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- Verified Buyer
We have 2 indoor cats at home who are smart enough to knock on the doors and let you know they want in or out. At first your reaction to this is "oh look at the cute, smart, well behaved cat who follows good door knocking protocol". After a while you realize that instead of you training the cat, its the cat that has been training you.... to be their BUTLER! 20 times a day they knock on doors to get in or out, and by then you are already asking for mercy.That's when this pet door came in. Ordered it and was delivered pretty much in the expected amount of time (we live in Puerto Rico so Prime takes more time to deliver over here). The door comes in a simple cardboard box with good instructions, 4 screws, 4 plastic spacemakers (if your door is too thick or if you need to make space between the 2 sides). It also comes with a cardboard guide so you can use it to make the opening on your door.We did not use the space makers since the door we used it on is an aluminum screen door. We just marked the opening with a marker using the guide, and proceeded to use a jigsaw.PRO TIP 1: use a drill first to make a guide hole before using the jigsaw. Choose the correct saw blade depending on the material. Remember saw blades are measured by teeth count.PRO TIP 2: remember to measure twice and cut once. The instructions tell you to place the door at a height where the bottom of the door is almost touching your pet's belly. We made a mistake and mounted it a bit too low, and our cats have to bend down a little to get through. They are cats so they don't really mind the bending. Perhaps a small dog will not want to bend.PRO TIP 3: Also mark and drill the holes for the screws AFTER you make the opening. if you mess it up, there's always a bit of wiggle room with this door.PRO TIP 4: Choose the right product for the thickness of your door. Some of these doors are made for thicker or thinner doors. This one worked well for an aluminum door that is just made from a 1/8 thick panel.Mounting was fairly easy once the opening was made. We drilled 1/8 inch holes for the screws and used a cordless driver (in the lowest torque setting) to make it easy on us (since you will probably be sitting down or kneeling for this).Once the mounting was done, we had to re-train our cats to use the door. This takes a bit of persuading, because the cats wanted to keep using us as their own personal butlers. We had a long talk with them and explained that they had to open their own doors now. We had to force them (gently of course) in and out of the door a couple of times until they understood what it was for. They will paw at it for a while but will not like the magnet at first. Just motivate them with treats and after a couple of days they will be fine. Our cats started consistently using it after the first day.PROS:- Magnet works amazingly well. It shuts the door tightly so critters and other vermin cant get in.- Looks good and will cover any mistakes you make when perforating the opening once you mount it.- Easy to mount with the 4 screws provided (DONT OVERTIGHTEN)- Cats get used to it pretty quickly.- No more cat butlers in our home.- Sturdy enough. Door is made of hard plastic.- Not very costly compared to similar products.CONS:- The door does has a lock, but it is a full lock. Meaning you can't lock it for going out or in , independently. Other products do this. Sometimes you will want to let your pet come back in, and not go back out (at night for example). You wont be able to do this with this product.- Somehow... my cats learned to open the door even when its locked. So the lock doesn't work that well. It's not a deal-breaker for us.Serves my needs for kitties sunning on the screened in porch. And the lock works for when they need to stay indoors. Looks pretty good too.Smart engineering and quality manufacture made this cat door a pleasure to install and use. I put it in the lower panel (1/8" aluminum) of my storm door. It seals against drafts pretty well, and I can't see any obvious points of wear or stress that would lead to future problems. Following the simple directions led to a good outcome. The only minor niggle was sticky movement of the sliding latch, but a couple of minutes with a scalpel, excising some untrimmed molding flash, got it moving smoothly. Some installation tips:1. When placing the template on your door, use a bubble level across the top of the template.2. Use a jig saw with the appropriate blade (fine-toothed metal-cutting blade in my case).3. Cut/file the opening so that the door frame slips in with zero force, so as not to distort the frame and bind the door.4. When marking the screw hole locations, use a bubble level (again) across the top of the inner frame.5. Drill the screw holes in the door a little smaller than suggested, 9/64" rather than 3/16"; this snugger fit will ensure that the door remains plumb as you install the screws, assuming that you levelled it as above.6. Vacuum meticulously afterward: the last thing you want in your feet (or your cat's paws) is sharp metal swarf.Being used to the unmodified screen door for 2+ years, my cat was wary (spooked, actually). After I taped the flap fully open, she gingerly approached and peeked outside. After 15 minutes of lurking, she took her first tentative steps through the door. After going in and out through the propped door many times over the next hour, she still would