Attention :cat owners regarding bird feeders

how do you place feeders for optimal bird safety? I have mine close to a tree for a quick getaway although I can't watch them from my window . I never had a problem with my older cat but Mandu and Lilith are only a year old and I don't trust 'em


I certainly don't want to entice birds into my yard only to have them become cat food, but I do love both cats and birds!

across the top of it. Dad would flush it a bit every other day or so.

But the thing attracted birds, cats, squirrels. We always had a lot of wildlife in the yard and never had that many dead birds.

Our cats were generally overweight and belled. If a bird can get caught by a cat like that, I don't think they're long for this world.

I don't really worry about it too much.

I love Ginsbergs name


Alan or Ruth Bader? I am a fan of both!

Hopefully someone will have some helpful suggestions.

for some reason they ignore that one.

I have a birdbath in my yard and next to it a kind of homemade feeder with perches. The cats would have to jump almost vertically up onto it and the birds would have plenty of time.

Besides the cats are too distracted watching all the iguanas in my yard (most bigger than them!)

Lilith was watching a huge blue heron in the back yard this morning . She just watched though! LOL

and even he knows to leave creatures bigger than him alone.

He's pretty much retired from his hunting now.

Though my eldest does like to hunt my shoes, so I guess that technically counts.

Probably a Buddhist.

Whenever I've had cats, the birdfeeders were hung from a tree or roof eave. Cats could never get the birds that way.

there are no suitable branches to hand one on

They you might entice your cats to become bird food.

are intimidating!

he looks pretty well-fed. :)

Completely cat and squirrel proof.

mikey_the_rat

I barely have a first one

Our cats stalk the birds but rarely catch any. If the feeder is somewhat in the open, the birds will see your cats and just not come to the feeder when your cats are there.

thanks

Both are hung close to the fence in front of our cat netting, quite a distance apart from one another and within full view of all the rest of the yard.

Neither of the cats have caught a bird in 8 months, and here's why:

The birds have gotten wise to the presence of the cats, and before they fly into the yard, they sit on top of the fence safely behind the cat netting and look both directions several times before flying down. They preferentially use the feeder that is the farthest away from the cats at any given time. If a cat comes near their feeder, they move down to the other one. The distance is great enough between the feeders that a charging cat at full run has no hope whatsoever of catching a bird. If a cat comes near them at all, they fly up immediately behind the netting, wait for the cat to settle again, and then use the farthest feeder from it.

Our poor cats are immensely frustrated by the situation, but the birds are safe and well-fed. There could be a problem in the future if the cats ever figure out that there are two feeders and two of them, but that seems unlikely for now because their little heads are mostly filled with fuzz. :evilgrin:

I am however having a problem with an obnoxious squirrel who has recently figured out that he can chew holes in the cat netting to get to the feeders. The problem may be self-correcting soon if he's not as wise or paranoid as the birds, but I was also pondering chili spray on the netting or something similar. Suggestions are welcome.

Thanks


Squirelsdrive me crazy My sister brought tulip bulbs back from Holland and squireks ATE them

Mikeytherat's. I really enjoyed the one that hung outside the kitchen window from the eaves/overhang area. I think being close to trees is a good idea, ours always were. My Sir Thomas never bothered much and I don't think he ever got any of the feeder birds. He'd watch them and plot and wiggle and make those funny little twitchy wisker/funny sounds and occasionally chase but I never saw him get one. My biggest problem were the hawks x( so we finally took the feeders down.

Hawks! I haven't seen any around here but they are thick on my girlfriends farm which isn't that far away

It was like somebody filled them in or something because all of a sudden boom, hawks were having lunch outside our window seat in full view.

One year we had two little parakeets, budgies or whatever they're called, that showed up at feeder in front of the kitchen window. There was a blue one and a green one. I tried so hard to entice them into a cage because the humane society told me they wouldn't live through the winter and that they wouldn't migrate with the rest of the birds. They only came part of the summer then I didn't see them anymore.

I think the birds enjoyed the window feeder as much as I did. They'd watch me in the kitchen as much as I was watching them.

knowing it was Mosby, who didn't have any interest in catching birds.

left me a dead mouse in the middle of my livingroom floor recently . I think it was Lilith because she was acting all proud!

And his smelly car. It retained water that gave a nice moldy smell, or whatever.

She would leave the moles right by the driver's door.

:rofl:

if I did that! That is a pretty kitty, it has a fluffy tail like Mandu and Lilith.

He's a great big stripey Maine Coon mix with white paws, a white ruff, and a giant fluffy tail which is about 4 times fluffier than the rest of him.

That's my big fluffy Maine Coon Oberon in his winter coat. :-)

He's a bit fluffier than mine, and looks bigger too. But mine isn't a pure-bred Maine Coon. He does have a tail that's about that fluffy, though!

So your kitty has a distinctly different winter vs. summer coat too? I didn't start to see that phenomenon until just this year (he turned 2 this May - I guess he finally grew up enough this year to have his adult fur type). I was brushing him one day last month and pulled off enough fur to knit another cat. Then I looked at him and realized that parts of him had suddenly become short-haired! And I could tell that there were still a few left-over "winter" hairs hanging around - they made him look almost patchy because they were about 1 1/2 inches longer than the rest of the coat!

I was kind of amazed and taken aback. I've owned cats for 20 years and never had one that had two distinctly different coat types depending on the season.

He completely loses his mane when the heat rolls in:



He has that same pitiful in-between stage that you are talking about in early Spring, when tumbleweeds of kitty fur roll down the hallway!



He is really huge too. Here's a photo of his grandmother (I'm not the woman in the pic):



The fur may be a hassle, but they are great cats!

Very friendly, sweet, kind of goofy personality. Only cat I've ever had with a sense of humor - he likes to play "jokes" on people! He has a consistently positive outlook on life, and it infects everyone else in the household. His brother (a long-haired tuxedo MC mix) is a nice little cat too, but is a little more timid.

I would definitely get another Maine Coon again if I were to get another cat. They're fabulous little beasties.

I have two Turks, my Maine Coon and a domestic short hair tuxedo kitten. I adopted a half Turkish Angora back in college (a student's show cat got loose and mated with a local ally cat). That kitty was one of the best pets I've ever had. He had a wicked sense of humor and would pull pranks on everyone, including my other cat at the time. One of his favorites was to sit with his open mouth poised right over the other cats twitching tail, as if he were just about to bite it. The other cat would howl and hiss, and every time he looked at the Turk the Turk would look away as if to say "what? I wasn't doing anything"! He played a lot of those "I'm not touching you"! games, lol!

Here's my other Turk Pippin:

so make sure there is no bushes or other things nearby for cats to stage ambushes.

Seriously, though, the feeders attach to the deck more than twenty feet off the ground, and not far from the tree that provides plenty of cover from raptors.

But it may not stop them from ambushing them.

for cats to hide for at least a 15 ft. radius underneath. This gives the birds plenty of time to see and react if someone tries to catch them. My cat watches the birds, but doesn't ever catch them (although she is an excellent mouser), but there are many feral cats in the neighborhood that would enjoy a birdie snack if given the chance.