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From: dugdale@camlot.DEC (Susan Dugdale CSSE MKO1-2/K13 264-4824)
Newsgroups: net.pets
Subject: Petdoors -- never again
Message-ID: <1230@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Wed, 19-Feb-86 09:35:37 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1230
Posted: Wed Feb 19 09:35:37 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Feb-86 08:12:06 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.DEC.COM
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 35

I once lived in a house where we had a minimum of 4 cats at any one
time.  We had two different catdoors over time, both homemade.
Neither one of them was the least bit energy efficient -- something I
would consider fairly important these days.

The first catdoor was in the upstairs bathroom window.  The cats would
climb a tree by the garage, go over the roof, and along a ledge to the
window.  Cats and very young kittens are amazingly good a figuring
this sort of thing out and it caused very few problems with stray
animals, etc.  Although, we did worry about the navigation problems in
icy weather and I do remember at least one late night catfight that
ended in a splash (swimming pool located just below).

For some reason (presumably because my roommates who used the upstairs
bathroom got tired of the winter drafts), we moved the catdoor to a
downstairs door.  The problems began immediately.  We got very few
strange animals entering the house of their own accord.  However, the
hunters carried in anything they could catch -- dead or alive.

Every cat owner has at one time or another has dealt with the
occasional mouse corpse.  That is nothing compared to dealing with
live, frightened, and sometimes wounded birds (flying around the
living room), rabbits (hiding under your dresser), snakes (in the
bathroom when you are in the shower), chipmunks (behind the washing
machine), moles (under the sofa), and squirrels (all over the house
and madder than hell).

I now have only one cat and he after ten years has learned to live with
my schedule.  Never again will I devote half the night to chasing live
wild animals around my house with a broom.  No more petdoors.

Susan

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