I’ve mentioned in the last few days that we intended to install a kitty gate at the top of the stairs so that the cats could have some freedom to roam about and inspect things further. We’d ideally like for the cats and dog to just somehow start to get along but who knows if/when that will really happen. So after hubby got home yesterday, we made that our task for the night. We try to take it pretty easy on work nights since we have to start the routine all over again the next morning…and 5:45 am always comes way too early.

So we set about our task and then realized that the gate we have is too wide to fit in the staircase…or most of the door frames in the house. This one is apparently for wide entrances and that is certainly not something we have in this house. So we’re back to the drawing board as far as the cats go. We’ve come up with a few options but we’re not really sure how great any of them are. One thought is to put a kitty door in the door of the extra room upstairs so that the cats can have a place to retreat whenever they want. I’m thinking I will put their food in the kitchen which should force a bit more interaction between the three of them & we’ll just keep the dog on a leash in the house for a while when the cats are roaming. Hopefully then we’ll be able to teach the dog that the kitties are not to be chased and none of their stuff belongs to her (that last one is going to be really tough – especially when it comes to the litter box…yuck!) We’re also thinking that we can put the litter box in the mudroom/laundry room which would really prevent the dog from gaining access…but we’d need to put another kitty door in our new kitchen door. Definitely something we need more time to think on and I guess it’s time to do some new research on the subject and see what we can do to help ease the process.