Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Is this crazy?

This houseblog is about to turn into a petblog if I don't get to work on the house soon...

Anyway, I need to keep our front yard cat out of the back yard. She's bullying Kiara, our 12 year old kitty who thinks she's a dog, and who never even leaves the back yard. She's a total softie and she's being completely bullied by Bella.

She enters the back via two routes (at this point). One is the screened porch, which isn't screened, and the other is our back fence next to the garage.

First things first, we need to screen the porch. Next, I'm thinking of two things. One is the super sticky furniture tape to keep cats from scratching. Maybe put this along the top of the fence...? I'd have to change it pretty frequently until she got the picture. Or aluminum foil along the top foot or so of the fence? I know cats hate aluminum and she'd have a hard time climbing it. It'd be ugly, but maybe I could get fancy with it and use copper flashing to sort of wrap the tops of the fence slats ;-)

My last solution is good old fashioned clothespins. Just run clothespins along the tops of the fence sticking straight up. Or a combination of all of the above? I'll probably put some sort of chickenwire Elizabethan collar around the adjacent tree to keep her off that, but...

I dunno. Something's got to be done. Inside is not an option, as we'd have the same problem (we have a total pushover in the house who already gets her fair share of being walked all over by the other two). Bella's no longer scared of the dog.

Any ideas? I've had a lot of cats over the years (I don't think I'm allowed to say; they'd call animal control on me), but I've never had any that didn't eventually work it out. This, however, only seems to be getting worse.

Seriously. I think I need to just suck it up and buy one of those motion activated water sprinklers. Stupid economy, ramping up my cheapskateness.

3 comments:

1916home.net said...

Arent there some natural cat sprays you can spray in areas you dont want her to go? Maybe draw a line on the ground with the spray and see if she will cross it.

Eventually though that stuff will wear off, but maybe it could work until you get your area screened in, and by that time the cat will instinctively know not to go there anymore.

Amalie said...

I'm definitely considering a spray as part of my multipronged approach...But I've not had great success with sprays in general. The dog just followed behind me and licked the spray or ate the granules. I have a feeling the cat might be a similar story, though I am going to try it.

I just have a feeling she's getting back there whether I like it or not. And I want to be careful about not driving her into the neighbor's backyard, where they have a very sweet, young boxer. Luckily, there's also a little dog that barks a lot and scares her, I'm sure. At any rate, I'm going with a combined approach...

Anonymous said...

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