Ideal Pet Products Aluminum Sash Window Pet Door, Adjustable to Fit Window Widths from 27" to 32", Chubby Kat 7-1/2” x 10-1/2” Flap Size

This "cat flap" (as I call it) works very well. Our cat was waking us up every night when he wanted to go outside. Now he can simply come and go as he pleases. I put a chair by the inside of the window with a towel on it so that his feet get wiped as he comes in. Outside I have a plastic step to give him easy access to the raised window. The "flap" itself is pretty solid and does take some pressure to open. My cat prefers to put a foot through first, and then his face. I've had one before with a softer opening (in a different location) but it only took a minute to get my cat reacquainted with using this one. This will accommodate a larger cat. Mine is a tall, fairly lean and long 15 lb cat who gets up to 17 lbs at times. This cat door also allows us to leave for a few days without having someone care for the cat. He comes and goes freely, and has access to his food and water. I do have stray cats in the area, but my higher privacy fence seems to keep them out of the little gated area behind my condo. However, it is always possible for another animal to figure out how to use the cat door if they see my cat using it. So far, so good. My cat also defends his territory so we should be fine. The installation literally takes minutes to do. Just make sure you get the correct size for your window. Once installed, you will no longer be able to open and close that window freely. Also, you'll want to place a small stick of wood in along the side of the window above the pet sash for security reasons, so that a person cannot just push the window up from the outside to break in. I hope you buy this product if you have an indoor/outdoor cat or small dog. It will save you a lot of time and interrupted sleep without having to constantly cater to your pet, and allows you more freedom to be gone for a day or two if need be. Your pet will also be much more content knowing they can freely come and go.

I bought this Ideal Pet Products Aluminum Sash Window Pet Door, Adjustable to Fit Window - Chubby Kat 7-1/2” x 10-1/2” Flap Size This is an excellent cat door, however, if you have any doubts about the plastic latch breaking, you can do what I did. I have included a picture of the extra security cover I made. You could use wood, or heavy plastic to make it. Cut security door slightly larger than the flap door that came with it, Then drill out four holes - one for each corner - Then use 4 hair bands or some other elastic cords to pull through the holes. Now you have a solid security food over the flap door. It takes 20 second to secure it by using the hair bands over the silver knobs. Use this on the inside. I did not remove the door flap that came with this pet door and the latch has never broken, However, if I were to go away for a day or two, I would feel better knowing my cats could not possibly break the latch as it is covered by this security door, I also use this each night for the added security. This cat door leads to a screened in eclosed porch so they can go out anytime during the day. At night, after 8pm, I secure the door shut until 6am the next morning.

The third time is the charm. I ordered this product 3 times. The first time the lock was defective, second time the same issue. I returned both. I was about to give up but I ordered it one more time and this time the lock worked properly. The lock works 4 different ways. You can either leave it completely locked so the cat can't leave or come in. The in position only allows the cat to come in but not out. The out position is only for the cat to go out but not in. The final position is open for the cat to go in and out as he pleases. I bought this for my cat who goes out for a little bit around my yard in the daytime but I didn't wanna keep my door open all the time (I have a doggy door as well but its the door outside not inside). He goes in and out through the window as he pleases. When it's getting a little late I just leave it in the in position and my cat comes in but can't leave, then I lock it for the night. It has been working great especially now with the cold weather. Sometimes the door doesn't go all the way down when it closes, sometimes it does. It's not bad though, it's only minimal. It's easy to install anyone could do it. There are a few areas in the bottom where I do feel a little air draft. I'm going to buy something to help with that.

Love this window cat flap. It was easy to train my cats to use it. The flap is sturdy and the unit fits in my window well. Like others have posted, the lock is pretty useless or I'd give this 5 stars. It was very easy to install.

Love it! Easy to install. Our cats learned very quickly how to use to use. Great product! You have options with the flap- in only, out only, both or closed.

Works and looks exactly as described. Very easy to install.

