Fencing in the kittehs! Help me brainstorm the ultimate fence?

[cowboymom]

I have eight cats and two of them are six month old kittens. We live in a very remote quiet place but unfortunately, our house sits quite close to the road. Old place, back then they built everything as close to the road as they could get and here we sit. Some day we will build further away but now we’re stuck.

Cats are in/out all the time-the older six are very road wise and for the occasional car that comes by they’ve done ok but I think it’s just luck. Kittens, of course, are clueless of the danger.

This situation has bothered me for the year that we’ve lived here but with summer coming again the cats are going bonkers and want outside. The power company is working on the line above our house and the trucks are coming by daily and I am literally living in fear of hearing the big THUMP every time a car goes by. We keep them in as much as possible but they literally run under the dogs to get out, wait for us to open the door to come in and dart out and run, they’re clawed holes through the screens and they have torn up the dryer vent to escape that way. If we do get one captured it yowls all night and breaks things and fights with the other cats. I can’t keep them in, can’t keep them in, can’t keep them in.

We have a good back yard, it’s big and comes complete with a half fallen old cabin/barn structure that is a kitty jungle gym, well-stocked with mice. The yard is fenced in with a wire fence and 5 foot t-posts now.

Now that I’ve set the scene: I am going to fence the buggers in.

I can get 2 by 4 welded wire or 2 inch chicken wire. Trying to figure out if I should just make it 8 feet tall and use two 4 foot rolls, or if I should make it 6 feet tall and add a 2 foot roll along the top that can be angled inward. 8 feet high would be optimum but for at least part of it would require much taller posts.

I’m going to have to do something to keep them from crawling under and I might just resort to a light weight electric wire. They’ve been around electric wire and know what it’s about.

The gate?? No clue just yet. Thinking of hanging a water bottle by the gate and using that to clear the area before anyone goes in/out. :lol:

Just thought also that I would like to have a way they could get IN but not OUT. Like a step system on the outside they could use to jump in… we’ll see about that.

Husband has seen this coming for miles and isn’t thrilled but is resigned to his fate.

Any ideas?

[kimkatsooo]

I have done this!!!

As tall a fence as you can. Get some pvc poles and chicken wire.

Tie the chicken wire onto the top of the fence GOOD!

Put the pvc poles onto the fence at the top. Cut slots on the bottom and top of the poles. Put the poles under the wire and prop the wire up so that about a foot hangs over.

It is kinda like an arch. The cats can/will climb it BUT will bump their heads on the overhanging wire AND they should NOT be able to snag the wire to pull it in to climb over.

It will be a learning curve. It is high enough so they cannot not just jump up on top of it? It is hanging over too much so they can snag it?

It worked GREAT at my old house.

I hope this helps!

[cowboymom]

Thank you! I hadn’t even thought about getting pvc involved!

This helps a lot!

[cloudyandcallie]

I’ve always done cat fencing this way:

I stop anyone, dog or cat, from digging under a fence by laying wire along the ground and covering it up. Dogs and cats cannot dig up dirt where the wire is. A few feet inside the fence and outside the fence line. I have a 6 foot chain link fence installed, and then I have the fence company install those no climb tops…the ones that the army base has which slant inward so that when a cat reaches the top of the 6 foot fence, he has to lean back to try to get over the fence. The no climb tops are used to keep people out of businesses and military bases. They works well with cats. (You can have either chain link or chicken wire put on the top line, instead of the barbed wire that companies and the government use.) You want the slanting to be inward, not outward as companies and the govt have theirs slanting. Slanting towards whatever you want to stay inside or outside of your yard.)

If kittens are small enough to slip thru the chain link fence, you can attach chicken wire. I paid for a stockade fence to be installed inside of my 6 ft chain link fence. Good for privacy and keeps small animals in.

It only takes one mistake for a “street savvy” cat or dog to be run over. Some people actually intentionally run over animals, especially cats. So it is worth it to have 6 ft of double fencing plus the no climb slanting extensions on each post. Which is why my cats live to be 18 or so…one will turn 22 this month.

[cowboymom]

Believe me, I know the dangers out there and I wish I could keep them in but short of kicking one of the kids out of their rooms and locking all 8 of the cats in there I can NOT keep them in, can’t. I don’t think anyone that drives by our place would do hit one deliberately but it could so easily happen on accident. We live in a very small community, everyone waves when they do drive by.

It’s about 600 feet of fence line in hard packed clay. I would like to bury the wire but I’m not sure that will happen. We have to install the fence ourselves I think but I will price out chain link, I didn’t think of that actually. We’re so rural everything is either woven wire or chicken wire but my dad put in a chain link fence that was very affordable, thank you for that! While I’m at it, I might just price out the whole job; I’m sure we can’t afford it but maybe I’ll get lucky!

Angry cat is scratching demonically at the window next to the computer as I type.

[kimkatsooo]

I have done this!!!

As tall a fence as you can. Get some pvc poles and chicken wire.

Tie the chicken wire onto the top of the fence GOOD!

Put the pvc poles onto the fence at the top. Cut slots on the bottom and top of the poles. Put the poles under the wire and prop the wire up so that about a foot hangs over.

It is kinda like an arch. The cats can/will climb it BUT will bump their heads on the overhanging wire AND they should NOT be able to snag the wire to pull it in to climb over.

It will be a learning curve. It is high enough so they cannot not just jump up on top of it? It is hanging over too much so they can snag it?

It worked GREAT at my old house.

I hope this helps!

