TK – Kitten Escapologist

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.

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.