How do I keep my cats safe during a home renovation?
Written by Scott on February 5th, 2009
Puffxoxo12
I have two cats. One is a 6 year old and the other is 8 months old. They both like to wonder around the house. Starting in two weeks, we are going to be completely renovating our first floor and basement leaving us with only our second floor and third floor (which has a guest bedroom and bathroom). How can we keep our cats from going into the construction area? Is there any like plywood thing we can use to block the stairway and balcony? Should we lock them in our bedrooms connected with a shared room and bathroom? Is there anything we can do? People who have been in this situation please help! I don’t want my cats to get hurt or lost.
Tags: Balcony, Construction Area, Home Renovation
6 Comments at "How do I keep my cats safe during a home renovation?"
If I were you I would get one of those block way things they have for babies, except get a really tall one–so your cats can’t jump over it, or keep them locked in a room or block off an area of the house for them.
Keep them limited to one floor, whichever is easiest to block. Make sure the construction ppl know abouot the cats.
You mentioned you have two bedrooms connected with a shared bathroom.. I think you should keep them there so they have two rooms plus the bathroom to live in for the following weeks. There are people that live in studio apartments smaller than that and still have a cat and the cat is happy. They will be safer in your rooms than if you were to put some kind of plywood, like you mentioned, blocking the stairs. I’m sure they’ll find some way around or over the plywood.
No question, I would put them into a safe room on the third floor and put a note on the door to not open at all on pain of death.
Taking the chance of a cat getting injured or lost outside isn’t worth the stress. Put a box in front of the door as well, or a chair. Something to make SURE nobody opens it until after all the workers are gone and the doors are not left open to the outside anymore.
Shut them up in a room or take them to be boarded/kenneled somewhere.
Our bedroom has an en suite shower and WC.
Whenever we have workmen in any part of the house we move the cats into the bedroom - their litter tray in the shower tray.
To keep the room ventilated we use a luggage elastic hooked over the bedroom door and the bedroom next to it and a lump of wood or door stop on the floor which prevents the door closing completely. The door cannot be opened accidently because you have make the effort to unhook the elastic to go into the room.
You could make a gridded insert as suggested re the stair gate - we use one on our fish pond to keep the cats and heron away from the goldfish. Basically, it’s just a rectangle of a wooden frame with the middle filled by the thick green plastic climbing “netting” used on fences for heavy climbing plants. This is held on with wire staples.