Folks, this has terrifying implications for the Budster. Whatever you do, don’t show him this video!
The short clip shows Olive, a tuxedo kitty belonging to Beth Belnap of Oregon, prying open a sliding glass door that leads to a porch outside. Olive was able to get the door open by jumping, grabbing onto the door handle and pressing her little feet against the door frame to give herself enough leverage to slide the door open a crack.
The setup here is similar, and Bud is already well-versed in the “feet against the frame” trick because he’s used it to open my bedroom door from inside. Thankfully I believe the sliding glass door is too heavy for Buddy to push, but we’re talking about the same cat who pulled a 20-pound mirror off a wall when he was a kitten weighing no more than three or four pounds. You never know.
Here’s Olive doing her thing:
Bonus: Check out this little guy’s technique:
Pain In The Bud 
When my cats got big enough that they might be able to do this, I got a latch installed on the screen door that they couldn’t open. So far, that’s worked, and they haven’t thought of shredding the screen (yay!)
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You’re lucky on that count. Once they realize it’s fun to scratch a screen door, they start getting their claws caught in the mesh and have to be blocked from going near it otherwise they’ll destroy it.
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My cats’ lack of interest in trying to open the door might be due to the fact that it opens to a small balcony, which is surrounded by a wall, rather than a rail that they could see through. They can’t really see much of “outside” when they’re sitting on the floor in front of it. So their main interest in it the big sunny patch it makes on the floor, and when the glass door is open, they can smell the outside air.
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Well of course, the revered tuxedo cat is multitalented. Tux is pretty good at nudging open doors if not completely latched! By the way, are you sure Buddy doesn’t have some tuxedo in his lineage?!
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I don’t know much about Buddy’s lineage except that his mom’s humans didn’t get her spayed quickly enough, so she went into heat, escaped, then came back and gave birth two months later. I adopted him in late April of 2014, so he was born in early February, a lot earlier than the typical kitten season.
The father could have been any kind of cat. I imagine his mother or father must have been vocal, because he rarely stops talking. Interestingly, Buddy’s stripe pattern is almost entirely unbroken, which is supposedly more of a wild cat trait.
This page has a lot of info and illustrations for the different pattern and color types. According to this, Bud is a silver mackerel tabby: http://messybeast.com/spotted-cats.html
As for tuxedo markings, he does have one white patch of fur on his chest, but nothing as gloriously tuxesque as Tux himself, who is always ready for dinner parties and formal occasions.
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The coolest thing about this video? Once she’s got the door open, she doesn’t even bother going out – instead, she just turns around and nonchalantly gives herself a bath. What artistry!
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So typically catlike too in that she cannot abide a closed door.
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Years ago a place I worked in downtown Philly had an office cat. The office door knob was lever style, and so he let himself out of the office several times. Fortunately the the office was on the second floor of the building, and the door to the street was the push/pull kind, and way too heavy for him to push. Although I’m sure he tried at least once. Just for the experience.
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