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My cats open doors! How to keep them safe from predators and wildlife?

Updated on September 23rd, 2025

Pet's info: Cat | Mixed Breed | Male | neutered | 1 year and 3 months old | 2.5 lbs

I have two neutered cats who love being outside. We live in a mountainous area with wildlife, so we are trying to keep them inside but they learned how to open doors. We are trying to decide b/w a wireless pet fence in our yard where they wear large-ish shock collars (even though they are smaller for cats) all the time as the company says not to wear for more than 12 hours or to just put cat trackers on them and find them every night. Which is safer?

1 Answer

Most Helpful Answer

Answered By Andrea M. Brodie, DVM

Veterinarian

Published on July 26th, 2018

I have 5 cats and live in the same kind of environment. Our cats are also inside outside cats and I can tell you how we manage:
1) we feed twice a day wet food and call the cats for it. They come running for their food, we use the same call every time. This ensures that your cats come home when you call them.
2) Our cats are to be inside at night. ie we do not let them out after the evening feed.
3) they can go out if they wish, after the morning feed.
Most predators hunt at dusk and dawn. So this minimizes the opportunity for contact of the cats with predators.
If you can replace door handles with door knobs, the cats cannot open the doors anymore.
We have been doing this for 12 years now, and have not lost a cat yet.

1Pet Parents found this answer helpful

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