Recommendations on Cat Doors

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networkn

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#318366 10-Jan-2025 12:52

Our neighbours cats are often in our garage and we are considering a Microchip CatDoor with Smartphone App. Pricey, but probably cheaper than feeding 6 cats!

However, between our garage and house there is a wooden door which currently has a cheap plastic cat door, that we don't require to be smart.

The current one is probably 15 years old and because of it's plastic make up, is noisy as it swings, and swings with the wind.

We don't want to spend the earth but is someone able to recommend a quiet model that isn't stupidly expensive?

TIA

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#3330008 10-Jan-2025 13:21

Do you even need a cat door for that internal door? Just remove the flappy bit (its what we did years ago).

I imagine you might want to minimise the draft though. Would a piece of cloth hanging over it help with that? Might need to teach the cat(s) they can get through the cloth.

For the external one, a magnet based one is cheaper as long as your neighbours dont use the same.

networkn

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#3330009 10-Jan-2025 13:23

nzkc:

For the external one, a magnet based one is cheaper as long as your neighbours dont use the same.

The wife and daughter want to know what our cats are doing when we aren't home :-/

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#3330010 10-Jan-2025 13:29

networkn:

The wife and daughter want to know what our cats are doing when we aren't home :-/

If they're like ours, sleeping :D

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#3330011 10-Jan-2025 13:34

Catwalk brand available from Mitre 10.

Not expensive and you are supporting NZ made.

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#3330013 10-Jan-2025 13:57

I still rate the surepet hardware. Using the pet door even the bigger cats can get through. If you find an older hub that hasn’t been connected to the internet I can help with getting a pethublocal setup working.
But personally I just use the pet door without batteries these days as my dog keeps any cats away and I don’t need to keep tabs on when my cat or dog goes through the door.
As I got tired of changing the batteries every 5 months.

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#3330017 10-Jan-2025 14:08

I have experience with two SurePet products: SureFlap Cat Door Connect and SureFlap Pet Door Connect (for bigger cats / small dogs). Both have been reliable for me, took my cat ~2 weeks to train to use it initially, and then a couple of days of re-training whenever we've moved house.

With the cat door you can individually control which cats are allowed out, the pet door only scans the microchip on the way in.

If you want to use the app, they connect to a hub which you have to connect to your network via wired ethernet.

They chew through the batteries (4xAA for the cat flap, 4xC for the pet door), probably change them every 3 months or so.

Not super cheap, but reliable and my cat knows how to use them so I've been pretty happy with them.

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#3331204 14-Jan-2025 09:35

Escapist:

I have experience with two SurePet products: SureFlap Cat Door Connect and SureFlap Pet Door Connect (for bigger cats / small dogs). Both have been reliable for me, took my cat ~2 weeks to train to use it initially, and then a couple of days of re-training whenever we've moved house.

With the cat door you can individually control which cats are allowed out, the pet door only scans the microchip on the way in.

If you want to use the app, they connect to a hub which you have to connect to your network via wired ethernet.

They chew through the batteries (4xAA for the cat flap, 4xC for the pet door), probably change them every 3 months or so.

Not super cheap, but reliable and my cat knows how to use them so I've been pretty happy with them.

+1 Sureflap.

-never had an uninvited guest since install.

-replace batteries once ~6 months or so.

-single button interface.

-Has always let our cats in.

Note - When these were released it was around the time (many) years ago there was a massive bad batch of microchips which failed after only a year or two, leading to people blaming their Sureflap for not working when it was the chip that failed.

But I've found this misconception of poor reliability may linger. (Source: Our cats were affected, one of our animals had to get rechipped at least 3 times!) so take any bad feedback of them failing after a few years with a pinch of salt if the chips were never checked.

richms

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#3331211 14-Jan-2025 10:08

Sureflaps are quite annoying with the battery consumption, and extremely short warnings between low battery and door not working.

