need help with a stalker cat

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yeah you read right, a stalker CAT!

It started a few weeks ago, I found a cat - in my bathroom!

A window screen had mysteriously fallen out of the window and thats how he got in. I checked him over, he had claws and no tag/collar so I let him go, assuming he belonged to one of the retards in my neighborhood who think this is normal cat ownership.

He came back, again and again. I found him fighting other cats near the window he came through. Then I found him HANGING by his claws on the outside of this window,and hissing at my indoor cat. Then he pulled the screen out of the window.

It goes on and on.
I yelled at him, he came back.
I poured water on him, he came back.

YESTERDAY, 5 am, he was hanging on my bedroom window, I chased him away TWICE, and then finally I punched him through the screen as he was getting really agressive to my cat on the inside. Screen and cat go flying.

Last night, he is back, hanging on same screen, son throws shoe and connects, and cat flees.

This morning, he is BACK AGAIN!

How do I get rid of this menace???

He is destroying the screen in my backdoor, and he can pull my bedroom screen right out!

I DONT know who owns him, the wont care anyway.

The SPCA here is under staffed and under funded. The wont assist me, unless I bring him in myself.

Any suggestions?

2

Get a dog.

3

Get a gun

egg

4

There is an animal repellent spray – quite humane – that basically works like “bitter apple” for the sense of smell. Generally, you spray it in your garden to keep cats and other critters from eating your plants or “marking their territory”. If he got a big spray-cloud of it while he was hanging on your screen, he’d find if terribly upsetting and would hate you all for it.

It would be much more humane than launching a shoe at him and if you spray the screen and the area near the window where he keeps appearing, it would also dissuade him from returning (at least until the next rainfall washes the stuff away.) Spraying the screen would also discourage your cat from sitting in the window too.

I’ve seen the product in most pet stores. It works well for keeping away dogs too.

5

The only thing I can think of right now is that Bill Plympton cartoon from a couple of years ago, the one with the “and the cat came back, the very next day” song. :smiley:

Or, this video: www.ebaumsworld.com/media/catattack.mpg

Since this cat obviously loves your bathroom so much, is there any way you can trap it in there? Then you could take it to the vet, and keep him. He obviously wants to be your cat. If not, does your city have an animal control division? (Seperate from the SPCA.) Of course, if it’s like my city, it will take them a couple of hours to get to you, but they will usually take an animal that seems to be dangerous to the pound.

6

Skerri:
I used to think he wanted to be our cat, but his attentions have changed, and he is now very territorial. NO cats, even my own, are welcome in my yard/house now.

I dont want this cat, at all. I have a cat, and he is the most loving, CLEAN, smart, best cat ever. He is very happy and he owns us, as a matter of fact, he is helping the kids watch tv right now…

Adding another cat would be a rotten thing to do to him, and he is an indoor cat, if I ever added a cat, it would be a kitten, with no outside experience, so he wouldnt try and get out.

We have no animal control at all.

Charmian:
I will try the bitter spray stuff, but I hate to punish Murphy by taking away is window seat. However, better no window, than no Murphy.

THis furry little menace is pretty determined though, but maybe a spray right to the face through the screen would do the trick…

(and I am not worried about ‘humane’ anymore, this thing is getting dangerous- he was actually hanging my three feet and trying to claw my cat through the screen with the fourth foot-EEEK!)

7

They also hat the feel/sound/everything about tin foil. They won’t stand on it. I’m not sure if that helps.

You can also buy some citronella, they hate the smell.

8

OOooo foil! I HAVE foil!!

I cant even sleep, every sound I hear I think he is at the window, this is insane.

9

Kellibelli,
Hope you are able to keep the cat away! Sometimes they stake territory for no obvious reason…

We’ve had an on and off stalker cat for awhile now as well, though ours was not at all violent. He mainly would sit meowing at the back door to be let in. If someone was at the front door he would run to the front to sit meowing forlornly and trying to push his way past people going in and out. His favorite spot was within view of the front windows…the same windows my defenseless and stupid guinea pigs are stationed while getting plumper and more tempting looking (I assume this is how they are viewed from a cats point of view). :wink:

If we would have been able to carry him to the humane society (we have a no kill one near our house) we would have, but no luck yet.

Viv

10

BAH he was just on the back door again, son chased him away.

I am gonna have to try and catch him, but shit I dont want to get bit!

