Ella & Bubba

I put a cat door in the wall between the laundry room and the library. It's not a regular cat door, but one that activates with a chip that Ella wears around her collar, which she's never had to wear before and doesn't much like. The library has doubled as a storage room since we quit heating it a few years ago but I've been cleaning it up. I have a space heater in there now but hope to have a wood stove hooked up in there before winter is upon us too hard.

The point of the door is that Ella doesn't think it was a good idea for us to take Bubba in, but he's family now so we have to live with that. Bubba doesn't make it any easier in that he is constantly annoying her, slapping at her when she walks by or taking all of her favorite places. He doesn't mean any harm by it but she's turned into a grumpy old lady, which wasn't the effect we were looking for. The cat door will only open for a cat wearing the activator collar, and Bubba doesn't have one. The idea is to give her a place she can go if she wants to be alone since I'm not letting her out right now.

When I finish moving things around and dumping stuff in the library, I will have places where she can get to them all or most of the sixteen windows in that room, and I'll have beds in some of them for her, including a couple of heated beds.

Now, Ella needs to learn how to use the door. When it detects the activator, it clicks. At that point, the door will open if she pushes on it. But if she doesn't go through, it will soon reset. As it is, the click scares her and she backs away rather than going through. Then, when she decides to go through, it has reset and it won't open, or it will click again as it detects the activator, and she backs away again.

I've pushed her through it a few times, trying to teach her how it works, but she seems to have the idea that I have to be there to let her through. So she comes and gets me when she wants to go into the library, which defeats the purpose of the smart door.

When she wants to come back into the regular part of the house, I can hear the cat door clicking over and over as she tries to figure it out. Then she gives up and goes to the regular door to scratch on it for me to let her in.

She's not stupid and she'll figure it out before long, I think.

 

Ella has gotten to where she can get into the library whenever she wants, although she comes to me for help if she has trouble with it. I don't know that she has ever gotten back in on her own, though. I set a camera up in there to see what is going wrong and I think that, because she pushes the flap in toward the library in order to get in, she think she has to pull it outward, toward the library side, to get back in. So she walks up to the door, it triggers but then, instead of pushing through the flap, she tries to snag the door with her claws to pull it in. There is a way to set the sensitivity on the machine, which might make it easier for her to trigger it, but I seem to have misplaced the instructions.

 

That's pretty cool. I've never heard of these, but assume they're meant to let pets in and keep foreign critters out.

So does Bubba try to invade Ella's sanctuary?

 

Oh, yeah. He's confused because the door never works for him. Ella has a couple of cat beds in there now and has been hanging out there some. It puts her in a better mood when she comes back into the regular part of the house, I think. Once I finish cleaning the place out, I am going to put a small desk in there so that I can hang out with her some, too.

 

That's pretty funny. Gettin' a catitude, huh?

Good luck with that wood stove. I bought mine 10 years ago but think the EPA put some new efficiency standards in place since then. I'm not certain what's available out there these days. And I can't imagine what needed improvement, unless they're just trying to kill the wood burning market. My stove is 2 ft³ and is rated to heat 1,800 ft². It keeps my 1,300 ft² house toasty with a decent burn time.

 

We don't have that problem here, at least not yet. I'm not even going to get a permit for it because the town knows nothing about what I have here. I found that out from a friend who used to work in the code enforcement office. My house was built before the town began keeping records so they have nothing on file, except for what they were able to determine from the outside. I have the stove. I just need to have someone cut the hole and put a chimney in. Actually, there's a little more to it than that, as I will have to get a non-combustible floor pad and a heat shield for the wall behind where I am going to put the stove. If the house burns down, the insurance company will probably refuse the claim but I'll take my chances on that. It is not a stove that is going to be lit for long periods of time. It's a small stove, and I'll only be using it once in a while in the winter, and that's only because wood stoves are more comforting than space heaters and I can get the wood for free.

Back on-topic, although this is sort of on-topic, since one of the reasons I want to get it in is so that I can hang out with Ella in her private room. She has gotten very good at getting through the electronic door to get into the library but I don't think she has ever successfully gone the other way. She knows it should work, and I can hear her triggering it, but she can't get it through her feline head that she needs to push her way through the flap both ways. When she goes in, the flap pushes in toward the library so she is convinced that she needs to pull it in toward the library in order to get out. I have explained it to her over and over again.

 

I just did a quick search. The EPA (not our duly elected representative) put new wood stove emissions standards in place for 2020.

Here's the EPA page with links.

Other than cost and frequent maintenance/routine catalytic converter replacement , one thing to be aware of for your application is that in order to reduce emissions, stoves must now operate at a higher minimum temp, so "just burning off the chill" on a late spring/early fall days is gonna be impossible.

Back on full topic: Ella understands. She just likes the attention.

 

Hooray for Ella! She just made it back from the library on her own for the first time.

 

That girl recognizes a camera without difficulty.

 

Reminds me of Snowy, my attack cat I had for over 20 years.

 

She's actually orange and white. The night vision filters the colors out. I set the camera up to see if I could figure out what she was doing wrong when she couldn't figure out how to get back in. One problem, I think, is that going into the library, the cat door has a little bit of a tunnel, as can be seen in a photo a few posts up, while the door coming back doesn't have that. I think that the act of getting into the tunnel puts the chip in the right position to activate the door, while it's not necessarily in the right position coming back. There's that, and the fact that she thinks she has to pull the door in toward her rather than pushing on it. I've explained it to her over and over again, but there's no getting through to some cats.

 

Aahh...gotcha.

She must have heard the camera "wake up."

 

Bubba just walked into my office carrying a bag of cat treats that he lifted from Michelle's office. He came walking in with the bag in his mouth as if to say, "I need some help here. Could you open this for me, please?"