Cat fencing/new house dilemma

[stargzng386]

I have on cat that has to be allowed outside, she won’t use a litterbox inside and gets destructive. I am buying a house off a fairly busy county road on 3/4 of an acre. The house is right at the front of the property and the all the land is out back with one shared driveway that wraps around it.

I am having a hard time stomaching the thought of her getting run over if she decides to cross the road out front. I feel like my only option to keep her in the back is a full privacy fence with cat safe fencing…basically make it fort knox for cats. First, is this even feasible to work in such a large area? Will it cost so much that I simply won’t be able to afford to do it?

If I put in a regular wire mesh fence for the dogs which I know she could climb are there any other deterrents I could put by the road to keep her away?

[Simkie]

Can she have a small “cat yard”? So you don’t have to fence the whole thing, just an area for her instead?

[Cammie]

It’ll be expensive, but it works well if you have it set up right. I believe if you just add the netting to the top of an existing fence it has to be at least 3’ high to keep a cat in, but I may be wrong. I have a 6’ wooden privacy fence, so I just bought the netting to go around the top. Instead of paying for their expensive fence arms I just use garden stakes with zip ties. They generally last 6 mos-1yr before they need to be replaced, but they only cost $2 so it’s not very costly. If I buy long enough stakes I can generally get two uses out of them before they fail. I have one dedicated escape artist who I swear checks the fence nightly to see if there are any weak spots in his prison yard. I have a tree in a bad spot with easy access to the carport roof (and then FREEDOM!), but I seem to have it locked down now after festooning the tree in netting. Although he still faithfully checks it.

You can also buy a freestanding cat fence if you don’t have an existing fence, so that may be an option if you want the yard fully fenced for dogs but want to save money by having a smaller area set aside for the cat with access to the house.

[stargzng386]

I have no dog fencing either so have to put that up. I do have to do a dog run and dog door for when I’m at work but maybe I can make that larger with a privacy fence and cat fencing. It would be more boring for her but I can put a cat tree in the middle and enrichment to keep her occupied. I just would love to have her running around with me while I garden etc. if I don’t do privacy fencing for the whole yard I’d do a lower 4 foot mesh fence I could potentially put cat fencing on the top of that.

For a dog run how do you keep them from digging out?

[js]

Could you put up a smaller completely enclosed area outside for her, something like this:

https://catiospaces.com/catios-cat-enclosures/

We have a six foot chain link fence with a wire overhand for our backyard. It does keep our cats in but a local stray cat climbs in and out of it easily. We had this same set up at our old house, a couple of our cats figured out how to dig under the fence. At our new house we put solid metal edging at the bottom (think its some kind of patio edging?).

[BEARCAT]

I am lucky that my cat has never tried to get out of our yard (4 foot fence), but in your situation, I would think of building something like the “catio and tunnel” from the link above.
https://catiospaces.com/catios-cat-enclosures/diy-plans/oasis-tunnel-8x8-8x10/

[saje]

I made my cats their own paddock.

I first got a Purrfect Fence, and when that was a hit I made my own I used the same mesh as they do (1+ inch squares, 7 ft tall) that I found online elsewhere, 8 ft T-posts, large shelf brackets, snake-type pipe clamps, and rabbit wire for the L at the bottom, and many, many zip ties.
There are pictures here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10206131668482302&type=1&l=6199c29dac

I have a cat door window insert in my office window, and they pretty much come and go as they please. This fence has now withstood winter ice (I’m in SC so no snow to speak of) branches falling on it, and 2 rounds of tropical storm force winds. I replace zip ties every so often, and tighten it up every so often.

Purrfect fence has a very nice package set-up, but it ain’t cheap. Mine isn’t as nice looking as theirs, but so far no-one’s gotten out. I DID acquire cat #11 when she jumped IN (from the back porch, I think) and was in such rough shape that I decided she wasn’t going back to wherever she came from.

I think the whole thing cost me about $300, and most of that was the mesh fence. It’s 45 x 120 ft, more or less.

[betsyk]

We have one that was allowed out in the dog yard for a while. He wasn’t a climber, but he could turn himself into Flat Stanley and go under the fence somehow. It’s a standard 4’ chain link fence and we had to put boards and rocks and whatever we could find along the bottom edge.

[Feliz]

We had to build Catcatraz at our last house because The Big Fluff was living IN other people’s houses and our neighbours were unhappy.

The house was already almost fully fenced with a 6’ wooden fence. We bought cat specific netting from Australia (we’re in NZ), lengths of aluminium (fairly easy to cut, bend & drill holes in), a million cable ties & U shaped nails. The aluminium extenders were about 700mm long, bent to make an overhang on the inside. Netting went about 100mm down the fence, secured with the U nails, then 600mm up the bent aluminium. Everything was black, including the fence, so it was relatively discrete. Total cost was under $200 – not including our hours and hours of labour!

It was fairly easy to do on the straight sections, we did have a lot of weak points that the cats helpfully exploited for us – corners, gates, where the garden shed was etc. I think it took us about a month to make it cat tight. Even our little cat, who seems quite unathletic at times, can easily jump onto a 5’6 shed roof!

My top tips would be to make it as simple as possible and have nothing butting up against it if at all possible.

Not very good photos but you can see it on the top of the fence behind Mac, and where we just used the netting as a barrier all the way to the ground

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[alabama]

If you google cat fence systems, there are a few different kinds out there. I like this one with a privacy fence: https://catfencein.com/

[stargzng386]

I am looking into fencing and prob not going to be able to afford wood privacy fencing for 3/4 of an acre. I’m thinking chain link with the privacy slats in it. I think the plan is to start with the dog run and add brackets and cat fencing mesh to the top and see how that goes. If she’s contained and fairly happy with it then over time we’ll add it to the entire 3/4 of an acre fencing to allow her more room to roam.