When we bought this house, I swore that the first change I was going to make was installing a dog door. I am okay with being a dog parent, but being bound by the schedule of someone else's bladder was getting very tiring. We had been stuck in an apartment with two very energetic and easily bored dogs for the first four months we were here, and all I could think of was getting them a door of their own, so they could set their own schedules without consulting me. Unfortunately, I fell in love with my Park, which doesn't have an easy spot to install a dog door. The man and I disagreed about how to install one, whether it was worth punching a hole in the wall instead of altering the French doors, and we had to wait until the fence was built. Until the perimeter was secure, we had to assure ourselves that the old man cat couldn't get outside unsupervised. At least five times since we arrived here, the half blind and three quarters deaf cat has taken off through the neighborhood, going as far and fast as he can. We weren't sure we could trust the electronic pet doors, that supposedly only open to the animals who wear a transponder on their collars. The old man is wily enough, he would just sneak out under the dogs' bellies, like Odysseus and his men escaping Polyphemus the Cyclops by riding underneath his giant sheep. So again, we delayed installation of a dog door. We procrastinated so long that it was too late, and the man left for his job far away, and it remains undone.
Now I am re-evaluating my days, and looking at being gone long hours at a stretch. It's too hot to leave them outside all day. Leaving them inside all that time is preferable, but it's a dicy prospect. For a few days I can get some friends to check on them once a day, but that's not a good long-term plan. Do I dare punch a hole in my living room wall, like I suggested years ago? Will a radio-activated door control really work?
All the cats in the Pride have proven themselves fairly trustworthy when it comes to staying in the Park on out days, but they aren't very good at keeping the Park out of the house. This spring, my happy little nature preserve has become a bloody killing field. When I first started letting them out, I made a point of saying very clearly to my big huntress, "Do not kill baby birds. Or mommy birds. Or daddy birds. Just don't kill birds." When I tried to go back and tell her not to kill lizards, she wouldn't let me change the rules. My omission was her open door. If I have a pet door into the Park, she will find a way to get out and hunt. And she isn't the only one. Athena kept having the anole lizards clamp their jaws onto her paws, so she ended up with them dangling like a wristlet purse. Twice last week, I had to rescue small creatures from the big kitty boy's jaws--first an unfortunate fledgling bird who died in my hands as soon as I picked her up to move her to safety, and more recently a skink with half a tail who ran straight up a sycamore as soon as I grabbed the boy cat.
So I am stuck exactly where I have been for the last few years. To cut a hole in the wall or not to cut a hole in the wall. That is the question. And there is no easy answer.
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