11

I had a similar problem once, and found that a water pistol (one of the big Super Soaker ones) kept handy to the area did the trick. Took a couple of days but, in the end, the stalker cat worked out that setting so much as one paw in my garden was going to get him soaked.

Nice simple cleanup, no smells (I’m like cats in that I’m not fond of citronella either).

12

We used it to keep a nasty-ass male cat from spraying our sliding screen door (he was actually trying to pee on our indoor cats!) It worked really well. Once the stalker cats gets a few good spritzes in the face, he probably won’t come back. Then you can wash the screen and throughly clean the window sill, so Murphy will only be deprived temporarily.

The Critter Repellent spray is fairly odorless to humans (not completely), but you can get a vague idea of how yucky it must be for animals right when your first spray it and the particles are still in the air. Very similar to bitter apple – it feels like it sucks ALL the moisture out of your sinuses! And it’s undescribably bitter – reminds me vaguely of melting plastic. As I was spraying it, I wanted to get away. It must be really unbearable for critters with such well-developed senses of smell. Once it settled, we humans didn’t notice it so much, but yuck! Spray stalker-kitty in the head, he’ll avoid you like crazy.

13

He wants to kill your cat. It depends on how serious you are willing to get.

Get a trap from animal control and trap and remove him to local SPCA and they will find a home for him.

Paintball gun might move him elsewhere but unsure as to whether paintball would kill standard issue tom cat or not.

Lion or Tiger (or cougar) dung under the window would repel him (and lots of other things too)

14

I like the repellent scent spray idea, but…

My guess is that this is an “intact” male cat, who would be much less aggressive if he were neutered. You might want to check into any low-cost neutering programs in your area. Call the SPCA or any local cat or dog shelters or charities in your area and explain the situation.

I’m not talking about keeping the cat - just neuter & release. You could end up spending more on repellent sprays over time than this one-time procedure would cost.

Please remember the cat is just being a cat. It’s the irresponsible nitwit owners who are at fault here… as usual…

15

The repellent sprays are fairly cheap and so little is required that we threw out our almost full bottle after four years (we assumed it would no longer be potent after all that time).

You don’t need it regularly, we sprayed our patio twice (one week apart). The evil spraying cat came back the following spring so we sprayed our patio area a third time, never saw the cat again.

Neutre and release is good for feral cats, but if this cat turns out to actually belong to someone (albeit someone irresponsible), the human could become much more disagreeable than the cat ever could be.

16

Nix on the fancy sprays. Save some money. Buy a Super soaker & a bottle of vinager. Squirt the little furry mouse-trap with that. Right in the face. Won’t harm him, but the vinager will smell bad, & sting his eyes without harming him.

You get to keep the unused vinager and you get a nifty squirt gun.

Win-win situation.

17

I wonder if I can have the owners neutered?

18

Tavalla’s suggestion has merit, but I’d reccommend a Super Soaker rifle like the one I’ve got…it shoots about 1/5 of a gallon at a time in a stream as big around as a nickel for a good 30 feet and will make an annoying neighbor cat think the world’s ending. I use mine to discourage our neighbor’s cat from playing on our porch at night and driving my cats nuts.

19

Well sure, that’ll work when you’re there to super-soak him. Unless you’re there 24-7, he’ll still be after your house pet when you aren’t around.

We used to blast the evil, peeing cat with a hose. It worked great to roust him from the property. But he adapted by coming around in the wee hours of the morning or when we were at work, then peed all over our steps.

The $7 spray (cheaper than some super-soakers I’ve seen) works over as large an area as you wish to spray even when you’re not around. Cat’s consider the place contaminated because their more sensitive sense of smell keeps your place too offensive. A little goes a long way. You wouldn’t need to spray the sill where your own kitty sits, but you can make the grass leading up to the window, too bitter for that bad cat to want to walk through.

20

Yes, I thought of that… But:

(1) Nobody at kellibelli’s house knows nothin’ about it, and I didn’t see a thing;

(B) Careless cat owners are less likely to notice anything missing; and

(III) The bastids would open themselves up to a nuisance suit, not to mention damage to the bathroom screen, were they to come forward and identify themselves.

Heck, if the spray works, great. But the snip is probably in the cat’s best interest.

I actually like the idea of neutering the owners best of all, but those pesky laws & civil liberties would pose a bit of an obstacle…