19.10.2013

The build quality is high and noticeably more solid than our previous cat flap (the Staywell Petsafe Infra-Red, which is a reasonable choice if your cats need a wall tunnel.) From the inside it is good looking with a shiny white finish and has some nice features, such as the indicators that let you know whether your cat is in or out, and the flap is transparent enough to let the light through.The operating instructions are clear, but the fitting instructions were pretty useless. Unless you can drill at perfect right angles all the way through an exterior door, so that the hole comes out within a millimetre or two of where you intended, then:a. It really is necessary to cut the hole 3mm bigger all the way round,as it says in the instructions.b. Drill the screw holes with a drill bit thick enough that you can push the screw through the hole.c. Drill through the door from the inside out.The reason is that the two long screws don't need to bite into the door, but they do need to tie the outside face plate to the two holes in the main body of the cat flap. I made the mistake of drilling pilot holes, and discovered the hard way that lining the holes up to make the outside face plate close to level needs an almost impossible degree of precision unless there is some play with at least one of the screws.I was also puzzled by the gap left on the outside between the hole liner and the face plate, as "L A H" describes. At first I thought there should have been a middle plate to cover the wood around the hole, but this seems to be a consequence of the design. I also find that the face plate doesn't fit snugly against the door at the top and bottom and don't see why it doesn't come with corner holes to screw the face plate against the door.I have just had to refit the cat flap for the third time. I was seeing the problem described by "Mrs B" where the flap sticks half open. I put this down to cutting the hole too close to the size of the hole liner without leaving the full 3mm gap. The flap started sticking after heavy rain and I think the pressure on the flap unit is the cause of the door sticking open.The long screws are Philips (cross-head) type. The heads are now very battered from the many attempts it took to get the screw holes right. I have a good range of screwdrivers but unusually they seem to fall between two sizes and the metal isn't hard enough for the force I had to use to screw them through the hard wood of the door.A few of the things that I initially thought were problems have turned out to be fine. The cats don't seem to mind bashing their heads on the flap to get their disk close enough to unlock flap. Having to press a button on the circuit board to set up a new disc key is a minor inconvenience, but the circuit board cover seems fairly robust and not as stiff as plastic battery covers often are. The disc keys are an improvement over the infra-red keys that we used to have. They don't need batteries and they don't contain delicate electronics. Even our smaller cat doesn't seem to mind the size and weight of the disc.

2.5.2012

With two cats originally and now 4, this cat flap gets a good workout and has been great at preventing unwanted 'visitors' coming in and freaking out my cats.I did have a small problem with the latching mechanism while still under guarantee, but staywell customer services were brilliant and sent me a new cat flap straight away. Helpful that they did this without wanting the old one returned first as this leaves a gaping hole in your door!In operation the latch is a but noisy but it's only an electric motor whirring for a fraction of a second to drive the locking pins down.My cats took a while to get used to the fact that there is a small magnet on the bottom of the clear window that needs to move slightly (by cat pushing against the door slightly with either a paw or a nose)to energise the RF ID unlocking circuitry.I like the fact that I can restrict certain cats to 'in only' or schedule set times for in and out, the programming takes a while to get into your head but once you've studied the instruction book while on your hands and knees for 10 minutes it becomes easier!NI-Mh rechargeable batteries last better than alkalines and are cost-effective, I get about 4 months out of a set if 2000mAh batteries before they need a recharge. Best to buy two sets of batteries so you can swap them without losing the codes if you do them quick.As for the RF ID tags themselves, I have gone thought a few of them due to cats losing their collars. Sometimes you find them in the garden, sometimes not, but instead of paying £7 or £8 or even more for each new ID tag, I have a great tip for you that does work!Go to a web company called [...] and order their 'key fob RFID Tag 125KHz' product code 000648. They are red in colour and slightly smaller than the catmate tags and encased in waterproof plastic similar to the official ones. They come with a small keyring loop attached and fit the cats collar exactly the same as the standard tags do. The cat flap recognises these perfectly, so the circuitry must use standard industry protocols.I took a gamble the first time I ordered these replacement tags, not knowing the operating frequency staywell used, but it paid off, so let my experiment be to your advantage- the best bit......they cost £1.33 each!!Add on the VAT & postage, and I got 4 delivered for just over £9. Bargain.Addendum to the above info on cheaper tags- just do a search on your favourite internet auction site for 10x Readable RFID Tokens 125Khz EM4100 Tags ID Card Key Chain Access" and you'll get 10 compatible fobs for about £1.70. That's 17p each, delivered! & I can confirm they work fine on both the super selective car flap and the newer catmate electronic flaps. I now have a newer design flap that instead of the motor drive for the lock mechanism it has a solenoid. This is a much better design, the worm drive plastic mechanism of the older flaps (prone to getting dirty & stiff) is replaced with a simpler and more reliable solenoid & an added bonus is that batteries last twice as long, so I'd recommend the newer type.

