NaturallyResilient

About

I use to have a large black and white cat who liked to use his paws like hands. He would use his paws to pull cat food out of the dish to eat. Sometimes he would eat it right from his paw like a hand. Barney would also dip his paw in the water dish and lick the water off. Once I had a tall glass with a little water in the bottom sitting on the coffee table. I watched to see what Barney was up to when he started looking at the glass. Soon he dipped his paw in to taste what was at the bottom. My other cat, Callie, was watching and as soon as Barney left she came over to try that trick herself.

Barney was so into using his paws for every thing that he naturally used them to pull the cat door open to go through, just like a human pulling a door open with their hand. The only trouble was that this particular style was a hard plastic, double layer system. It was meant for the cat to use their head to push their way through. The double layer consisted of a large rectangle with a cut out that would only swing one way. The cut out inside this large rectangle had a smaller rectangular flap fitting over it. A cat when going one direction would push against the flaps and the larger flap would catch on a stop and the inner flap would push open making a smaller hole for the cat to go through. Going the other direction the smaller flap would push against the larger rectangle and both would move up and out of the way making a larger opening for the cat to crawl through. The smaller flap could swing either direction but in one direction it pushed the larger rectangular flap with it.

Barney would use his paw to pull the flap open. This worked ok, sometimes. One day Barney pulled the smaller flap open and proceeded to go through, however this was the direction where the larger rectangle should be pushed out of the way with the smaller flap. As Barney went through the door the larger flap with its smaller opening caught around Barney’s large frame and the farther Barney went through the door the tighter the larger rectangle grabbed him. By the time I got over to the cat door, Barney was in panic mode.

Paul and I had to push him through backwards to unhook him. Barney then did not want anything to do with that door. But that was the way to go out to do his thing (we did not keep a litter box at the time). So Paul and I grabbed Barney and pushed him through making him use his head and not his paws. We had to push him through about ten times before we felt he was comfortable with the door again. At least he was smart enough to realize what was going on.