What do your vet friends suggest? Sounds like you have made up your mind about the fence, so good luck.
ETA: Thanks to those who supported my snap mouse trap suggestion. My vet suggested that and it worked well as a startle type deterrent.
ETA: We put clothes pins on the snap part
OP, the snap traps are not as out of the package for killing mice. Watch the video a few posts back. They don’t harm anything except for the heart of the person who accidentally sets one off and has a great rubber thingy flapping at them for a moment.
And, by god, nobody suggested glue traps. Seriously. Sticky tape/double sided tape are NOT glue traps. Not even close.
I guess if you really think that something as crazy as setting closely set lines of hot wire in your kitchen is a good idea, well knock yourself out. How do you plan to properly insulate the wires so you don’t make your whole stove a hot mess of electricity? How are you going to ground it?
For one of my labs that would open the lazy susan we used the snap traps with tin foil over the top. Foil kept him from getting his lip snapped but was noisy was enough to discourage him. He still would check that cabinet every day until we moved to make sure those traps were there. I eventually could stop setting them. They just needed to be in view.
Electric wire is child’s play. You definitely need razor wire, and perhaps some sort of pellet gun.
I mean really? Get a frickin’ squirt gun, and when she jumps up where she’s not supposed to be, you squirt her.
And FWIW, I’m finding it hard, no IMPOSSIBLE to believe that a cat is getting up on a hot stove and playing with the lids of pots that have (presumably) hot food sizzling or boiling in them. That’s really not very cat-like behavior. Animals have a better sense of self-preservation than that. Munching on leftovers out on the counter, or licking the butter? Sure. Knocking lids off pans hot enough to burn you? Not so much.
And if that IS the case, pretend like you have a toddler in the home. Lock up the cabinets you don’t want her into. Secure the garbage in a tighlty lidded container. Don’t leave the hot stove unattended. Problem solved.
The large sheets of double sided tape (typically used for cat deterrent purposes on furniture) and/or just getting some tape–I use blue painter’s tape from time to time as it’s easy to remove, though it’s not as attractive looking and if the cat does jump on it, it moves around/gets pulled down as not being double sided (I just tuck the ends under to keep it stuck). My cat also knows when I’ve removed said blue tape that it’s all clear, so this is where the larger clear tape solutions can come into play. It’s nowhere near the adhesive of a glue trap. Just regular tape. Most cats find that sufficiently uncomfortable to want to avoid stepping on it, though, if your cat thinks a hot stove is a nice place to be, maybe it won’t work, and I agree that that kind of behavior unfortunately is going to require supervision. Forcing the zap to happen won’t necessarily mean the cat will avoid the stove from then on out. As with tape and other methods, they will try to find a way around it, and unless your whole stove or her approaches to it are electrified, she will find a way around to where she isn’t getting zapped.
Sometimes it takes persistence with whatever methods you use - squirt gun, can of pennies, air blower, horn, tape, whatever. One of my cats hasn’t figured out that if he claws at the curtains enough, he can pull them down. He has done this many times and scared himself silly every time. He is not so bright.
An easier option than covering something with double-sided tape: industrial “tacky mats”. They’re used at entrances to clean rooms and other sensitive production areas. When one gets cruddy you just peel it off and there’s a fresh one underneath. One of these on each side of the stove will discourage kitty from stepping near it. Cats really hate stepping on tape.
I’m seriously wondering though how often does this actually happen, where pots are cooking unattended on the stove and you are nowhere near (in a wide-open space, as you describe it) to scold the cat?
Please consider the snap trap ideas offered. The newspaper or tinfoil “covers” are a great way to 1) eliminate the potential for the cat to get caught in the trap and 2) maximize noise and surprise. My uncle used snap traps to cure his large GSDs from sleeping on the furniture while they were out of the house. After one or two encounters with these snapping monsters, the dogs did not go near the couches. Every now and then, my uncle would put a few traps out (not set, just laying flat) on the couch as a refresher.
I have the invisible fence in my house for the dog/cat to keep them out of my living room. Works fantastic!!! They have indoor flags we used in the beginning and it’s a plastic disk you set the radius from 3-10 feet. The animal wears a collar and gets beeped when within 3 feet of the area, animal goes through and gets a small shock. We don’t even have it set up anymore as they just stay out of the room. Worked fantastic for me!!!
Chachie - Did you ever find a reliable, safe way to keep your cat off the counter?
FIVE YEAR OLD THREAD … post 31 reported as spam
How about a few of the motion activated sprayers that sprays compressed air? We use them, and they scare the crap out of me all the time! We set up a few on the counters and it works. PetSafe SSSCAT Deterrent Spray.
Heads up that this is an older thread that was bumped by now-deleted spam.
I think this is your best bet.
What about a small dog shock collar and a video camera to monitor the kitchen? You see her jump up, and you can give her a audible beep sound and then a small, small animal sized shock if she doesn’t respond.
I have a feeling you will spend a lot of work putting up a electric fence in your kitchen just for your cat to mission impossible her way onto the counter anyways. With the collar you can control the intensity too.
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