Outdoor "mudroom" to prevent cat from door-dashing?
Hi all! First post here :)
I want to get a travel trailer that I can haul with an SUV. But before I can do that, I have to take my cat into consideration, as rehoming her is simply not an option.
My problem is that she's a bit of a door dasher. I currently live with my mom and she spends most of her time in my bedroom. Our daily routine pretty much consists of 8am wakeup, I open the door while I get ready for work so she can run around, then I crack open a can of food when I'm done so she comes back, I say goodbye and close the door, and head to work. Then I come back, give her dinner, shower, and then we spend the evening in the kitchen before heading back to my room at about 10, where we sleep with the door closed.
The problem is, anytime I leave her in the room, even if it's just to go to the bathroom at 2am, she tries to bolt when I open the door.
Obviously I plan to equip her with one of those collar tag GPS trackers and a microchip with my info on it (as well as a QR code tag that anyone can scan with their phone to get my info, and a name tag with my phone number on the back), but we all know that things happen. It's hard to find a cat collar that isn't breakaway, so it doesn't take much for them to pull the collar off and then 3/4 of those precautions are useless. Plus, what if she runs into the bush and finds herself face to face with a coyote before I find her? She has zero survival skills. I take her out on a leash sometimes, but she's still very much an indoor cat. She wouldn't last, and that would kill me.
So, while trying to figure out a solution, I had a thought. What if I could buy (or build) a little screen room outside the trailer? Then, as long as I make sure I close one door before opening the other, she can't get far at all and I can just scoop her up if she gets out.
This brings me to my question:
How can I make it so that she can't either squeeze between the addition and the trailer, or run under the trailer out the other side?
I thought about affixing some sort of heavy-duty snaps to the trailer to solve the separation problem, but I have no idea about the viability of that solution and I'm still not sure what to do about the open underside. I kinda doubt permanent skirting is a smart thing to do when I'm planning to move the trailer relatively frequently, but is there temporary skirting? Or could I maybe use the same snap method to attach a screen thing around the bottom, and then use tent pegs to secure that to the ground so she can't just squirm under it?
Any and all advice (aside from "rehome the cat") is welcome!
I want to get a travel trailer that I can haul with an SUV. But before I can do that, I have to take my cat into consideration, as rehoming her is simply not an option.
My problem is that she's a bit of a door dasher. I currently live with my mom and she spends most of her time in my bedroom. Our daily routine pretty much consists of 8am wakeup, I open the door while I get ready for work so she can run around, then I crack open a can of food when I'm done so she comes back, I say goodbye and close the door, and head to work. Then I come back, give her dinner, shower, and then we spend the evening in the kitchen before heading back to my room at about 10, where we sleep with the door closed.
The problem is, anytime I leave her in the room, even if it's just to go to the bathroom at 2am, she tries to bolt when I open the door.
Obviously I plan to equip her with one of those collar tag GPS trackers and a microchip with my info on it (as well as a QR code tag that anyone can scan with their phone to get my info, and a name tag with my phone number on the back), but we all know that things happen. It's hard to find a cat collar that isn't breakaway, so it doesn't take much for them to pull the collar off and then 3/4 of those precautions are useless. Plus, what if she runs into the bush and finds herself face to face with a coyote before I find her? She has zero survival skills. I take her out on a leash sometimes, but she's still very much an indoor cat. She wouldn't last, and that would kill me.
So, while trying to figure out a solution, I had a thought. What if I could buy (or build) a little screen room outside the trailer? Then, as long as I make sure I close one door before opening the other, she can't get far at all and I can just scoop her up if she gets out.
This brings me to my question:
How can I make it so that she can't either squeeze between the addition and the trailer, or run under the trailer out the other side?
I thought about affixing some sort of heavy-duty snaps to the trailer to solve the separation problem, but I have no idea about the viability of that solution and I'm still not sure what to do about the open underside. I kinda doubt permanent skirting is a smart thing to do when I'm planning to move the trailer relatively frequently, but is there temporary skirting? Or could I maybe use the same snap method to attach a screen thing around the bottom, and then use tent pegs to secure that to the ground so she can't just squirm under it?
Any and all advice (aside from "rehome the cat") is welcome!
