Cat flaps

Another very warm day today with the thermometer hitting 90 degrees by noon. Despite this fact I actually got some things done today. First the fat boys (the 4 dieting cats that own the house here) got a new cat door to their cat porch. Last spring when we extended the front porch so that it would run  the full length of the house we enclosed 20 feet on the east end with wire and put in a cat flap so the fat boys could go outside and watch the birds. I also wanted the litter boxes out of the house because I hate walking around barefoot and having the clumping litter getting stuck to me feet. That stuff tracks everywhere! They are also fed outside on the porch in order to keep the dogs from getting their food. When we were building the porch the only cat flap we could find locally was made to go through a door, not the side of a house, so I just framed up a tunnel through the wall and made do. Last week I broke down and ordered a new pet door that's made to go through an exterior wall. The boys like it, and so do I since it's much more weather and bug proof than the old one was. Here's Blinger, the most svelte of the boys, heading outside to see if there might be any food in the dish.

The old cat flap was now free to be re-used in the camper. Mr. Kitty (K for short) will be traveling with me, and I wanted to find an out-of-sight place for his litter box. The best place seemed to be in the basement under the bed. There was already a "door" that could be lifted up to access the basement area, but I didn't want to have to lift the mattress every time the litter box needed cleaning.

 

I also didn't want K to have free run of the basement area. So I had to come up with an enclosure that would keep him from getting into things he probably shouldn't be messing with, and I didn't want him to be able to get to the outside door in case I opened it and he jumped out. I still needed to be able to access the litter box from the outside basement door for cleaning. I came up with a hinged wall that gives a large enough area for the litter box, and can be unhooked from the wall just inside the outside door and swung to the side so I can get to the box to clean it.

The other benefit of the hinged wall is the whole thing will fold flat against the inside of the storage space, allowing me access to the hot water heater in case that needs repairs.

The last bit of the project involved installing the cat flap. I had to build a framework to support the cat flap and cut a hole into the interior of the camper.After that it was a simple matter of screwing the cat flap to the wall, and the project was done.

I think this arrangement will work well. It preserves my access to much of the basement storage area and allows me to get to the hot water heater if I need to, it will keep the Archie the Yorkie from snacking on Cat Crunchies and hopefully it will keep the tracked litter to a minimum in the camper. I still haven't come up with a good idea for where to put Marley the milk snake's enclosure but I'll keep working on that one.I also got a paper towel holder installed, and I screwed a small plastic basket to the inside of the cabinet door under the sink to hold sponges and scrubbers. Not a bad day all-in-all.