a midway bikelog

I have 3 pets; a dog and 2 cats, and i have a cheap wooden screen door on the back of the house. Earlier this summer, a hole appeared in the bottom left corner of the door, i think from one of the kids. It was a cheap fiberglass screen, well on the way to hanging in shreds already. Whatever the initial source of the hole, the little orange cat, Louis, decided it made a dandy escape route and over a couple of days worked to enlarge the hole enough to get out to the back yard.

Over the course of the summer the hole got big enough for both cats to easily jump through the door without trouble, and they spent most of the summer coming and going freely when the main door was open. Between the pets and normal wear and tear of kids coming and going and my own clumsiness, by fall that screen door wasn’t so much a screen as a frame for holding scraps of screen-like fabric. It hung in strips from the middle of the door, only the top 1/3 relatively unscathed (and only relatively at that).

Finally yesterday i had a chance to use the new screening i bought and fixed the door. The new screen i got is Pet-D-Fence Screening; it’s not metal, but some sort of coated screening, supposed to resist getting torn up by claws, seems like a good application for it. Installation was straightforward, just like any other screen job, and it came out nice and tight. I got the door installed again last night and forgot about it until this morning.

The typical morning routine is that the dog DEMANDS to be fed, then goes out to pee, often followed by one or more cats. This morning was no different, the dog doing her manic tap dance while i scooped food and cats meowing in circles. When the dog wanted out, i opened the wood door and Louis became an orange blur streaking past the dog, smashing into the screen mid-leap, in the exact spot where the hole used to be. He hit the door hard enough to open it several inches and sat there dazed for a couple of seconds while i opened the screen door and let them both out, laughing my ass off.

Although, i’m sure, the neighborhood cats will be sad for having less access to their sparring partners, I get a nice new-like screen door, and hours of entertainment until the lack of escape route sinks into his little feline skull!