Cats & Doors

My cat, Sammie, does not like closed doors. He does not like closed front doors, back doors, closet doors, cabinet doors or bathroom doors. When he sees a closed door, it must be opened, and he must go through it. He is very agile with opening the kitchen cabinet doors and is known by the other domesticated felines in the neighborhood as Flash because he can dart out the back door before the door is halfway open…no matter where he is in the house at the time. But he especially does not like closed bedroom doors. This is in direct conflict with my need to keep my bedroom door closed while I am sleeping. Therefore, we share a nightly ritual wherein Sammie wakes me up around 2:30am scratching at my bedroom door to get in.

No problem, right? I should just leave my bedroom door open and let him come and go as he pleases. In theory, this is a brilliant plan. However, Sammie does not want to come in and sleep, he wants to play…because he has been sleeping most of the day, you see. So, he comes in and plays with the blinds, and jumps up on the wardrobe, and eats the plant, and chases my foot under the covers, and steps on my face, and knocks things off the nightstand and scratches at the door to get back out, and in general deprives me of a decent night's sleep simply because he is more curious and energetic at night than I am. So, I keep the bedroom door closed. This also provides an extra barrier between my sleeping self and whatever else might be lurking about in the house. But I could leave that paranoia to fate and keep my bedroom door open, if I thought that would solve the problem. It would not. And, every night, I try to think of some way to convince him that scratching at the door and waking me up is not pleasurable for me and tends to invoke hostility in me towards him.

Now, he is not an obtuse creature, nor is he purposefully disrespectful He is just extremely focused and insistent when it comes to expressing his likes and dislikes. So, we have been acting out this nightly drama for a few months now. At first, I would get up, go to the door, and tell him to stop, as he would run past me and jump on the bed. I quickly learned that opening the door was what he wanted, and I was merely doing what he wanted. So, I started simply yelling at the door in a very disturbing manner (particularly disturbing for other people in the house). This would stop his scratching for about five minutes. Then, I started throwing things at the door, like pillows, books, shoes, profanity. That did not really work either.

I quickly resorted to drastic more traumatic measures. I kept a water gun next to the door. When he would scratch, I would leap from the bed, grab the water gun, fling open the door and squirt into the darkness as "Flash" retreated down the hall to the kitchen. Now, I am very nearsighted, and I would not always think to grab my glasses before launching my water assault. We will have to replace a couple of the pictures that are hanging in the hall, but most have survived the midnight monsoons. And, typically, Sammie would be back the same night scratching at the infernal closed door.

Finally, after trying almost everything, excluding a well-calculated short-range missile attack, I was offered a can of compressed air, normally used for cleaning dust out of electronic equipment, but I was told was federally approved for feline behavior modification purposes. The objective would be to squirt the compressed air under the door when the scratching began because Sammie hates sudden loud noises and air blown on his face. I think most would agree that this combination of sound and wind is particularly distressful to anyone who is scratching at a door in a dark hallway in focused intention. So, a can of compressed behavior modification is what I tried last night.

It was 2:30. I was asleep. He probably sauntered down the hall, saw the door was closed, muttered some kind of cat expletive, and began to scratch. I leapt from bed, grabbed the can, dove for the door, and tried to get the long thin nozzle tube under the door to spray the air. This, of course, caused a great deal of commotion, which, in turn, made Sammie suspicious. I heard him retreat down the hall before I got the can in the "ready" position. Undaunted, I eased the nozzle under the door and waited for him to return. I fell asleep in the fetal position with my face pressed between door and carpet and my hand on the spray can.

I woke up about 30 minutes later to the sound of Sammie scratching at the door. Instinctively, I pressed the red button and sprayed the can under the door. I do not know exactly what happened after that. What I heard sounded like an angry cat inside a trash can that is being kicked down the hallway into the kitchen and down the other steps to the basement. I still did not open the door. I crawled back into bed and continued my sleep. Today, he has clearly avoided me and every closed door in the house, quickly heading in another direction. I can handle the rejection. And I know he will survive the trauma. And, just maybe, if I am lucky, he will think twice before scratching out his dislikes on my bedroom door at night.