At least in this part of the country, lots of houses are built with bifold doors in them, especially closet and pantry doors. Opinions about whether they are attractive or not aside, there is a more serious issue: they don’t latch, and cats can and do learn to open them.
Little paws fit right underneath the bifold doors, and a little tug will pull them ajar. If you store anything inside that your cats shouldn’t get into, this can make the kitties unsafe. It became a real issue in our house several years ago when our late cat, Louie, both diabetic and hyperthyroid, was so hungry that he was breaking into any food source he could find and indiscriminately eating it. Everything edible had to be locked up, which meant that the human food pantry had to be secured.
Newton will be happy to demonstrate that the pantry door isn’t safe from a determined cat who knows there are treats inside…
One way to latch a bifold door is to use commercially-available bifold door latches intended for childproofing a house. We found that these worked well for the standard wooden bifold doors, but our house has metal bifold doors for both the kitchen pantry and bedroom closet doors.
We could have replaced the doors, but instead, we came up with another solution. We barred the doors.The process was actually pretty simple, and didn’t take much in the way of needing handy-ness. It took a sturdy 1 1/2″ wooden dowel, cut to the width of the doorway, and a set of wooden curtain rod brackets per doorway. We painted them with some leftover trim paint to match the room trim, then used the included screws to attach them on either side of the pantry door.
Each set of brackets has a round bracket for one end.
This is the end that you will put the dowel into first to secure the door.
The other bracket is U-shaped.
The dowel slides down into this bracket to secure the door.
The result is a tidy barrier that sits so close to the door itself that the cats can’t pull it open.
When the dowel is removed from the brackets, they are unobtrusive, and the door operates as normal.
We used slightly different sized brackets for the kitchen pantry and for the bedroom closets. The bedroom closets were a challenge because the door jambs are narrower than the one in the kitchen. After some research, we realized that we were going to be unable to get a bracket that was quite narrow enough to allow the door to close and also not to protrrude into the room. We overcame this problem by trimming the sides of each bracket so that the decorative edge was no longer round, narrowing it to fit on the door jamb.
This project was done all with the materials available at the nearest home improvement store, so the wider array of brackets available online would have prevented us from needing to take this extra step.
This inexpensive, easy project has given us a lot of peace of mind. The cats can’t get into the food pantry and steal things they aren’t supposed to have, and they can’t get into the spare room closet where the extra dry food bins are stored, either.
Newton doesn’t approve of either of these things, but it’s for his own good.
We have bi-fold doors for our bathrooms. While I don’t mind the cats going in and out of the bathroom, a recent post about how a python entered a local house via the toilet bowl made me freak out. Now I am looking for ways to keep the bathroom doors shut when we are out. Unfortunately, our doors open inwards so I can’t use your method. 🙁
What a great (and cost-effective) solution. Luckily I have only one bifold door, the hall closet, and that’s the one Nicki has NOT figured out how to open. He’s super-able with the all the other closets, which have sliding doors (easy to paw open), and he can open the kitchen cupboards too. Right now I have a couple of thick elastic bands hooked over the cupboard door knobs (the cupboard doors that “join” together, if you know what I mean), and that prevents him from opening them.
That’s pretty clever! We don’t have any bi-fold doors but we do have pocket doors which everykitty seems to be able to open.
Mom is now freaked by the Whisppy’s comment!
The Florida Furkids
We’d never thought of opening up cupboard doors so thanks for giving us the idea!
Luv Hannah and Lucy xx xx
Very clever! We only have one bi-fold closet door and since it has two handles a bunjee cord did the trick!
newton…want eye shuld send ya a hammer anda saw !!!! round my houz nothin can be plugged in…less itz a plug eye canna get two coz eye loves chewin on lectric cordz…..N de food serviss gurl iz sayin thiz iza grate eye dea !!!..course it wuz her eye dea ta unplug stuff two …..
tuna of moon
That is a great idea! THANK you for it.
Newton you’re brillant! We have a few bifold doors and leave it to Miss Annabelle to figure out how to open them all!
What a purrfect solution. You should patent that idea!!
Bravo
Hugs Madi your bfff
We don’t have any kind of those doors, but the kitties here know how to open all the cabinet doors. That sure looks like a great solution to keeping the bifold doors shut.
Hope you have a super day.
We have bi-fold doors on some of the closets. But for some reason, they don’t open easily for us when we tried. So we lost interest in trying to open them. But the pantry…where our food and the peeps food is kept…is just a regular cupboard door and we can open that! And we do! And now the mom says she needs to install those baby-locks on it. RATS!
What a great idea and solution to keep mewz all safe, but no fun for us kitties! I don’t have these kind of doors but some of us have been able to open the kitchen cupboards. Luckily for our humans there is no food kept in those ones. Although we cannot break in to food, this does not stop us from using our voices to scream in annoyance and bodies to trip the humans until we get what we want!!
My mom says that’s a great solution. I don’t agree. I also don’t agree with all the catproof locks she installed in our cabinets! I remember the old days when we had the house and I was able to get into the pantry because the door didn’t latch properly. I got to chew up a 40-lb bag of cat litter! Then my mom fixed the door. :-{
What a great idea! My cats get into our bifold doors all the time. Replacing the doors can be really expensive! I’m glad to see there is a cheaper fix that works.
We have bifold doors here, but the current kitties don’t know how to open them.. Toby, a kitty who came before, could open anything! Once the mom put Minnie Pumpkin (another before kitty) in the bathroom so she could get the PTU and take her to the vet’s. Toby heard her crying and opened the door (a regular one, not a bifold). The mom looked over and saw their tails running from the room pronto. If we ever have another talented kitty like Toby, we are going to follow your advice! Thanks!
Wow, that’s really a brilliant idea! You are smart Peeps!
Great solution!
Dad says that back in the day he had a kitty, Ming the Merciless, who used to open his bi-folds. Luckily it was just to snooze.
Wish we had them here as I feel a need to snack coming on
MOL
Timmy
Claire and Momo were used to do it for years in the previous house, because Angel Hercule knew how to open the kitchen’s door when humans wanted it to be closed. Purrs
Nice solution. We have those doors only we call them something like French doors or Freedom doors. They’re so old and creaky, paws could never get them open. TW is lucky she can open them. MOL! She’s more afraid they’ll come off their hinges and fall on me.
Any thoughts for a bi-fold that has traffic going both ways? There’s a bedroom in the basement and the basement also has a million little nooks and crannies for our Tux to get into trouble with. We can’t use the traditional locks at the top of the door as it’s too high for anyone to reach.
What a fantastic idea!
I’ve had to pile things in front of the closet which makes it annoying to open, as well as gives the little monster ample time to investigate what I’m doing.
All my kitchen and bathroom drawers & cabinets have magnetic locks, which work wonders. She still wants to get in, but hasn’t figured out how to manipulate a magnet in one paw, and pull open the cabinet with the other.
You could just use a simple hook latch. It’s way cheaper and easier.