2020 UPDATE: We still have this insert and it is a permanent fixture of our window. We now have a full screened in patio (with the pet/trampoline screen) for the cats to go in and out of and we also added two cats. Highly recommend this. We also added a door insert in our sliding door that goes out to the patio, but we have left this in so that the cats have multiple ways to get in and out of the patio in case one fails or just to keep the peace between them. Wow, what a project it was installing this window sash cat door! But already it is worth it, and the cats love it. We used ours to put in our bedroom window which leads to a small "catio" that we built outside. We did not want to have to create any big holes in our doors or walls, so this Ideal Pets Sash - Chubby Kat is perfect. Our cats are not fat, but they are tall, so we wanted to make it comfortable for them to get in and out of their catio. They learned very quickly how to use the cat door (same day) and did not want to leave their catio until we finally made them come in at 1 a.m. We live in Florida, and it is so hot right now that we cannot supervise our cats in the back yard as often as we normally would - we have to wait for it to cool down. So this cat flap gives them the freedom to go outside and inside as they please, and it still keeps them safe from traffic and other potential dangers outside. Anyway, back to the PROJECT of getting this installed. It took a lot of tweaking to finally get this to fit the way we wanted, especially to be able to make it as weatherproof as possible. Our window is about 35 inches wide. This window sash has springs on each side so that you can push the sides in to get the sash into your window frame, and then when you let it go they stretch back out and are tight in your window. The small silver knobs are basically just used to tighten that mechanism so that once the window sash is in place, you secure them and they will no longer be able to be moved. This sounds very simple, and for the most part, it was, but I am here to explain just a couple of things we had to do to get ours to work. Although the sash fits width wise into the window frame and weather stripping is provided, we ended up using about 7 feet of our own weather stripping to secure this thing. It comes with black weather stripping, which would have looked terrible all around the window and sash. We had to line the bottom of our window, the bottom of the window frame (tracking), both sides of the sash, in between any holes that were exposed between the window and top of sash. Also, we had to weather strip the sash itself from left to right all along the front below the cat door flap and silver knobs, as well as much more behind the sash to fill in any spaces created near the bottom window tracking. It takes a little bit of work to get the sides where you want them and to tighten the flexible side mechanisms just right as well as getting the sash at the height you want it. If you take a close look at the item you will see that the plastic cat door in the center has a white plastic frame around it. This will have to sit above your window tracking or else you will create a huge gap, letting air in and out, etc. In short, just be prepared with your own weather stripping (I suggest white colored), and I mean many feet of it, in different widths and also in different thicknesses (yes we had to choose different widths and thicknesses for our weather stripping.) It was a lot of careful and detailed work, but it really only took about 3 hours to complete - and that is definitely worth it for the amazing outcome! We are so happy with how this turned out and our cats are too. A couple of other things to note: despite all the work on the weather proofing, the product itself has a few features that will make it unable to be perfectly fully weatherproofed. As other reviewers mentioned, this is a cat door. The swinging door is surrounded with gray bristles that act as its own little weather strip, but those definitely let some air in and out. I believe the door is magnetic so that it should close behind your cats automatically, but since they have to make that magnet weak enough for a cat to get in and out of the door, it doesn't always fully close. We have only noticed this a couple of times. For the most part. it does close all the way. Above the swinging cat door is also a little bit of space that is not weatherproof. These are just small considerations to be aware of. In all, the small amount of air that may get in and out is probably much less than when you are opening and closing the doors to your house. I hope this information helps. We love this product and our cats do too! If this review helped you please feel free to select "helpful" and/or leave a comment.

This is not a cheap product and you need to be handy to get it to work right but the components are solid and the design is very nice. Shipping was fast and well packaged. The pet door itself is obviously a cheap one from a third party that you can get at any home supply store. They build it into a custom housing, which is the clever part. I had to disassemble and reassemble the pet door itself because the lock was stuck and the door wouldn't open correctly. That was a bummer. A big phillips head screwdriver was necessary. The cat can use it fine after doing that and he picked up on it instantly even after never having a pet door before. The pet door allows you to lock the whole door or choose in only or out only so that's cool. Installation of the whole unit was super easy. The part that the manufacturer designed is quite clever and really well executed. I think it will last a long time and everything in that regard worked really really well. If that's all you care about then it'll go in in about 2 minutes. The pet door itself will always allow bugs and A/C to escape because there is a 1/8" gap all around it. I think they should include a better pet door to improve their product because the body itself is just so great. There's just no way the manufacturer could plan for everyone's windows, but they should probably include more weather stripping. They do include some instructions and components for sealing the outside of the unit body around the interior window edges from the outside elements, but you will want to go much farther with this if you want to keep bugs/noise/weather out. I would suggest going to the hardware store before you install the unit and picking up an additional roll or two of the soft foam weather stripping and plan on running it on top and possibly on the sides of the unit and anywhere else around your window that you deem necessary. I used an extra 12 feet or so myself because even though I have brand new fancy e-coated double-pane windows and the unit fit perfectly, there would have been plenty of open gaps for my A/C to escape in all sorts of places. I also basically laid down an obstacle course for bugs to hit on their way in and I've caught quite a few in the past two weeks. My window sill looks like a war zone.