We are about to replace our backyard door and hope to take this opportunity to install a smart catflap.
“Smart” here is mainly about automatically locking them from going out during the night but letting them in and no other animal (picking up their microchips).
We let them out during the daytime and lock them in when it’s dark.
I found https://www.onlycat.com/ but all the reviews I see about it are suspiciously positive, which makes me worried that they are manipulated.
I also have negative experience from buying other “smart” cat feeders which stop working after a few months.
Does anyone have recommendations they can point to from personal experience?
We don’t have a smart flap, our flap has clips that we can push down to stop egress and/or ingress. I would just go with a manual system and spend maybe a minute flicking the flap clips so they can’t exit. Are other cat entries a problem? If so I guess I can see why you might want something that bars entry to other cats, if not it is an expense that may not be needful??
This company is possibly located in the UK (only phone number on website is +44 international code). Their terms and conditions would also breach the Australian Consumer Law.
I personally wouldn’t purchase from them as any recourse for problems is unlikely. They will point to their T&Cs as a out for them.
Highly likely. Many reviews on a seller’s website are often manipulated, as they are unlikely to present unfavourable reviews on their own website.
Some shonky business also populate independent review websites with their own ‘reviews’. This is particularly the case when there are a lot of negative reviews from their customers. It is usually easy to see when this occurs, as most reviews are either highly favourable (say 5 stars) or very negative (say 1 stars). There isn’t often many reviews in-between.
We have a sliding cover that we open and close manually, but:
We sometimes have to start a bit of a cat-and-mouse game with the cats to make sure they are indoors before we close it. It would be nice to have something that just lets them in without letting them out anymore, automatically.
At some times of the year, they catch lizards in our grass and try to bring them in. It’s not a big issue, but it would be nice to prevent that.
So far, we haven’t had many issues with foreign cats coming in.
Thanks for your response, I’d take it into consideration.
We can just lock the exiting the house side so it doesn’t allow them out after they come in. It is a flap rather than a slide door. It has magnets in the bottom to stop excessive swinging after entry or exit (it swings maybe 3 times each a little less each swing).
It’s called Petway.
Other examples of Smart doors that you might want to look at:
I had a window mounted cat flap with a device attached to my cat’s collar (magnetic maybe?) It whirred and clicked when it operated and startled her so that she wouldn’t use it.
I was intending to get one that fits in the sliding door (or sliding screen door) for Toby, but given that he refuses in/out independence I decided against. Just as well, read some reviews of them just yesterday and most were disparaging…
