The cat who walks through doors

There is a proverb in the Bible that reads like so, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise!”

But if you want to learn about persistence, look no further than your household moggy. Put a door between a cat and her goal and she will find a way under, over or through that door. I have proof.

Just ask our local home handyman – Charlie (not his real name.) Charlie and his lads did some work on our basement – pulling down walls that cats had tunneled through, and putting up more durable ones. (At least that is the hope!)

And his crew leveled out our basement floor. All good, but when they put the doors back up, there was a bit of a space between the bottom of the door to our storage room and the floor.

I called Charlie up and asked if he could add some length to the door because a few of our cats were able to get into (but not always out of) our storage room – a place we want to keep cat-free because of the natural tendency of cats to destroy things.

Charlie looked at the crack and said, “There is no way a cat can fit through there!” – only to watch a cat stick his head out, and starting wiggling the rest of his body through.

Cats, you see, don’t have “true” collarbones – meaning “not like ours.” If they can fit their head through a space, and they haven’t eaten too much cat chow, the rest of their body will follow.

OK, so cats can go under doors. But what about over doors? The answer to that too is “Yes!”

At my shop, Small Things, there was a space between a temporary wall and the door that sits in it. This makeshift wall was erected to keep the cats from invading my landlord’s space – City Roofing.

One cat in particular, Cookie, became ingenious in jumping from the floor to half-way up the bookshelf, shimmying her way up to the top of the bookshelf, balancing on the very thin top of the wall, and making her way down into Tyler’s office – in particular, onto Tyler’s chair.

A father of a cat-loving friend agreed to help us by putting up a few inches of lattice work to separate our two spaces even more. When he was finished, Cookie weaved her way up to the top and was halted. Victory dance!

Except the next morning when I arrived, Cookie was in Tyler’s chair and the door between Small Things and City Roofing was open.

At first I reckoned that a fellow volunteer had accidentally left the door open, so I put Cookie back in my side of the shop and closed it firmly.

I went downstairs to do my litter box scooping and kitty dish filling, and by the time I had returned upstairs, Cookie was back in Tyler’s office in her favourite spot.

It was beginning to sound like “The Cat Came Back.” I carried her back over to our side and watched her while she patiently pulled at the door until the latch came undone. And then - pad, pad, pad, pad and hop – back onto Tyler’s chair.

Grrr. Thankfully an amused visitor was more than happy to go to the local hardware store, buy a second latch and install it.

That certainly slowed Cookie down – but it didn’t stop her. She then took to hiding out near the door and the second it was opened by a human, she made a run for it. My theory is that Tyler’s office chair was partly stuffed with catnip. Cookie is now adopted and our remaining cats are less obsessed with doors.

Or at least that door. At my request, Tyler put up some lattice and a door at the bottom of the basement stairs. My store cats have a passion for digging around in his side of the basement. Reflector tape on the floor to divide up the basement means nothing to them.

Tomorrow, I move the litter boxes from my side of the basement to the landing at the bottom of the stairs, close and latch the door, and thereby set the cats up for their next contest with their two-legged co-inhabitants.

But if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the four-legged ones.

Jan Carrie Steven is a volunteer with Cat Adoption Trust Sudbury (CATS) and the co-ordinator of Small Things: Kitty Boutique and Cat Adoptions. For more information, go to www.smallthings.ca.