Our kitten TK (stands for That Kitten) is a skinny ginger
tom with big feet and an extremely long tail. He looks a bit like a feral
meerkat.
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| Not TK |
‘Feisty’ isn’t a strong enough term to describe him – we suspect he
has small cat syndrome. He’s a very free spirit in the sense that we can’t keep
him in the house if he doesn’t want to be there.
We bought one of those cool cat doors that have multiple
settings: no cats in or out, cats out but not in, cats in but not out or cats
in and out. The cats have to wear a
little magnet on their collars to activate the door. TK learnt very quickly. Our venerable ten year old
ginger tom Tiger didn’t much like the new fangledness and preferred one of his
human staff to just open a door when he asked but eventually got the hang of
it. Tiger doesn’t understand what he did wrong for us to foist TK on him in his
twilight years.
Despite all this marvellous technology we kept finding TK
where he shouldn’t be if the door was working properly. A bit of sneaking
around observing TK (not an easy thing to do) showed us the problem: TK was
using his head. Literally. He was butting the cat door until the magnet that
closed it vibrated to a new setting and then he’d just push through.
Technology defeated we resorted to a brute force approach. We
put a box in front of the cat door at night. Too easy for TK. He’d wedge his
pointy muzzle in between the door frame and the box and gradually edge his way
in. Once he’d got his body between the box and cat door he’d revert to head
banging. A very motivated kitten this one - possibly with a headache. This might
help explain his general demeanour.
OK, time for a different approach. We now place a twenty
kilo bag of sand against the cat door on the outside every night. So far he hasn’t found a way around this one but
I’ve noticed him checking out the insect screens on the windows and doors. Come
summer I expect he’ll be applying his head to those problems as well.
