It is finally getting warm enough in Wisconsin to the point that we can start opening our windows during the day and at night. Our cats like to sit on the windowsills against the screens, but this is their first summer and, being curious, they sometimes like to bat against the screens at insects and such, and have already torn through some of our window screens.
I found http://www.petscreen.com/, which advertises a type of screen that pets would have trouble scratching through, but I don’t know much about screens or whether this would actually work.
For the pet owners out there - have you found a screen that resists cat claws? We’re not willing to get the cats declawed in case they do escape, and I don’t want to leave the windows closed all summer because these cats can’t control themselves around bugs…
The one thing I’d warn about is that these screens are probably attached the same way as normal screens – i.e. with rubber spline. So a pet can put enough force on the corners of a screen to simply pull it out of the door at which point they’re outside and gone.
My current cat did this once, but all she did was go outside, grab a salad and come back in, and I didn’t figure out what was going on until I started wondering why she was puking up grass all over the house.
I’ve used Pet Screen in the past and had pretty good success with it. I have a 70lb husky that liked to stand against the sliding screen door at our old house. We had this for a few years and never had any problems with it.
The Pet Screen is either a full plastic screen or plastic coated nylon screen. We had used the regular metal wire screens, but the dog usually would get her nails caught in it and get snagged. Pet Screen is a little thicker than the metal screening but it doesn’t move if a pet’s nail gets caught in it, it just pops back to regular shape.
It is installed exactly like a regular screen with the spline in the groove. I was able to do it myself in about 30 minutes or so using a cheap plastic rolling tool for putting spline in screen doors and windows and a utility knife to cut off the excess.
I was very happy with it, but my current house doesn’t have any screens reachable by dogs anymore. I would use Pet Screen again if I did.
Shadowfyre, would you say it is pretty resilient when it comes to the screen being torn? We try to keep the cats’ claws trimmed, but every day we find a new tear in one of our screens where they tried to get at a beetle or something.
Pet screen is very tough. I worked behind the counter at a window shop and we had a sample screen with pet screen in it. To show customers how it worked I would pull out my car keys and rake the crap out of the sample screen and then let them try it. I never did put a hole in it. A knife will cut it but the cat is not going to harm it. They could jump at the screen and bend the frame.
You can just take your screens in to a window or glass shop and have them replace it. Removing old screen and putting in new, and getting it tight yourself, is not as easy as you might think.
Just a warning about this site–it’s noisy. I opened it and was greeted by a dog bark, which did not go down well with our cats who were in the same room.
They like open windows too, and they have damaged screens before. In spite of the site’s noise, something like this would be perfect. Thanks for the tip!
we took this screen, like hardware cloth, it was a 1/4" metal screen covered with a green rubber-like stuff. I used a staple gun to attach it. The cats can’t hurt it.
I’ve been replacing my screens with this stuff. My Luna is fond of hanging on screens and so far I have not seen any tears in the new stuff but then again it is very new so I can’t say how long it will last. I have considered putting something else, hardware cloth like over the screens as additional protection.
