Is CakePHP's routing messing up my .htaccess 301 redirect?

I just migrated a site to an updated version, but want to put 301 redirects in place for some of the most common entry pages of the site to the开发者_JAVA技巧ir counterparts

So here's the rule I'm adding to the .htaccess:

Redirect 301 /oldhomepage.htm http://www.thesite.com/

It sort of works, but it redirects to

http://www.thesite.com/?url=oldhomepage.htm

Is this some conflict with a CakePHP routing setting?

EDIT: Someone pointed out that it's probably an .htaccess conflict and indeed it is. CakePHP automatically creates an .htaccess file (which was in a child directory) that has the following:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

Is there any way I can easily have the best of both worlds and have my simple, per page 301 redirects and keep CakePHP's routing as well?

If all of the old URLs end with .htm, and none of your new URLs do, you could edit the CakePHP .htaccess file like so:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.htm$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]

Why would you not use $this->redirect('http://www.thesite.com/', 301); in your controller?