If you have a pet cat you may decide that you want them to be able to come and go outside as they please. By doing this, you’ll find several advantages, one of which is that the cat will enjoy some freedom and engage in some exercise, but it will also free you from the duty of cleaning a kitty litter often.

No matter what the reason if you have decided you want your cat to be an outdoor cat it will be much to your benefit to install a cat door pet door. A cat flap door will ensure that your cat can come and go as they please without you having to worry about constantly having to open the door for them. Installing a cat flap door is very easy, even if you don’t have great building skills.

Installing A Cat Flap Door

You do not have to call a professional to install a cat flap door if you would rather save yourself some money and just do it on your own. The first thing to do is to take some basic measurements with a ruler or some other device to see how big the door needs to be. All cats are different sizes and you certainly do not want your cat to end up stuck on their way out the door.

Next, tools and materials have to be purchased, if you don’t have them already; they can be found in most hardware stores without problem. If you are not an expert in building things, stick with the simple materials, which include a cutting saw, sandpaper for smoothing edges, door fixings, protecting googles, and protecting gloves. To be more exact when cutting, you can use a ruler and a pencil to mark a line that will serve you as a guide.

Then you can use the saw to cut through the door and always stick to making it smaller and then slowly work to make it larger, rather than the other way around. After cutting the door, use the sand paper to make the area as smooth as possible, as rough edges might hurt your cat when it uses the flap door. To make sure that your cat has enough room, make the flap door a bit bigger than your cat’s expected maximum height.

The flap fixings include both the flap as well as the screws; make sure that the flap is safely attached and it won’t get loose easily. Once you are finished the flap should be easy to go back and forth through and there should not be any cracks or openings when the flap is closed.

New! We've just starting a message board and discussion forum over on the Toxic Byte Pets Forum. It's a bit lonely over there at the moment, but feel free to join in and participate!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Cats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.