18.5.2009

We've been looking for a simple timed cat flap for a while now but there still seems to be a hole in the market for this. You seem to just get a choice between the lower end manual 4-way models, or ones like this which come with a timer tied-in with electronic tags or infra red etc. Personally we are only interested in the 4-way timer function so that our cats can get outside after we have gone to work, after rush hour is finished. We also wanted to be able to set the timer to just let them come back in only when it gets close to evening rush hour, before we are home.This was about the closest we could find for just a timed cat flap, but we found it annoying that you can only use the timer functionality in conjunction with the electronic tags.

25.10.2011

I think the Super Selective Cat Flap is fantastic but there are a few design flaws that could do with improvement!I had a big problem with my neighbour's cat coming in and eating me out of house and home but since I installed the Super Selective only my two cats come in.The instructions are a little confusing but I managed to set it up alright.I love the fact that I am able to set the automatic timer and no longer have to manually open and close the flap. It took Tommy, my male cat, a couple of weeks to get used to using the flap but now he has no problem with it. He has got used to the timer too and more or less knows when he can can try the flap in the morning to get out.

19.3.2016

I recently bought it to prevent our neighbour's gigantic Norwegian Forest Cat from gaining access to our house, food, furniture, cat toys, and work surfaces, not to mention the flaming fleas he kept bringing in. Up until this particular cat flap I had tried a microchip door, which wouldn't work with my cat and still allowed the great ginger fluffiness of the NFC into the house. More recently I have been using an infrared one with a fairly flimsy lock on it (a different brand intended to keep out other creatures). The NFC didn't manage to break the lock itself, but the brute did break at least two of the clear plastic doors and was therefore still breaking and entering.

25.5.2012

We bought this flap rather than the microchip version because it has a timer function which allows us to keep the cat in overnight.We installed the flap into a wooden door. Our cat only took a day or so to get used to it. They have to learn to bash it a bit with their paw or head for it to activate when they place their head into the sensor area. Shy cats may take longer to learn as the noise as it unlocks can startle them. We trained our cat by having one of us on either side of the door with treats calling him and pushing him through gently, of course! We Rewarded him with a treat as soon as his head came through the door.

11.8.2013

Best thing we have ever brought. Make out life more easier and feel happier now that the cats can now access the home when we are not there to let them in. We was a little reluntant in buying a cat flap as we didnt want uninvited guests so when I spotted this i did a bit of research and found it to be the best one for microchipped cats that didnt wear a collar. Brought it and have never been happier, just wish we had brought one sooner. We was having a new door put in so asked the double glazing guys to allow for the hole in the sealed unit. When it arrived the guy fitted it for us and it fitted perfectly. My only gripe would be is that when the cats venture in doors it makes an audible clicking sound which distracts the smaller cat from entering.

