Home Repairs: The Cat Door

No problem, just deal with the cat for the three week vacation. A sliding glass patio cat door panel, that’s the answer. After about two hours online I found out everything about cat door including the door that would work for me at about $200. Just install it in the patio sliding glass door frame close the existing door against to lock the two together. No muss, no fuss, no big learning curve. The cat can come in and out through the small door in the bottom of the cat door panel when a properly installed. “Very easy to install,” or so the advertisement states. “Only a screw driver needed for installation”. The sliding glass patio door will still open and close, dragging the cat door panel with it in the track. I can do that. I know which end of a screwdriver to use.

Trip stops… No one in the area has the sliding glass patio cat door panel in stock. Lowes, with their “30 minute online order preparation guarantee” (“order online and pick up everything in 30 minutes”) has to call and order the panel through their “one day stocking” guarantee service. The guy on the phone assures me that they can have it in the store in five days, one day after calling the “stocking” department. I can pick it up 30 minutes later and it will only cost $456 unless I want it delivered with their “free delivery” which will cost $45 because the cost of my item is under $500. A week or ten days at the most and I can have it at my house with some assembly required. Home Depot has about the same options but were rude on the phone and will not deliver it ever even if I buy the $650 double pane best of show most expensive cat door ever. That’s about how much the sliding glass door itself cost.

Online the sliding glass patio cat door panel place will ship the panel for $45. Now the $45 pays for two day delivery. That is not bad so after considering the options of available doors from $200 to $650. I chose one door in the mid-range and then filled out the purchase form. When the delivery info came up there was a map that showed Michigan is in the 5 day delivery time. So why do I pay the $45 for two day delivery? I called and the guy at the online store and he told me that they would deliver it within 2 days after they get the order which would take at least 5 days. That means that in 7 to 10 days I could expect the thing to arrive with some assembly required.

Then there is the training period the online cat panel door person told me about when I talked to him on the phone. Training the cat can be done in as little as a week, but could take as long as a month. Some animal become traumatized and never really take to the door. I was thinking that after installation the animal would just figure it out. How hard could it be? I only have three days until I leave. Should have considered this last week, or last month.

New plan. Put a regular cat door in the door that provides access to the garage from outside and then just leave the food in the garage. (I thought about just throwing a 15lb bag of food on the floor in the middle of the garage and cutting it open to let the animal feed as it wanted, but I found a self filling bowl that is essentially a plastic version of what I proposed but cost $11.) After calling the pet stores in the area it seemed clear that they all had the thing I needed and had many versions and prices ranges to choose from. The installation seemed simple and required only a screw driver and a saw: “Anyone can do it.”

It took 30 minutes to drive to the pet store through the construction and Saturday traffic. Inside the store there was special event: adoption day for random animals, dogs mostly. The store was full of cages, crates, dogs on leashes, dogs tethered to shelves and dogs running amok. The dogs were barking, whining and fighting in the back of the store. I think there were people taking bets back there on the vicious fights breaking out among the adoption animals. At least from the din of barking and people shouting it sounded that way. After looking through the selection of available cat doors that had been severely picked over by previous cat door buyers, I got some of the “expert” help from one of the 16 year old professional pet associates and choose a door. I exited the isles and migrated to the one checkout stand behind a line of people holding animal food, toys, weasels, rats, cats and dogs, all squirming, wriggling and fighting trying to interact in a natural way with all things near them or escape the din of the store. Only one counter open, why do they have five checkout counters in the store? Why do they put the new person at the checkout? By the time I reached home I had invested about an hour and a half in the cat door project and that doesn’t include the two hours of research and frustrated online shopping.

Once home I looked over the project and the box clearly stated the cat door was for an inside door. My garage door of course is an outside door. I am sure that that information was printed on the front of the box after I left the store because I am sure I read everything on the box before selecting a winner. The cat door I bought would never do in the garage. Back to the store through the traffic and into the phalanx of barking, yapping, crying pets in the store to select a more appropriate product. Add another $45 to the cost of the pet door because the outside door cost more. Now I am up to $70 and by the time I got home I had three hours of driving and buying and two hours of research and no way for the cat to get into the garage yet.

The directions for installation were simple, only a screw driver and a saw required, oh, and a drill and a pry bar to get the door off the hinges, a hammer, a ruler, pencil, scissors and the template cut from the directions... It took me an hour to gather the tools required with the scissors taking the most time to find. After removing the whole garage door from the hinges and laying it down on two chairs, I drilled the pilot holes for the saw. Two problems: the access door is metal front and back and the 1/2” hole is too small for the hand saw I bought and assembled myself, and the saw I bought cannot cut the metal. Back to the store to find a saw that would cut the metal door. Now I have about seven hours of work putting the pet door in the garage door and all I have is the door in the garage lying on two chairs (it won’t go back on the hinges that seem to have been bent when I took it off) and four holes drilled through the metal door. Skit, the cat, can’t get through a 3/8” hole, but it might be able to peek through and see its food. Of course the cat won’t have a problem getting through the doorway because the door is on the chairs and won’t go back on the hinges which are now bent.

