Opinions on infra-red cat flaps please!

Hi

Long story short we have one indoor/outdoor cat, he's always gone outdoors and it's impossible to keep him in. Now we have a 6month old completly black kitten and the thought of sending him outside scares the life out of me!! It took months to train our other cat to keep to the back of the house and use the catflap because the cat flap leads onto a roof, then another roof, then another, then a statue and then the ground! In a year we are moving to another house in a much quieter location so we will review the situtation then.

The problem at the moment is that George needs to be able to get out but Marcel has to stay in. We are opening and closing the door into the study where the cat flap is upto 20 times a day, and when we go out George can only get into this small room. For this reason I thought that an infra-red cat flap looked like a good idea but I would be interested to hear from anyone that actually has one, ie how long after George has gone out will it lock shut? Will Marcel be able to follow him out because he really really badly wants to get outside?

Has anyone experienced any negative reactions when they said that they where keeping a cat indoors? When I told some people in the UK this they all went crazy, even the vets there are against it

Thanks for any input!

ps does anyone know wheather the infra-red ones are better than the magnetic key ones?

Our cats stay inside all the time and are fine. In the US that seems to be pretty normal and people quite often have indoor only cats.

Never having a cat that goes outside I don't have any advice on the infra-red flap but it seems like it would be worth a try. I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping your other one in.

This probably is little help (you'll see why lol) Tristan put a magnetic one on his bedroom door so Cleo could wander in and out around the house. She has to be carried out of the house to her enclosure as she's blind, and she actually doesnt like the flap being closed, she didn't like the force of the magnets and the clicking they made...sooo...she flap is taped open all the time! And the two dogs stick their heads through it, and Timmy can just squeeze through and steal Cleos food...

Told you i wasn't help

Hee! Not much help but the thought of the dogs poking through really made me laugh! Do you mean that when the magnetic cat flap is closed that it clicks when it unlocks but they still have to push really hard? That might be a good thing for my situation.

I don't think George would mind it around his neck too much, he has a bell and used to have one of those adress barrels.

Thanks for the giggle!