I’ve cat-proofed many yards for us as we moved, and I approve of catproofing and catios because – well –lock up your moggies. Yeah that’s my article I recently posted. Cats are on the way to being as big a problem as rabbits and foxes, and while I personally like cats and Kerry and I have cats ourselves, we’ve kept ours in DIY cat-proof enclosures generally by way of cat-proofing a whole section of yard so we could share the outdoor space with them.
But we curfew them at night as well. If we let them out at night we found that the cats of other less considerate people would come to the fences or gates and yowling matches ensue. Since yowling cats are one of the classic cat annoyances for neighbours, we started the night curfew. Also, cats take advantage of the night to probe for escape points. I got good at finding those…
Our Beta Tester
We’ve had the luck to have one cheeky and perfect escape artist, George Fluffypants Perpendicular. Thanks to George I’ve become somewhat of an expert at finding the chinks. And even I get skinned by George occasionally. Luckily he’s an older gentleman now and if he gets out, all I have to do is open the gate and call him and he comes back inside the yard, giving me a smug look as he strolls by. “Gotcha, hoomin!”
Professional Catproofing
There’s a Facebook video from a catproofing company which I watched in admiration – they’ve made a pretty good version of the catproofing I came up with, and because they’re doing it professionally they have better looking metal parts, I used cheap galvanised builder’s fixings for ours. I’ve found a quick picture of our current setup, plus the picture showing the answer to the question about where a cat might escape the professional yard.
Anyhow – after I got over my awe at the excellent materials and craftmanship involved, I played it a second time and looked to see what I could see. I was looking for better ways to do our cat yard in future if it ever becomes necessary. So I spotted an escape route really easily – see if you can pick it in this video, then come back here. (Side note: Maybe I’m becoming more of a cat. Who knows?)
My current solution:
The above picture is the way I did our catproofing. I had the square wire netting and some of the galvanised straps, bought a handful more to make it all uniform. The “hot wire” underneath goes to a specially-designed electric fence energiser made for small animals and pets and was only switched on for a bit over a year and is now just up there because I’m too lazy to remove it…
Yes, the cats can scramble up the rails of the fence but they can’t get around the “wing” there. As long as we don’t put anything tall close to the fence that they might be able to jump onto the tops of the palings, they can’t support their weight with their paws on such thin wire.
It’s proven very effective, isn’t visible from the outside, and only one cat ever got out, a very muscled feral cat that came in by jumping on a car roof outside, found itself outnumbered by our cats and us, and did a most amazing vertical jump that got it halfway over the wing.
Answer:
I.e. spoilers! Proceed only once you’re sure you want to know!
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It’s the covered entrance’s roof – leave a chair near that roof the cat would be on the roof in a flash, and then it’s a 50cm jump to get over the netting…
More reminiscences and why it’s always a good idea. In one place we also netted the entire back veranda/balcony – all 25 metres of it – and it was just as well. One night George managed to scarper out a door to the veranda at night and there we were getting ready to sleep when there was a very loud BOOIINNG! noise and I made it outside justin time to see an owl bounced off the netting. It had set its sights on George for dinner and the netting saved him. So yeah – pretty much all cat / local wildlife interactions are a bit fraught and that’s why being responsible is important…
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