cat flap

Murtle

I live in a flat on the ground floor and am thinking of putting in a cat flap....has anyone had any experience of putting these either in the sliding doors or through a wall? any advice would be greatly appreciated....

thanks

Paul_Varjak

Have only ever fitted cat flaps to normal doors and a window fitted with laminated glass.

Your sliding door - does it have toughened glass? If so, you cannot fit one unless new panel is made with hole already in it. That is because toughened glass cannot be cut.

If it has laminated galss it may be possible to cut a hole but I do not think anyone would guarantee that it would work without cracking. I had to live with a crack for five years - but at least it won't just break to smithereens!

When I moved out of flat had to replace window. You should have seen the cat still trying to get in through the window where flap used to be!

As for fitting to wall - that may be difficult especially if you have a cavity wall! Don't think any cat flaps are designed for brickwork, are they?

System

I had to have a cat flap fitted into a cavity wall in my new conservatory. No problem - just added extra pieces of plastic to make a sort of tunnel. Cats have no difficulty getting through!

System

...and the cat flap inner and outer bits on the ends of the tunnel! Simple

boots_babe

A couple of months ago we got 2 cats, and had to fit a catflap through the cavity wall. It took my other half and his dad a couple of hours to do the whole thing; borrowed a huge drill (about 1ft long) from a friend, drilled through from one side, then drilled through from the other side and the piece of wall just dropped out.

We bought a special Staywell catflap which is made for walls; you simply buy as many exensions for the tunnel section as you need. Can't remember where we bought it from in the end but look around on the internet before buying as prices vary hugely.

We were pleasantly surprised how easy it was to do, and the cats have soon got the hang of it!! Need to wipe out the tunnel every so often though as it can get a little muddy if it rains ;-)

Murtle

thanks for these replies - got a question on the cavity ones....how do I fill it in when I want to move??

thanks

M

boots_babe

Well we've not come across that problem yet as we're not planning to move house for a while! ;D

But, if/when we do, I think that we would just leave the catflap where it is - unless of course the buyers asked us to remove it.