[Cammie]

Homemade version

I actually just finally got around to doing a homemade version, since the official cat fences were more than I wanted to spend. I have about 130’ of privacy fence, and I bought garden stakes and netting and did my own cat fence along the top of it. I have two cats, the 4 year old has never even considered the idea of jumping out (afraid of heights/not athletic AT ALL), and the 1 yr old cat is extremely athletic, but since no one has ever shown him how it can be done the idea has never occurred to him. :lol: I figured eventually he would leap after a butterfly or bird and the light bulb would go off though. Since neither are escape artists, I figured my home version would be sufficient. So far, so good. Other than the poor hummingbird that got confused by the netting on the first day and was captured by the younger cat, thankfully I rescued the bird in time.

Take a look at the official versions to see how they have it rigged-
http://www.purrfectfence.com/
http://catfencein.com/

This is what mine looks like-
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u71/Cammiespike/image_zpsekkqkmgi.jpg

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u71/Cammiespike/image_zpszgyvybcr.jpg

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u71/Cammiespike/image_zpsrz9fdawd.jpg

I bought the garden stakes from Home Depot (5’ green plastic wrapped around steel) and bent them at roughly a 90 degree angle so the top 3’ were angled in. The netting I bought from one of the cat fence sites, because I couldn’t find any that would work locally.

[regalace]

Anyone do anything like this: http://www.katzecure.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/slide011.jpg I think it looks nicer than the mesh cat fence toppers that lean in, and it looks like the cylinders would roll when a cat tried to climb them. I wonder if a piece of clear plexiglass a couple of feet wide would work, at the top of the fence, so the cats couldn’t climb up it? I’d so love to fence in our cats so they could play in the yard, but we have a big yard and it would be kinda expensive!

[Kat_the_Horse]

Hardware cloth laid on the ground, with a flap folded up and fastened to the fence does very well to keep your cats from digging their way out. Cover it with rocks, gravel, or mulch if you are worried about the look. It eventually becomes incorporated in the lawn given time.

A year ago we actually went all out to fence our 9 cats safely in a humongous back yard, using 6-foot vinyl privacy fencing. We also built on a screen porch to the back of our home so that they could enjoy the ‘outside’ feel when the weather did not allow them to actually be outside. Now, there was only ONE cat who could ever jump this high, and as a tortie, her vision deficit served to scotch any such hijinx.

However, within weeks the cats had dug themselves OUT, pulling all of the large rocks, bricks and boards we’d placed to temporarily keep them from doing this very thing. We had more permanent measures in the works involving decorative plantings and attractive wooden battens, but were heavily involved in pasture fencing, garden, and life in general. Finally, 70mph winds blew every damned gate off the fence, rendering the entire enterprise moot. As a P.S. we haven’t lost a cat yet, despite heavy coyote population. The fact that we have acquired THREE Australian Shepherds could have something to do with this. (the cats stay close to the house and particularly close to ‘cover’).

Lesson learned: 'A fool and his/her money…".

We have since repaired the flimsy vinyl gates with solid wood parts, and laid hardware cloth inside and out (so nothing can dig IN too). It is buried under fill dirt outside, and under a cedar edging and mulch inside. After much consternation, all have accepted they are restrained thus UNLESS they are gutsy enough to scoot out the front door along with the 3 Aussies.

The lovely screened porch suffered from a surfeit of cluster flies, wasps and the occasional hungry o’possum eager to snack on the corn-based cat litter.

[cowboymom]

Oh no, Kat the Horse, that started out as a happy story and now it’s turned into something that my husband wants to present as evidence for the case against!! :lol:

I worry about the digging too… ugh. Hardware cloth is a good idea, thought today that putting down wire, then gravel/rock would work well if I can’t bury it.

I have five dogs, including a Great Pyrenees… but they can’t help the kitties not run in front of the cars…

If we had a board fence it would sure help a lot but we don’t… hmm.

[sk_pacer]

I did a catio at one time - had a large porch that I enclosed in chicken wire, and this was long before the days of Jackson Galaxy; back then it was just called a closed in porch. It also made a good place for the barbecue and a nice place to sit in summer

[Cammie]

CowboyMom, take a look at the Purrfect Fence page-

http://store.purrfectfence.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=KIT-CONVERSION&buttonOutdoorCatEnclosuresConversion

Their system can be used on chainlink fence- you don’t need to have wooden fencing. Depending on how your current fence is set up you may be able to jury-rig the conversion kit to work with your t-posts.

Of course, they also have a free-standing fence that you could just put inside your current fence, but that’s expensive as hell…

[Coyoteco]

These on top of chain link posts or perhaps another type of post will enable you to angle in the top part of the fence.

https://www.google.com/search?q=chain+link+barbed+wire+holders&client=opera&hs=c7T&tbm=isch&imgil=5yTH0Lpc8KJrCM%3A%3Bs2yJIzuckaqReM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ffence-material.com%252Fbaarmchlife.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=5yTH0Lpc8KJrCM%3A%2Cs2yJIzuckaqReM%2C_&usg=__E_e8ywhOhz53fH2GIADsObaay9A%3D&biw=914&bih=459&ved=0CDUQyjc&ei=YWknVdPHEMydsAXK5IP4Cw#imgrc=5yTH0Lpc8KJrCM%3A%3Bs2yJIzuckaqReM%3Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fep.yimg.com%2Fay%2Fyhst-27933644532887%2Fbarb-arm-chain-link-fence-6.gif%3Bhttp%3A%2F%2Ffence-material.com%2Fbaarmchlife.html%3B640%3B480

lol, I meant to arms, not the razer wire :).

[JanM]

A friend’s son built an entire chain link room the size of the end of his house. The cats had a door from the house to the basement, and went in and out the basement, floor level window. This included a chain link top, and was totally secure. It also had sun shield cloth on top.

Unfortunately, they didn’t put in a gate/people door. When they needed to scoop up, or change out the cat tree (a real tree from the river), they had to climb in and out of the window.