cat door turtling squirrel

At the old address, I had bird feeders on the side of the house, one right out the window by my desk, another in what functioned as the living room -- but what we called the middle room -- and we would see lots of birds at the feeders, cardinals, titmice, sparrows. I placed a sign that I pulled out of the trash against the house after moving it around the inside of the apartment awhile and deciding it didn't work, and it made a good hiding place for the neighbor cat Clyde to wait for unsuspecting birds. He killed two -- one killing leaving a lot of blood and feathers on the porch and side yard -- before I figured it out and moved the sign. The messier one was a young cardinal (the other was a turtle dove) and I felt really bad, but grew to love the daily visits from the dead one's sister, whom I watched grow up. She always had one feather sticking straight up from her body, just above the left wing. I don't know if that was because of a near escape from Clyde, but I always called her "The One That Got Away," or Totga, for short. I miss Totga.

We didn't have squirrels at that address; most of the pesky critters were possums, and they didn't (or couldn't) bother with bird feeders. When we moved to this address, I put one feeder outside my temporary bedroom window and the other outside the bathroom window. The birds (mockingbirds, mostly) light on the fence but haven't come to the feeder as far as I can tell. Maybe they're smarter here, or more timid. A squirrel made his way over the roof to the feeder outside my bedroom window and when I spotted him, he was hanging over the eave, lifting the lid of the feeder like a rude party guest, snacking by the pawful. I added a length of wire to the feeder, and that stopped him for the time being. He moved to the one outside the bathroom window, a slender feeder without a removable lid, but with lots of little feeding stations and perching poles next to each. It's a bit more difficult for him to get to those seeds, but he does it, falling into the red berry bushes below (the red berries which the mockingbirds love, by the way) once in awhile; but he makes his way back to the roof, back to the feeder. I don't mind the squirrels; I'm not going to war to keep them out of the feeders, but I'd much rather see birds out my windows than a squirrel.

When I was trying to get Timmy used to the cat door -- which is on the same side of the room as the bird feeder but out other window, the one with the air conditioner unit in it -- I kept it propped open to show him the way. When I started seeing the squirrel turtling his head through the cat door, I stopped leaving it open. I have a friend who had a squirrel sneak into her house while she was out of town for a weekend, and boy, what a mess he made; the chew marks on the window sills have been painted over, but they're still there.

I figured out that Timmy won't use the cat door on his own because he doesn't have enough of a ledge on the inside, so he has to dive through from below with me holding it open. Last night, exhausted, I lay in bed dozing but being constantly awakened by him tapping the door with his paw, trying to get it to the open position (I assume). I found a couple of boxes that I stacked up on my bedside table; they give him a surface big enough to hang out on and casually, comfortably make his way out and in, which he did all night long.