Houdini the Escape Artist! pls help!

[cypris]

my cat is female, 6yrs old, and spayed
she is normally an indoor cat, but she has this habit where she darts out the door as someone's coming in, it doesnt happen as the person's leaving tho i guess cuz its easier for her to catch ppl off guard. when i lived on my own my method was when i came in the door, i opened it just enuf to stick my foot in front of her and gently nudge her inside, saying "In!" very sternly. this worked. now that i live in a new place with roommates, the habit has started again. she used to just go as far as the porch or walkway, then she went to the front yard to chew on grass, now she has gone under the fence into the next yard! shes always come back but i want to prevent her from going out the door in the first place. i told one of my roommates my method and he says that i cant expect everyone to use it, he suggests a spray bottle, maybe even with cayenne pepper in it! i thought that was cruel so i suggested locking her in the room with the litter box & some food before u leave. i've heard that a spray bottle will make the cat fear, dislike or ignore the person using it, plus i dont want her getting any bad reaction to whatever they add to the water. i have had experiences of what she does when ppl treat her badly, so i dont want that happening. Any other suggestions to detour an escaping cat besides confining her to a room?

 

[ghostuser]

The doorbell worked very well into frighting my cat away from the door. She was a runner, too, only she would tear you to pieces if you tried to stop her or even retrieve her. We tried everything, and the only thing we found to work was raising the loudness of the doorbell and telling everyone to use it before they touched the door. She'd leave skidmarks trying to run in the other direction. (Of course, if there was no doorbell she'd run out the door. It's kind of hard to get into the habit of ringing your own bell.)

Another way to get her to stop is to rig something to the door that makes a loud sound when it's opened. I only thought about it after our Eby passed away. We used to have a large lead plate that sat atop our stove, and everytime we opened the oven door it would fall and make a very loud noise. We finally gave up trying to leave it up there after a month, but for nine years Eby would run whenever she heard the oven open, because she thought the bang was going to follow.

 

[kumbulu]

You could try filling a soda can with pebbles and leaving that outside your front door. Ask your roommates to shake the can vigorously at knee level as they open the door and that may be enough to dissuade her.