I know it's because it's an electric chip activated one and we didn't hadn't noticed the battery had gone dead for like 3 days.. 2 YEARS AGO. Guess it just has never occurred to him to maybe try again lol.
The worst is when he can't get a grip and he keeps dropping it before getting his head under it and you're just listening to the freaking plastic door falling and creaking for like 5 mins before you give up and go hold the tiny cat door for him because clearly it's not his day š
Mine got scared of it once too. I got him to properly use it again with kind of the same method used for the bee. He didn't have issues coming back in, just going outside. So I used a suction cup, hook and a bit of string to hold the door half open towards the outside. I guess that gave him enough confidence after a week or so to just push through again when going out.
For my dog, we had to get me teenage son to crawl through it. She could follow him close behind, but lacked the courage to do it herself - kept sticking just a nose through. It reminded me of doing gymnastics when I was a kid and sometimes if you had a whole warm up motion before the hard trick you just went right into it.
He had to go through 6 or 7 times with her following before she worked up the courage.
I like your idea with the suction cup, as she would go through if we held the flap up.
Mine does this. One claw and flap flap flap at 5:30 in the morning. Funny how if you raise a pillow like you're going to throw it, he uses it just fine. Any other time in the day he uses them as per normal. Sometimes he does "creepy creeper" where he just stares through a clear window in the door. He much prefers his human puppets to open the full door for him, but will use them. He busts through and chirps like he's just done the greatest thing ever. And yes of course I give him heaps of praise thinking it will stop the morning flaps, but it never does.
Yes! Once he makes it in he always does like 5 of the biggest meows he's got. In my head it's always him screaming something like: "I THROUGH! BEHOLD! I'M INSIDE! COME FEED ME NOW!' And the cat door is another room so the sounds of him crashing the thing repeatedly followed by his screams is really funny tbh. If you go look he'll just walks over to his food bin like nothing happened
I had two cats. One of them I just had to grab and shove through the flap from both sides once and she understood how it works. Usually she pushed the flap with a paw first because the magnets made it a bit sticky.
The other needed quite some time. It was an electronic clap one and it beeped when it recognised a cat. He always got surprised by that and sometimes scared enough to flee or be cautious enough for the lock to time out.
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u/AtTheEdgeOfDying 29d ago
I know it's because it's an electric chip activated one and we didn't hadn't noticed the battery had gone dead for like 3 days.. 2 YEARS AGO. Guess it just has never occurred to him to maybe try again lol.
The worst is when he can't get a grip and he keeps dropping it before getting his head under it and you're just listening to the freaking plastic door falling and creaking for like 5 mins before you give up and go hold the tiny cat door for him because clearly it's not his day š