8.4.2012

We bought this programmable cat flap so that we could restrict our cat from going out late at night. We can program a 'kerfew' time into it which only allows the cat to come in but not gain access back out again (currently set at 9.00pm to 6.00am daily. Outside of this time period, the cat is free to come and go as he pleases.There were a few problems fitting the cat flap:-- It only has two screws which secure the whole unit to the door. It could really do with four, one in each corner to ensure it fits securely and as flush as possible- The self tapping screws supplied with the unit were poor quality and the threads easily stripped if you attempted to tighten the securing screws too much.The

20.6.2013

We have three cats, and the neighbours have cats too, so neighbouring cats were constanty visiting our house and eating our cat's food, and sleeping in our house. Previous make's of flaps with the coloured tags did not stop the neighbours cats. We tried IR and the long hair stopped that from working. We tried magnets and they got lost too easily.We bought and installed this cat flap in April 2010 and throught that time, we've found it to be a sturdy cat flap. Better than most others we've had.It is not particularly intuitive to program, so could use some updating from the manufacturers. It works fine for the vast majority of the time, but has the occasional wobbly.

8.12.2013

I installed this ~2 years ago to replace the last in a series of Staywell infra-red operated flaps. I bought this because I was dreading having to pay out for yet another Staywell, only to have the infra-red detector pack up again once the warranty had expired.This flap uses an RFID tag in the cat's collar, so no fragile infra-red detector in the flap to break. And only a very lightweight tag on the collar, with no electronics to get damp, and no battery in the collar either.Over the last couple of years, this flap has proved robust and reliable. It's placed where it catches the sun, but the plastic has not degraded and turned brittle (a problem we've had with other brands).

11.10.2011

We brought this cat flap 6 weeks ago, as we were getting two kittens and needed to keep them in but still wanted our older cat to be able to go out through the flap to minimise the disruption to him. Many of the electronic flaps seems to restrict cats coming in only, not out, which I found a little strange as our situation is not unusual. I also wanted to keep all our cats in at night due to increased dangers after dark, so this flap seemed to fit the bill.I totally agree with N Williams' review though. The noise of the locks is quite loud (for a cat), but our cat adapted very quickly to this. My main issue is the lack of visual indication too. After 6 weeks our cat has learned that the flap is sometimes open and sometimes shut now,

23.3.2015

The cat flap does what it says and works well. We just wanted one with a timer - other cats coming in the house is not an issue. A word of caution - from the description we didn't realise there is one model of cat flap that works with a tag attached to the cat's collar, and another one that works on the microchip - we bought the tag one by mistake. I thought the microchip idea is genius! I personally don't trust a tag on the cat, I think it would come off in no time. It was the microchip idea that sold the cat-flap to us in the first place. But for our purposes, we just stick a tag to the inside of the cat-flap and it just lets him in and out according to the time perfectly.

16.11.2009

We wanted to be able to control when our cats went outside so we purchased this cat flap.I agree with one of the reviewers saying that the noise of the flap opening can be unsettling to the cats but they soon get used to it and now I actually like it as it alerts me that the cats have come home/gone out.The display on top of the flap is genius, I love knowing what time our cats went out and came back in (I wish it could tell me where they had gone!)In response to one of the reviewers above, I too initially thought the range was poor, but then I realised that the cat flap is not supposed to open just when the cat is in range, but is only actually supposed to open when the car attempts to push the flap open.

17.7.2016

Excellent, simple to set up and works great bar a couple of very minor irritations. It responds quickly to scanning and opening and locks when I've programmed it. The noise scared my little cat for the first few days but once I basically pushed her through it she realised it wasn't going to hurt her and now she's a regular cat flap pro. Sometimes it doesn't re-lock after the cat leaves for several minutes. It has a magnet that obviously tells the flap when it's shut and to re-lock but this just doesn't happen. So, in theory, another cat could get in during this time. I'd say it does this about half of the time but it's only about 5 minutes.

16.6.2013

So we have two cats, and in 8 years I've gone through 5 cat flaps. We've also had strays breaking in through some of the cat flaps we'ce had.This one is the most expensive but by far and away the best. I am on my second, after about 18 months of service from the first. 4 stars because for such an expensive product I'd have liked it to last longer, but to be fair it keeps a determined puppy out, and other maruading kitty's out so I know it takes a bit of a beating. Set up is a little tricky, but it blows away the other main brand competition with a high quality build, good draft proofing and a solid reliable lock. It took a while for the cats to get used to it but they are happy kits now,

Petmate Cat Mate Elite ID Disc Flap with Timer Control - Reviews

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