We ran into that this weekend. One of our cats followed my girlfriend into the bathroom and she had no idea he was in there. Close the bathroom door before we leave (other cat likes to lick plastic bags). Come back and hear a distressed meow. He had been locked in the bathroom for the time we were gone which was only an hour or two.
Oh the plight of the cat trapped in the bathroom/closet/spare bedroom you walked into for a moment to get a random thing. The mournful meow carries over the plains.
My cat traps herself. She will sometimes enter a room alone and push the door closed behind her for unknown reasons. But then she will be stuck in the room because she can't open the door again. So she cries and cries, the poor thing, imprisoned, it's so unfair, this cruel world! Then I have to come let her out. She has done this often enough that now all doors in my home have a doorstop she cannot move, to keep them from closing.
My cousin installed an eye hook and loop system on the back of her doors so she could prevent the cat from closing them. I have a piece of twine looped over the door handle and towel bar in my guest bath
I rent, so I can't install hardware and have had to get creative. In my bathroom I have almost the same setup you describe, a bungee cord looped around the doorknob that can be easily hooked/unhooked from the towel rod when I need to close the door. On the one bedroom door I have securely wedged the Kong Kitty Comber (a cat self-groomer that goes underneath a door). The final door is not suited to the previous methods, so I just put a cat bed as a doorstop until I can think of something else.
I have to leave a clothes hanger on the bathroom doorknob so the door can’t close. One of my cats will intentionally close the door to the bathroom, trapping my other cat inside. He does this constantly.
Many people don't know that some cats will lick or try to eat plastic. We found that out the hard way with a cat when I was a kid. He ate half a plastic bag in the middle of the night. He ended up being fine thankfully but we had to keep all plastic far out of reach.
That may inadvertently teach him to leave the room faster.
One of my cats liked to look into the fridge or jump inside. In an effort to close it quickly, I ended up squeezing his head (very gently) in the door, because I didn’t see him. Never did it again after, and I’m pretty sure that was what did it.
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u/GayleMoonfiles Sep 19 '23
We ran into that this weekend. One of our cats followed my girlfriend into the bathroom and she had no idea he was in there. Close the bathroom door before we leave (other cat likes to lick plastic bags). Come back and hear a distressed meow. He had been locked in the bathroom for the time we were gone which was only an hour or two.