not nudge the fully closed flap, but when I lifted it halfway, she pushed her head under it and the body followed. Not bad for a couple of hours' work!Great value. The only issue my cats had is that the door is hard plastic and has a magnet which makes it stick. Since they were used to a soft flap, the change kind of threw them for a loop. However, they learned if they wanted to get in the house to eat, they had to figure out the door, so they learned pretty fast. I installed this on my porch door that goes outside to the yard, and I didn't want to cut any portion of the aluminum door, so I installed it as close to the bottom of the screen part of the door as possible and up against the vertical edge of the aluminum door frame for extra support. It's a little high off the ground so they have to kind of hop in. I have 3 cats that are large (not fat - just large cats at 15-16 lbs), and it is a bit of a squeeze for them, so if your cats are over 15 lbs you might want to consider the next size up. Otherwise I am very happy with this product and I thought the price was great.The installation was easy but we needed 2 people. We each held a side up on each side of the screen and one of us screwed it in.Basic cat flap, works well. Installation is a bitch, like it seems every other cat flap on the market you have to line up the front and back plates mm perfect or the screws miss the holes on the outer plate. The screws that come with the kit are useless unless your door is 1mm thick, so you need a selection of screw lengths to suit your door. It’s far easier to not drill pilot holes and simply screw from both sides directly into the door with short screws. The design of screwing through the back plate into the front plate is ridiculous, as you can’t see the front plate holes to line them up.Just fitted this cat flap over the last few days. What guided me to this purchase was the price and quality. I fitted the cat flap in a new house, which has MDF style fire doors which are about 1.5inches thick, it took me a lot longer than I thought as I don't have a jig saw, so did the old drill and saw out job, which was laborious. The design of this cat flap is that you connect the two halves by screwing from one side into the other, which I imagine is tricky and unnecessary, if the screws were supplied shorter. Due to this, when fitted to a wide door, you need to find 4 additional screws and drill out the small holes on the lockable side to attach it directly to the door, the holes are too small otherwise. It has a magnetic base so the flap does not flap about in a breeze though this does provide a little resistance to the kitty when pushing through. As you can see from the pics, I painted the hole, so the tunnel looked a bit more professional.This *could* have been a decent catflap at a reasonable price - it fits flush to the door, fairly weatherproof, decent magnet without being overly strong & it's quite a neat 'low profile' style catflap without massive big plastic borders all around & tiny flap.However, its *utterly* useless because it ONLY comes with a 'tinted' flap - it's quite a heavy 'smoky' tint not unlike expensive sunglasses. To my cat, this appears (from both inside & out) like a 'black hole' or even like a mirror in which he sees another cat staring back at him (ie. his own reflection). He will not go through it & is even scared to approach it (even after 2months) and yet he happily jumped through its predecessor which was virtually identical except it had a slightly 'frosted' or opaque flap. And he still happily uses the untinted backdoor catflap to get in the house. Even in strong sunlight looking outdoors (see photo) this catflap still appears suspiciously dark to my cat.When I contacted the seller/manufacturer and enquired if it was possible to buy a non-tinted flap for it, I got a terse response telling me all their catflaps are tinted except for their top-of-the-range microchip catflap at £££. Nowhere in their advert does it state that this catflap is tinted. It actually says it is "transparent" which everyone except CatMate would understand to mean that it would be clear & untinted!So I've now had to order a non-CatMate catflap to replace this one. I don't recommend this catflap unless you know your cat doesn't mind the dark tinted, almost mirror effect, of this one.Can't believe just how good this is for the price. I need to get a piece for the inside, my own fault for not reading the thickness sizes. But this is for an inner door so I'm not desperate. This was bought for my daughters bedroom door. The cats sleep with her but need to access the litter tray. This way she can sleep with her door shut, she's happy, cats can come and go, there happy, and now they don't wake me up scratching at her door to get in/out.....I'm happy. Best idea iv ever had!!!!!We got this as a basic option because we were worried our cat wouldn't use it and thought we could later upgrade of we needed a better one of needed.It is good value and didn't take much coaxing for our cat to use but annoyingly she will still come to us to be let out other doors.It was very easy to fit once the actual hole was cut in the door but oddly it only came with 4 fixing screws. I assume the idea is to fix the outside frame from the inside one through the door but the screws that came with it weren't long enough to go through a fairly standard UPVC door panel so we had to find another 4 other small screws to mount it.
