier than an actual cat bed)