But as they have patents on the way that you can read a chip like that, they are the only game in town for secure ones.

for non-smart ones I have just bought the cheapest thing that I could find that would deal with the thickness. For the garage and shed I have a cheap one set to exit only to stop the cats getting locked in when they go in and sleep while I have them open. Seems that they are able to pull it open if they really want to but thats only happened once as they have more interesting places to go, they only go in the shed when I am working in there.

Richard rich.ms

networkn

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#3331213 14-Jan-2025 10:14

I have found cat door companies are quite a strange group of people. Some really weird interactions.

We will get a smart and dumb one. I am not sure how hard they are to install, but some of the installation fees have been flatout nuts. >$1000 for 1 smart and 1 dumb cat door replacing existing ones.

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#3331266 14-Jan-2025 10:34

Looking at sureflap cat doors - Mitre10 are surprisingly expensive:

mitre10

surflap amazon store

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#3331269 14-Jan-2025 10:43

johno1234:

Looking at sureflap cat doors - Mitre10 are surprisingly expensive:

mitre10

vs

surflap amazon store

At the moment the price of Amazon to NZ incl delivery and Import Duties, is about double, so $120 > $240. Their higher end units are price comparative to NZ at the moment. No CGA importing from overseas. No local support either if that's important to you.

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#3331274 14-Jan-2025 11:08

networkn:

At the moment the price of Amazon to NZ incl delivery and Import Duties, is about double, so $120 > $240. Their higher end units are price comparative to NZ at the moment. No CGA importing from overseas. No local support either if that's important to you.

Check pet shops and see if you can make mitre10 do the 15% thing that they advertise but only do begrudgingly. They seem to like to trot out excuses that they cant do it that are not in their terms to try to weasle out of it but if you persist they will match online things.

Richard rich.ms

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#3331277 14-Jan-2025 11:22

We have the sureflap connect, and also have individual feeders for each cat... no stealing the others food.

The door is great, but... it is not waterproof like it says. If it is not installed in a sheltered area water will track in at the bottom of the tunnel and eventually short out the antenna loop.

My first one suffered from this when it got wet when we had a contactor clean the windows. (a smear of silicon around the joint fixed it, but I replaced it anyway as I was going away for a week at the time)

I find the batteries last around 4 months or so, I do find for some reason one of the cats info does not always get uploaded to the cloud, the door always activates properly just no data stored.

Lastly, the cat we had when I got it took weeks to get the idea, I taped the door open for a week, then disassembled the catch and ran it like a normal door for a week then added batteries (so it made the noise), then added the catch back... and still had to do a lot of coaxing, she still couldn't get the idea. To this day if I set it to allow cats inside and not out, the slight difference in operation means she can't work out how to get in.

Our second cat.. pushed him through one way and called him back... job done

Matthew

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#3331285 14-Jan-2025 11:40

mdooher:

We have the sureflap connect, and also have individual feeders for each cat... no stealing the others food.

The door is great, but... it is not waterproof like it says. If it is not installed in a sheltered area water will track in at the bottom of the tunnel and eventually short out the antenna loop.

My first one suffered from this when it got wet when we had a contactor clean the windows. (a smear of silicon around the joint fixed it, but I replaced it anyway as I was going away for a week at the time)

I find the batteries last around 4 months or so, I do find for some reason one of the cats info does not always get uploaded to the cloud, the door always activates properly just no data stored.

Lastly, the cat we had when I got it took weeks to get the idea, I taped the door open for a week, then disassembled the catch and ran it like a normal door for a week then added batteries (so it made the noise), then added the catch back... and still had to do a lot of coaxing, she still couldn't get the idea. To this day if I set it to allow cats inside and not out, the slight difference in operation means she can't work out how to get in.

Our second cat.. pushed him through one way and called him back... job done

Our cat will break the cat flap if he knows there's food on the other side. No other training needed.

richms

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#3331305 14-Jan-2025 12:28

Sigh. Its getting faster now.

Richard rich.ms

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