The Window Cat Flap – Pros and Cons

Cat flaps are indeed a reliable and important house and pet accessory if you are living with your kitty. Through these devices, you can go on with your work or rest without being disturbed by your persistent and insatiable cat who wants to go in or out of your house. Some people refer to it as a cat door, because it acts as a door for cats. But don’t let its name fool you. Cat flaps (cat doors) can be installed not only on doors, but also on windows!

Although most cat flaps available on the market nowadays are designed for doors installation, there are special cases wherein a cat flap is installed on a window, most especially when you are living in an apartment, condo or a rented property. Of course, you would not want to modify your door or your wall if you can get a window cat flap instead. Actually, this was the case of my neighbor Analiese.

Analiese lives just across the street, renting a flat with her cat, Queen Elizabeth. She works as a volunteer and she is always appointed and transferred from one place to another. We always see each other every morning before I go to work. We greet each other and sometimes she gives me baked pies and cookies.Analiese loves to bake with her cat. Whenever she brings me something, Queen Elizabeth comes along with her. Unlike my cat Cassie who is always outside, I’ve never noticed her cat playing or walking around the neighborhood.

One morning, I noticed that Queen Elizabeth was a bit gloomy. Analiese said that she has also been noticing the same. Ever since they moved into our neighborhood, her cat became rather blue. I asked her if she’s been letting her cat exercise or play under the sun. “That’s the problem,” I remembered her saying. She told me she just couldn’t let Queen Elizabeth in and out of her flat since she’s always busy working at the office.

I asked her if she has considered installing a cat flap. She said she has. But there’s nowhere to install it on! There is only one door in her rented room and it opens to the lobby of her apartment. She could not install a flap there! I knew it was a great problem. But suddenly, I remembered coming across an article about cat doors for windows on the Internet. This kind of cat flaps may be installed on a horizontal sliding window but can still be removed and replaced anytime. I told Analiese that a window cat door could be what she should be looking for.

After two weeks, Analiese brought me another pie as a thanksgiving gift. This time, Queen Elizabeth seemed better than the last time I saw her. Analiese told me everything. She said that she followed my advice and bought a cat flap for Queen Elizabeth. Although these flaps for windows are good, there were some problems that she encountered. One of them was the height of her window where the flap was installed. Analiese’s window is a bit high. Her cat may not be able to jump to that height. That’s why she also provided Queen Elizabeth a cat staircase that she may use in order to get up and down the window.

However, it is not easy to train a cat to use the stairs, Analiese told me. She had to use reinforcements like food and toys in order to encourage her to use it. Gladly, after one week, she was able to learn to climb to the window using the stairs and use the flap comfortably on her own. Since then, Queen Elizabeth could freely go in and out of her apartment into the backyard where she could play under the sun, scratch her paws on tree trunks and meet other friendly cats from the neighborhood. Just a day after she learned how to use the cat flap, the glow that Queen Elizabeth once had was back and she was healthy and full of life once more; and to that, Analiese was very grateful.