Kitty Invasion Chaos
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2022 8:39 am
While nothing on the scale of what is happening East of here, we have been having to deal with our own little invasion problem. After years or peace, we suddenly have three invaders coming here, craftily sneaking in through the cat flap when we aren't looking.
I have nothing against them coming in pinching a bit of left over food, having a bit of a warm up and then leaving, but when they start stressing out my own cats, putting them on high alert, and waking us in the night with the feline call to arms cry, it starts to get a bit much. When the invading cats start marking territory behind the TV making mine do the same, it has crossed the point of acceptability, not only because to the unpleasantness having to clean it up, but having any cat, mine or invader, pee next to a live trailing socket is not a risk i was willing to take, so measures had to be taken.
Stage 1: Shutting the lounge door over night. The lounge door is one that can be shut so that was the first option, shut it at night, the cats get the rest of the house. It stopped the peeing behind the TV, but the stress levels over nights seems to go up with my three all hiding upstairs on high alert for any sound of the chat flap opening.
Stage 2, block off the cat flap at night. This has worked well for the most part.
As the flap is old and the catches are gunged shut I got busy with some foam card and pva glue and made a plug t fit in the cat flap so that a board and heavy tool box could be put in front of it, no cat is getting through that. I have to admit I expect more problems from my three when it came to being kept in at night having been allowed free run previously, but after a few issues in the first few days, when one wanted to use a litter tray in the early hours and while the spare was clean the normal one was too messy for him, so he went on a mat close by. The mat went in the washer and some nice new bathmats that would hold any mess and were full washable were bought, and one put where he had gone. He has now decided it is great to sleep on, so that is an improvement, and seems to have accepted the routine knowing when the cat flap will be opened so he can go out.
However while it seems to have put of two of the three invaders, the third is more persistent, and has learned when our three are fed. Sunday I cleaned the litter trays when I got up, took it out to the bin and spotted a little grey face watching my from on top of my neighbours fence, as if to say, you can't chase me off, i'm not in your garden. With in 30 minutes of feeding my cats and them leaving half of it, the bowls were spotless. less than an hour later mine were complaining they were hungry as the bowls were empty.
I can't sit and watch the catflap all the time, so I decided it was time to go high tech. Our backdoor is on the South side of the house and gets full sun pouring onto it (whenever the sun is out) this perishes the plastic on the catflaps, so over the years we have had to replace them at regular intervals, we avoided the microchip ones as it is rather expensive to replace one every couple of years, however now I thought may be the time to invest. There is however a problem, there seems to be two options for teaching the flap your cats' chips, either put it in a learning mode and it learns the cats that come and go, if Grey is someone's then it would just learn his chip as well, alternatively you hold the cat with the head in the flap area for a time before you fit it, i only had to look in Freyja direction to know that was a none starter. So i have ended up at
Stage 3, remote catflap monitoring. When I started doing the leather work, i got an IPad to take to shows for taking pictures and card payments, more recently I actually went and bought an Iphone. With those two bits of kit already in hand, I looked on Amazon and found that the small CCTV security cameras weren't that expensive. So know I have a small motion detecting camera on the floor near the cat flap so I get notified when anyone comes in or out or goes near, so hopefully I can also discourage Grey.
I can't get close enough to him to put a paper collar on him, and he does look well fed (that isn't a surprise, he has a pouch of two off me each day) and isn't always hanging around the garden, so I don't know if he is a stray or an opportunist, he doesn't look in bad condition but I can't really get close enough to tell. If the camera gives me a good picture of him i might put up some posters to see if he is owned, if he isn't I can see if a charity can help, but I don't want ot put him through being trapped and scanned only to find out he lives in one of the houses we back onto.
The only problem now is when one of mine goes near the cat flap, my phone pings at me (only during the day, i disable the motion detection during the night while the cat flap is blocked), so now i have to train myself not to sit watching my own cats wandering around the dining room, while i'm meant to be busy on the computer.
I have nothing against them coming in pinching a bit of left over food, having a bit of a warm up and then leaving, but when they start stressing out my own cats, putting them on high alert, and waking us in the night with the feline call to arms cry, it starts to get a bit much. When the invading cats start marking territory behind the TV making mine do the same, it has crossed the point of acceptability, not only because to the unpleasantness having to clean it up, but having any cat, mine or invader, pee next to a live trailing socket is not a risk i was willing to take, so measures had to be taken.
Stage 1: Shutting the lounge door over night. The lounge door is one that can be shut so that was the first option, shut it at night, the cats get the rest of the house. It stopped the peeing behind the TV, but the stress levels over nights seems to go up with my three all hiding upstairs on high alert for any sound of the chat flap opening.
Stage 2, block off the cat flap at night. This has worked well for the most part.
As the flap is old and the catches are gunged shut I got busy with some foam card and pva glue and made a plug t fit in the cat flap so that a board and heavy tool box could be put in front of it, no cat is getting through that. I have to admit I expect more problems from my three when it came to being kept in at night having been allowed free run previously, but after a few issues in the first few days, when one wanted to use a litter tray in the early hours and while the spare was clean the normal one was too messy for him, so he went on a mat close by. The mat went in the washer and some nice new bathmats that would hold any mess and were full washable were bought, and one put where he had gone. He has now decided it is great to sleep on, so that is an improvement, and seems to have accepted the routine knowing when the cat flap will be opened so he can go out.
However while it seems to have put of two of the three invaders, the third is more persistent, and has learned when our three are fed. Sunday I cleaned the litter trays when I got up, took it out to the bin and spotted a little grey face watching my from on top of my neighbours fence, as if to say, you can't chase me off, i'm not in your garden. With in 30 minutes of feeding my cats and them leaving half of it, the bowls were spotless. less than an hour later mine were complaining they were hungry as the bowls were empty.
I can't sit and watch the catflap all the time, so I decided it was time to go high tech. Our backdoor is on the South side of the house and gets full sun pouring onto it (whenever the sun is out) this perishes the plastic on the catflaps, so over the years we have had to replace them at regular intervals, we avoided the microchip ones as it is rather expensive to replace one every couple of years, however now I thought may be the time to invest. There is however a problem, there seems to be two options for teaching the flap your cats' chips, either put it in a learning mode and it learns the cats that come and go, if Grey is someone's then it would just learn his chip as well, alternatively you hold the cat with the head in the flap area for a time before you fit it, i only had to look in Freyja direction to know that was a none starter. So i have ended up at
Stage 3, remote catflap monitoring. When I started doing the leather work, i got an IPad to take to shows for taking pictures and card payments, more recently I actually went and bought an Iphone. With those two bits of kit already in hand, I looked on Amazon and found that the small CCTV security cameras weren't that expensive. So know I have a small motion detecting camera on the floor near the cat flap so I get notified when anyone comes in or out or goes near, so hopefully I can also discourage Grey.
I can't get close enough to him to put a paper collar on him, and he does look well fed (that isn't a surprise, he has a pouch of two off me each day) and isn't always hanging around the garden, so I don't know if he is a stray or an opportunist, he doesn't look in bad condition but I can't really get close enough to tell. If the camera gives me a good picture of him i might put up some posters to see if he is owned, if he isn't I can see if a charity can help, but I don't want ot put him through being trapped and scanned only to find out he lives in one of the houses we back onto.
The only problem now is when one of mine goes near the cat flap, my phone pings at me (only during the day, i disable the motion detection during the night while the cat flap is blocked), so now i have to train myself not to sit watching my own cats wandering around the dining room, while i'm meant to be busy on the computer.