Tired of feeding all the neighbor cats

Why are you putting out more food than your cat will eat? She should remain a bit hungry so she will go after the mice, and will appreciate your food rather than taking it for granted.

Hey, I sense a better approach to welfare here, too.

Ya, the cat is strange, It will eat a little, hear a noise and leave the bowl. I empty it and 1/2 hr later shes letting me know she wants more.

I found this timer operated door that I can buy then modify cheaper than I could build one.

Mikek

Found a store bought solution, >

Mikek

That's normal. Cats tend to graze all day, and are easily scared off.

NT

See, you DID have a good idea!

Our cat went in and out via the doggie door, so he was fed in the kitchen.

The convenience of the doggie door turned into a double-edged sword when, one night, I heard a wild commotion in the kitchen and found a _huge_ raccoon helping himself :-(

So I took to pinning the doggie door at night.

I understand they make doggie doors the are opened with a tag on the collar... IF your cat will tolerate a collar. ...Jim Thompson

I found these RFID tags, How hard is it to build a RFID tag sensor?

Mikek

An RFID key fob is small, passive, and the readers are cheap from China. The downside is that they have to come within an inch or two of the reader to be detected; that may be a problem to arrange in your case.

Perhaps if she can only access the food dish though a narrow doorway/passage, you could put the reader at the narrow spot...

At the high-tech end, there's a webcam, OpenCV and an AI trained for cat-facial-recognition - all you need is a few thousand images of your cat's face to train it! :)

Not easy! TAG's are easy, detectors are difficult and expensive. I gather the doggie doors are quite like the anti-shop-lifting gadgets at the doors to stores... tag is just a spiral inductor plus a diode... detector just looks for second harmonic. ...Jim Thompson

Yikes, watch out for situations where teasing the sensor ends up decapitating you pet. But, certainly, some guys have made systems to lock their pet door so ONLY their pet can go back in the house, and stray cats, racoons, etc. are kept out. Do a search on line for that, you may get details on what they did.

Jon

You mean make a machine that turns poor people into cats? That is a _brilliant_ idea!

With a cat it is easy because implanted microchips in the cat neck area are commonly available (and in many areas a domestic cat would already have them). They have a unique ID that can be read from small distance, and cat entry doors that work using this chip are commercially available.

This cat is a 9 or 10 years old and has always been an outdoor cat. It was a sudden change that it got skittish with any noise or movement, while it is eating. I don't know why. One thought is, it had an encounter with a raccoon or possum, which is very possible. It surveys the back yard before it starts to eat. I have relocated more than a dozen raccoon or possum over the years. The cat lost an eye about a year ago. Don't know where she left it! Cue rimshot. As I understand it, it has a had pretty long life for an outdoor cat. We somehow acquired the cat when one of my son's friends sister moved to an apartment and couldn't take it with her. I've tried to give it back many times. Damn cat! Mikek

Just be aware that the supposed electronic solutions all come with their own problems, and tend not to work satisfactorily IRL. I did look into it a year or 2 ago.

NT

Hi, Mike -

The stray cats are most likely feral cats. They like to poop where they can cover it. Like my flower beds.

I have a "Havaheart" trap - a cage with a trip mechanism in it. I caught

I also caught 3 opossums (maybe the same one 3 times) but I released it/them since they do no detectable harm.

Just a thought.

John

I've had thoughts! :-{ Mikek

My main problem critter has always been jack rabbits. Fortunately there's a spray you can treat your shrubbery with that rabbits find rather nauseating (it also repels deer, but I've never seen one down here ;-) ...Jim Thompson

"amdx" schreef in bericht news:okvr5u$dk3$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

I can't feed my cat without finding stray cats coming around eating what she didn't. I have started emptying her bowl if she stops eating, but that is not the solution. Is there a passive device that I could put on a collar to trigger a receiver that I could attach to a yet to be designed cover for the cat bowl, so the food is only available when the cat is at the bowl. I'd prefer a passive device on the collar, don't want to mess with batteries. I wonder about the anti theft devices they put in product packages.

Mikek

Cat doors using RFID-tags for autorising are quite common these days. They're smal teardrops like tags on the collar. It's used for humans as well, in tickets for example. (That tags are cards, no drops.) In Rotterdam a nightclub owner experimented with some regular customers to ware a chip in their arms just underneath the skin. The range for the tags depends highly on the frequeny and the dimensions. Large ones on boxes and crates can be read over more then one meter.

petrus bitbyter

Deer are demolishing our shrubs, including the rose bushes. I've tried the "coyote urine" granules but that hasn't worked. I gotta do something or there isn't any point in landscaping.