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Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Infrared Cat Door Unlocks Automatically For Your Cat
Here's one for anyone with cats (there's a dog version too) interested in letting the pet in, but keeping the racoons out. (We have 5 racoons on our back porch every night and they will kill cats whenever possible.)

Notes from the catalogue: "Give your cat the freedom he desires by installing a cat door that will allow admittance to him and him alone. Your pet will be able to come and go as he pleases without interrupting your schedule, and you'll never have to deal with strays entering your home with the Infrared Locking Cat Door, which communicates with a key worn on your pet's collar. The collar key is powered by the included button-cell batteries. Four AA 1.5V alkaline batteries are required for the door but are sold separately." $94.99

# Permalink Posted at 4:01 AM 2 comments Email this Link

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These have been around for years. We don't have raccoons but we do have other cats in the area. We've had the following problems with the flap though (YMMV).
There's a time delay on the flap so if a racoon chases your cat in they might still make it before it locks (time delay is adjustable but min is 2 secs.
If your cat is as stupid as ours then it sits on the inside of the flap hissing at the "intruder". Result - our cat unlocks the flap for the intruder!
Neighbour's cat has actually managed to knock the door off it's hinge twice - and a raccoon is a lot bigger than a cat. In fact the neighbour had worked out it could get it's claw in and push down the little locking tab to get in on it's own anyway!

# posted by TJM 1:14 AM

Just something this brought to mind, I can not recall the URL address but awhile ago I was reading an article about a guy who setup his cat door (and a PC + CCD camera) to recognise the silhouette of his cat, I believe he was doing this more as an experiment for his image recognition software project, but its still a very cool solution.

# posted by Dazza 4:37 PM

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