Eli, the three legged cat
My wife and I have a BUNCH of cats, but our oldest boy cat is 14 and just survived a battle with a cancerous tumor in his leg.
A month of late night vet visits and over a year of secondary chemotherapy and he is finally cancer free!
Unfortunately, the result was a very agitated three legged cat.
A few months later though, he’s happy and energetic again. Sometimes I wonder if he ever remembers having four legs. He’s adapted to it surprisingly well.
(Wilson is making an appearance in the image above)
So ever since the rounds of chemo (where we had to leave Eli at a vet for hours at a time) he’s become a lot more… needy.
Unfortunately, as a software developer I spend most of my time every day locked in my office working or gaming. For the past few years, I get up every 10-30 minutes to let Eli into the room or out of the room. Sometimes it’s so he can use the bathroom, sometimes it’s so he can eat some food or drink water, and other times I think it’s just to remind me that he controls me.
So I started looking into getting a microchip reading cat door. The reviews for all of the reasonably priced doors were terrible… so we ended up getting this: SureFlap Microchip Pet Door
No affiliate links here, odds are this blog will never earn a dime, but I don’t mind advertising things that work!
Speaking of dimes, this door costs MANY. But it’s been working perfectly.
It’s taken Eli a few days to figure it out, but he now cries for a few moments to see if he can command me to open the door for him. If I don’t respond, he pushes his little nose through the door (in or out) and jumps inside.
I can tell he’s proud of himself afterward, because he acts a lot more energetic than when I used to just let him in myself.
The most important part about this door though, is that only the two or three cats that can be trusted (not to destroy everything) are registered via microchip to get into the office.
I occasionally spot the other cats peeking in, jealous of the special portal that only allows in select creatures. It has to appear as magic to them, and I know some of them have attempted to open the door, only to find it locked and unable to be opened.
Thankfully, our objective has been complete. Eli has total freedom to enter and exit the office all day long. It always impresses me how technology can be creatively used for functional purposes outside of the originally intended purpose.
What’s meant to be a life-saving measure to get an animal back home when they escape (or are let out to roam) can be used in an automated way to enable functionality.
It’s like my cat has an office badge, and it’s crazy convenient!