Electric Fence to keep out cats?

[EddieWalker]

Has anyone attempted to convince her to spay her female cats and neuter her males?

Tom cats want to mate and fight other males for those rights. Spayed females don't attract Toms and neutered males don't really care all that much.

Anyhow, good luck. It's nice of you to consider what she wants.

Her cats are all spayed. There isn't any food out for them. I have no idea why they have decided to show up and hang out in her back yard. She lives in a private gated community in the middle of nowhere without any animal control services.

 

[MossRoad]

Maybe they're hanging out because it's a cat social?

Weird.

The folded wire cloth on the fence grounded with a hot wire above it sounds doable. A wire welcome mat, so to speak.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Thanks. I'm just now starting to rethink this and it might work if I fold some one inch welded wire netting over the top of the wood fence and attach it to the ground rods. Then I can run a hot wire about 6 inches above the fence.

Just the wire might stop them from walking along the top of the fence, or climbing the fence to jump over the existing cat fence netting. But having the welded wire on top of the fence should provide me with the ground to provide a shock when they touch the hot wire.

It's more work, but it might be doable.

I'd make it easy. Gutter screen wire would make it easy, like this 6" wide stuff. Simply roll along fence top and staple it on. It wouldn't look bad, bending edges down.
Overlap a bit as you go so it makes contact.
Wire that to charger black post...you do not need a ground (you could wire it also to a driven ground if you're concerned about lightning).
Then those plastic insulators with metal screw ends run up fence and along top every 10ft should be fine. Electric fence wire through them. This hot wire (we use both white round and 1/2" flat ribbon for horses) make sure it's at least 3"-4" away from fence everywhere. Too wide the cats may scoot under.
I'm retired electronic technician.
It will work.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

The added bonus she won't have to worry about raccoons or opposums either. Won't hurt birds. Won't hurt cats...one snap and they're gone.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

You can buy a high voltage tester at the farm store. My test is a blade of grass you feel the tingle...wet the grass it's stronger. (I'm serious).

 

[ponytug]

You can buy a high voltage tester at the farm store. My test is a blade of grass you feel the tingle...wet the grass it's stronger. (I'm serious).

I used to use the grass test, but having bought a tester, I find it is very helpful for running down the odd short quickly. (Voltage higher, or lower as you walk along it. Rancher's version of "Marco Polo"...)

All the best, Peter

 

[ericm979]

For a while we had an electric top wire on the fence around the chicken yard. It wasn't a big horse fence charger, just a small one that we'd been using to run a temporary fence to keep chickens in a pasture.

One day my wife came running in and said there were bobcats in the chicken yard. It turned out that a female and two nearly full grown children were in there killing chickens. Actually they were done. :-(

The electric fence hadn't kept them out but it hurt enough on the way in that they did not want to leave. I took the opportunity to make it a really miserable experience. I squirted them with a hose and whacked them with branches. Mom eventually went over the wire but the kids did not. They were really unhappy when I let them out.

If I'd killed them, more would move in on the territory and we'd still have trouble. But if I made it a bad experience they'd stick around their territory but avoid the chicken yard in the future. We didn't have a bobcat problem after that.

Anyhow the point of the story is that the electric wire might make it worse by keeping the intruder cats from leaving.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I'd make it easy. Gutter screen wire would make it easy, like this 6" wide stuff. Simply roll along fence top and staple it on. It wouldn't look bad, bending edges down.
Overlap a bit as you go so it makes contact.
Wire that to charger black post...you do not need a ground (you could wire it also to a driven ground if you're concerned about lightning).
Then those plastic insulators with metal screw ends run up fence and along top every 10ft should be fine. Electric fence wire through them. This hot wire (we use both white round and 1/2" flat ribbon for horses) make sure it's at least 3"-4" away from fence everywhere. Too wide the cats may scoot under.
I'm retired electronic technician.
It will work.View attachment 801736

This is the right approach. I'd take it one step further and use chicken wire or similar for the hot instead of fence wire. Basically one layer of some kind of metal mesh attached to the black terminal and another layer attached to the red terminal. Position the layers so there's no way to climb over without touching both at the same time. You need to insulated the hot layer from everything the grounded layer touches, I've done that by mounting the hot layer on PVC pipe.

I once made a chicken tractor out of chicken wire and electrified the chicken wire. The bottom layer of the tractor was 4" PVC pipe. Something probably could have easily dug under the PVC pipe, but anything that came up and touched the wire got shocked and went away.

This is safer for passers-by because if the black wire isn't attached to ground you can't get shocked just by touching the hot side.

 

[MossRoad]

...Won't hurt birds. ..

I have an acquaintance that has shown me pictures of bird legs hanging from her electric fence. There's a barb wire strand right next to it. Apparently the birds get on both wires at the same time and ZAP! Rare, but it can happen.