Last night, after dropping Audrey off for band, I went to three pet stores in search of an electronic dog door. We had decided that two cats disappearing was more than enough, and this seemed to be the way to let Judy do her business while keeping the cats inside.

I met a friend who volunteers for an animal group, and told her I wanted to join. She had told me of her misgivings about the group I’d contacted before, and asked me if I had given them my address. I told her no, just my street. Her concern about the other organization was that they trapped animals and brought them to the shelter for euthanization. It hit me like a ton of bricks that Rhonda and Dave might not have been trapped by a neighbor, but by this person after I’d told her what neighborhood I was in. After this, after seeing all the cats in the store, after the frustration of finding no electronic doors in all my driving and shopping, I came home and finally cried about the cats.

I’ve been keeping it in, not wanting to make the girls any more upset than they are, but it finally had to come out, and I feel much better now. Guilty, Angry, Frustrated, but not bursting with repressed grief.

So I spent a lot of time searching for electronic doors. One determining factor was how well it would fit into the existing opening, and this was a bigger problem than I expected. Even the company that made the door we have doesn’t make an electronic one that comes close to fitting. The only door that would work cost $450. O.M.G. . . I began checking other options – electronic fences for the cats (the collars for three cats brings the cost up close to the dog door price) barriers (impractical because of the placement of the current door), and finally we came to the conclusion that we’re going to have to keep the cats indoors. This means manually letting Judy in and out when we’re home, and closing the cats in a room with food, water, and litter when we’re not.

This isn’t going over well with Toby and Calvin, both of whom made rushes for the front door a couple of times already. Calvin has been meowing at the dog door quite a bit, and it’s only 9:30AM. It has to be done, though. It’s one thing to let a cat out and take your chances that it’ll get hurt or killed. It’s another to send it out knowing someone is out there waiting for it. They don’t know that, and they’ll do their best to make me let them out, but they have to face the fact that they are now indoor cats.