When we recently moved into our new home and we knew that we wanted to put the litter boxes in the basement. Not that we don’t love our furry girls, we just don’t love seeing the boxes, plus they get a little added privacy while doing their business (and who doesn’t want their privacy). The new house has a door at the top of the basement stairs and obviously, our kitties (usually) can’t open doors for themselves, despite their best efforts (if they could, then I’d be writing a different story!). I scoured the web for a solution finding a plethora of exterior pet doors. Finally, I found the cat door by Cathole. Reviews on a few websites only sang praises for this product, so I immediately added it to my online cart and within a few days, it was at my door.
After “reminding” my husband for a couple of weeks, he finally took the door off the hinges and took it outside to handle the installation. As it turns out, his hesitation was for naught because it only took him half an hour or so to get this installed – that includes the time to cut the hole out of the door. Our kitties now have the freedom to run up and down those basement stairs as often as they’d like. It’s also a good way for them to escape when we have company and they’re feeling a bit shy.
One thing that is a pro and con at the same time is the brush. The cats love the brush and I’m pretty sure that once it was installed, they were just going in and out to get combed. With all that brushing though comes a LOT of hair balls – all down the basement steps. I’m often cleaning the basement stairs of the excess hair – pretty sure I’ve made at least four more cats from the fur collection. With that said, we ended up removing the brush to keep things clean and tidy.
Overall, this is a perfect product for our needs. The cats love it and even walk through it when the door is open and of course the added bonus, we don’t have to see or deal with the unpleasantness of the litter boxes!