I don't know if anyone can help me or not but I need to come up with a solution to a neighbor in the apartment complex where I live complaining that the cats I'm feeding have ruined her car with paint scratches. Is this even possible ? I've heard cats claws CAN scratch the paint when they jump onto the slick surface and try to grip it....although have no idea whether this is causing it or not (unlikely to nil IMO). I've been providing food for a couple years and have never personally witnessed a whit of damage to the patio shelter or plant stand beyond a foot print or two. At least the three that come for their regular meals have all been TNR'd.
So there is no hard proof either way but basically what happened when I talked to the apartment manager today (who also runs a shelter !) was that she agreed that the car WAS damaged with some kind of mammal foot mark. Hadn't considered the other animal possibility (raccoons, etc?) but still asked me to stop on a trial basis. I will for a few days.
While all it's going to effect in the end is stress the cats even more, definitely make them hungry, potentially make them sick by eating an infected bird or other parasite -- and besides any kind of change is so rough for cats to cope with. What is suspicious is having only one person in a public open garage that has brought this up as an issue. And the cats are most likely not even holding up there any more as this evidently all went down in the middle of winter. Over a damned stupid car that likely wasn't even their fault !!! I'm so mad I could scream. Can you put up fences along an apartment hall ???
On the other hand, she does have the right to a reasonable amount of time to solve the problem and I also need to maintain a constructive, problem-solving attitude. So I will uphold my end of stopping care for them and revisit this talk with the manager in a few days. At which point I would like to discourage her suggestion of getting the humane society involved.....which means improper care or none at all, forced relocation etc (released to new sites without possibly without following relocation procedures ?).
One possibility is a high frequency noise device. Do they actually work to deter cats ? Would something like a passive infrared motion detector with an ultrasonic speaker like ScramCat that emits a tone inaudible to humans work outside ? If this is the case, I really, REALLY hope solving the scratching incidents might be as simple as setting up an ultra sonic device and aiming it at the site in question.
So there is no hard proof either way but basically what happened when I talked to the apartment manager today (who also runs a shelter !) was that she agreed that the car WAS damaged with some kind of mammal foot mark. Hadn't considered the other animal possibility (raccoons, etc?) but still asked me to stop on a trial basis. I will for a few days.
While all it's going to effect in the end is stress the cats even more, definitely make them hungry, potentially make them sick by eating an infected bird or other parasite -- and besides any kind of change is so rough for cats to cope with. What is suspicious is having only one person in a public open garage that has brought this up as an issue. And the cats are most likely not even holding up there any more as this evidently all went down in the middle of winter. Over a damned stupid car that likely wasn't even their fault !!! I'm so mad I could scream. Can you put up fences along an apartment hall ???
On the other hand, she does have the right to a reasonable amount of time to solve the problem and I also need to maintain a constructive, problem-solving attitude. So I will uphold my end of stopping care for them and revisit this talk with the manager in a few days. At which point I would like to discourage her suggestion of getting the humane society involved.....which means improper care or none at all, forced relocation etc (released to new sites without possibly without following relocation procedures ?).
One possibility is a high frequency noise device. Do they actually work to deter cats ? Would something like a passive infrared motion detector with an ultrasonic speaker like ScramCat that emits a tone inaudible to humans work outside ? If this is the case, I really, REALLY hope solving the scratching incidents might be as simple as setting up an ultra sonic device and aiming it at the site in question.