This sucks! A whole day spent testifying to my sheer incompetence at home repairs. I can’t drill the holes bigger to fit the new saw blade because my drill has the biggest bit I own and the biggest bit that will fit in the chuck. And speaking of chucks, I lost the chuck tool for the drill and had to mickey mouse the installation and removal of the bits using a 4mm Allen key and a large pair of pliars. I can’t cut the door because I don’t own a blade that will cut the metal of the door or is even small enough to fit in the ½ inch hole. I only have a few primitive hand tools and my ax doesn’t seem to be the right tool for the job although I am close to using it. I was able to prop the door into the doorway and hold it in place using two garbage cans and a two by four. The cat can peek at its food through the holes in the door but can’t get in.

New day and time for a new approach to the problem of the cat door. I borrowed the tool I needed from my father-in-law: Black and Decker jig saw. Now this saw was made sometime in the 50’s so it is a bit on the used side with a cracked power cord and two blades for cutting metal. Of course the blades are about and eighth inch too short to go all the way through the door and cut both sides at once. The first blade lasted about half the way through the short side of the inside face of the door. The next blade did all the other cuts on the inside part of the door. The second side, the outside, had only holes in the corners. The cut I made on the inside face was not entirely perpendicular to the surface of the door, nor were the holes entirely perpendicular, so the cut on the other side was going to be tricky. In fact it was too tricky for me. The second and last blade broke about halfway through the opening on the outside face. I mickey moused the first broken blade into the saw and finished the cut. Naturally the cut rectangular opening on the inside did not quite line up with the rectangular cut on the outside face of the door. I hate it when that happens. Not only that, but the cut rectangular opening was too small for the frame of the cat door on either face.

It took another half an hour and mickey mousing the other broken blade into the saw to get the rectangular openings (actually quadrilateral openings since there were no real parallel sides) to kind of line up and kind of fit the frame of the cat door. Now the holes needed to be drilled for the screws/bolts that connect the outside and inside of the cat door. Without the chuck for the drill I took a 4mm allen key and a pair of pliers to extract the half inch bit that was actually too small for the project but almost too big for the drill. Looking in the work shop I found the box the drill bits had lived in at some point. I found an 1/8 inch bit and a 1/4th bit. I needed a 3/8 inch bit. The 1/4th was the best I could put in the drill being the closest to 3/8th. Next problem… The bit was for wood not metal so they did not really want to penetrate the metal. Given enough time and pressure the four holes were drilled, not perpendicular to the surface but through both sides of the door.

Now I had to ream out the hole as best I could to get the 3/8th hardware to fit in the 1/4th hole. I got six of the eight holes pretty much reamed out to fit and the other two were close, but the bit was finished. The holes were not quite lined up but they went “straight” through, so they did line up each in a different plane. Unfortunately that fine point does not always count for much in the world of home repairs. The two pieces of the frame, inside and outside, were pounded in the rectangular cuts in the door but the hardware and bolts did not make it to mate with each other nicely, or at all. Hammer time!

Idiot! Two of the holes that were not reamed out were on the outside of the door and that was the only place it really mattered. The only four holes that needed to be 3/8th inch were the outside where the female part of the hardware set into the door. Oh, well, muddle on and get a bigger hammer. When the bolt finally met the female part I cranked it down with a worn out Phillips screw driver. Why does the worn out part matter? The screw driver would not give enough force to the bolt before it slipped in the socket. Before the thing was all set, the screw was stripped out. Good enough. Hit it with a hammer and it looked pretty good from outside even if it was loose as a goose. I will caulk it or glue it or something.

I straightened the hinges of the door (remember they were they one of the first casualties of my home repairs) with a hammer and beat the door into place on those twisted hinges. The cat would have nothing to do with the newly installed cat door. The beast yowled for half an hour while I stood outside with the flap held open calling him. He was pissed and finally escaped when I open the door to try to grab him and shove him through opening. After three hour without access to the food bowl, the cat came back for a snack. I scooped up the feral beast and pushed him through the plastic flap in the cat door. Claw marks were left in the metal of the door with his passage. Once the front feet hit the sidewalk outside the animal shot down the driveway, across the street, between houses and disappeared on the next block. Maybe I won’t have to feed him now.

I am left with a thing of beauty in my garage door on the outside. The cat door has an artistic slant making it a rectangle not in line with any other part of the universe. In fact maybe it isn’t even a true rectangle but more of an irregular polygon, a quadrilateral of indistinct description. The gaps at the top left side between the metal of the door’s surface and the cat door frame, should not collect much debris before the snow flies. Caulk it, pack it with newspaper and caulk the space. I will have to paint the door to remove the scratches and paint scrapes from two days of building pains or maybe not. The garage door does not squeak anymore, it groans as effort is put into swinging the door shut. A hammer should be able to straighten out the hinges and tune the noise but I am definitely not in the proper mood for such subtle adjustment. Should have gone with my gut and used an ax to cut the hole, then duct taped the frame in place.

Well, it has been two weeks now and I got a report on the cat. Seems there is no sign of the cat, however there have been raccoons, woodchucks, and possums traipsing in and out of the garage partying hardy. They have dumped over the huge plastic tub of food, scattered it all over the garage and have eaten to the point of vomiting which the ants seem to be taking care of. From the looks of the droppings, the mice have been snacking heavily between parties.

After three weeks away I drove up to the house finding a large woodchuck basking in the sun on the sidewalk near the cat door. Inside the garage the food was gone and the beast has shit in the water bowl. The cat is gone, driven off by competing wild life. There is one animal I will not have to make arrangements to take care of when I leave again.