Lucille Dumbrava

A closed door is an anathema to a cat. It seems to present the ultimate challenge, forcing the cat to draw on all its wiles to overcome this object.

My house is an older one, laid out in a style more to utilize space than to honor esthetics. The front door opens onto a small entrance which leads to a hallway with openings or doorways to the rooms. Directly ahead, at the end of the hall is the bathroom. I am the only human inhabitant of the house, and therefore, the only one who uses this room for its utilitarian purposes.

When nature calls, if I am not careful to firmly latch the door behind me when I go in, one or more of the cats will bang and push at the door until it swings open. Often, it is not convenient for me to shut the door. This scenario can present problems.

This is also true when I am showering. The shower is at the far end of the bathroom away from the door. I have gone in to the shower, soaped up, rinsed off, and stepped out to a wide open view of my front door, open to the screen to let the breezes in. Fortunately, I live in an out-of-the-way location where there is no street traffic.

My closets have a wide variety of doors, all of which the cats have become adept at opening. My clothes closet has a sliding door. All my clothes are covered in fur. Even worse, the door is harder to open from the inside - the planners weren't thinking of cats when they installed them. Yesterday, I came home from a long day out and went to hang up my sweater. As I slid the door open, out jumped Pansy who had been locked in there for eight hours.

The door to my linen cabinet also slides, much to the delight of the cats, who think freshly washed and ironed table linens are great places for an afternoon nap. The door to the cabinet that contains the cat food has a lock, put there after I came home to the results of an afternoon of rummaging and gorging by the four cats.

The hall closet is a repository of everything that I buy in bulk, from paper towels to lightbulbs. Extra detergent, spray wax, even backups of food staples. It is also an object of endless fascination for the cats. It opens with a simple pull, but because the ironing board hangs on the inside, the door is heavy. No matter. At least once a day, I will find one or the other of the cats worrying the door. They tug with one paw; they lie on their backs and try to use all of their feet to pull the door open. None have been able to get it open yet. But on the occasions I need to go into the closet to get something or to put something away, what amounts to a grand prix takes place. From every part of the house cats come running, all with the single purpose of making it into the closet before I shut the door. On the few occasions one has succeeded getting in and not getting chased out again, the resulting messes have been awesome.

There are times in this cat zoo when I long for a little quiet time, a chance to sit without a cat tail snaking under my nose or two cats pushing and shoving to get comfortable on my lap. It's easy. All I have to do is leave the door to one of the usually forbidden places open a crack. It's an irresistible draw.

Lucille Dumbrava is a retired Teacher/counselor whose love of cats and love of writing started when she was a child. Many of her stories about the cats in her life have been collected in a book entitled CatHouse, now available from www.bookstandpublishing.com, Amazon, Alibris and local Northern California bookstores. You can also order directly from Lucille. She can be reached at Email