Re: claiming that a “super soaker” or hose “would have solved the problem”: This has been discussed at length at our Audobon meetings. The reasons it doesn’t work are:
If you stride across the yard with either of those, the cat will simply see you coming and run off. This won’t do anything to teach the cat to stay away from the feeders, it will only teach it to run off when it sees you approaching. The only effective deterrant is to have the predator assume that it is his own proximity to the bird feeder that resulted in the negative consequence.
It’s rare for a feeder to be situated in such a way that you could spray a predator underneath it with watergun or hose without the animal seeing you. Besides, you’d hit the birds as well. So those aren’t options for protecting songbirds at most feeders.
p.s. I would never dream of using a paintball gun for this. Any impact from one of those is guaranteed to seriously injure or kill a cat.
That is obviously so, in view of your cat’s injuries. Most folks know a BB gun will kill a bird (birds being pretty fragile creatures). But it really surprises me to see a BB gun cause such a serious injury to a cat. I would have thought the fur would stop the BB from penetrating the skin. Obviously not.
All I’m saying is that if the extent of this injury surprises me, it might surprise your neighbor too. I think you are taking the right approach.
The hair may have slowed it down some; I felt faint when I watched the vet pull a think string of bloody hair out of the wound, it was about an eighth of an inch thick. It’s hard to see from the pictures, but the deck is only about 30 yards from the feeder. The neighbor said he gave the pellet gun four pumps before unloading it into my cat; not knowing the psi of the model he was using, I couldn’t guess the velocity that is. However, in my opinion he was shooting from pretty close range at an animal below and unaware of him. FWIW, he uses a pellet rifle, like my dad used to use to hunt squirrel in Michigan.
Tripler, I hope your cat recovers with all due speed. Your neighbour, on the other hand, is a fucking asshole and I sincerely hope someone shoots him in the ass with a BB gun one day so he can find out just how much he fucking likes it.
Right. And that’s one of the things that makes me think he didn’t mean to kill or seriously injure the cat. If that had been his intent, he would have likely pumped it ten times. The reason he told you he only pumped it four times was to assure you he didn’t mean to seriously harm the cat. (Or at least that’s my reading of his remark.)
Obviously, he misjudged. When we had our (foolish in retrospect) BB gun battles as kids, we had a rule about how many pumps you could make if you were using a pellet gun. I think it was two (my memory is fuzzy). Four is too much, but your neighbor might not have known that.
Update-
I emailed the wife and included links to the pictures of the cat’s wound. Here’s their emailed response:
"We will pay for the vet bills. We feel bad about this insident. We care as much about our birds as you do your cats. If (Neighbor) had known that it was your cat, he would have just went over to you and asked you to get your cat. I hope that this does not hinder our relationship as neighbors.
Good enough, although if I were the wife I’d have felt obligated to come over in person to say it. And dragged the husband along to make him say it in person, too.
You actually expect me to spend thousands of dollars to fence my yard to prevent your animals from trespassing onto my property and killing the wildlife that resides on my land?
I think he was just too ashamed. Or maybe she was. I don’t think she holds much sway over him; they have a 12 year age difference and he seems the one who’s very much in charge. He’s a retired Chief Petty Officer and his wife still calls him ‘Chief’ rather than his real name.
Ok, correct me if I am mistaken, but a bb gun and a pellet gun are NOT the same things are they? Aren’t pellet guns more powerful? The OP’s neighbor used a pellet gun, not a bb gun.
I should add: A pellet gun can be more powerful than a BB gun, depending on how many times you pump it. If you just pump it two or three times, it is no more powerful than an ordinary BB gun.
And both have the capacity to maim a human being, or kill a small pet, if the respective BB, pellet, or whatever, is propelled with enough force (as by pumping it heavy) and strikes in the right place. I realize that those bringing up the point were clarifying in the interests of a tempered response, but I must say that my first reaction was to wonder how well they’d like having a BB gun (or pellet gun) discharged at them repeatedly.
Driven Snow, your point is almost as valid as the comment about the 6-year-old boy suspended from school for kissing a girl in kindergarten, that “he might grow up to be a rapist.” Yes, there are feral cats and cats owned by neglectful owners who do menace bird feeders placed by avid birders. And we have it specified that this was an elderly cat, exploring in the general vicinity of the neighbor’s feeder, not attempting to get birds, shot by the heavy-drinking neighbor in whose yard the feeder was. There is, I think, a difference between correcting boisterous children damaging your property, and taking the same action towards an 86-year-old woman with the temerity to walk past your house on the sidewalk. We had an elderly and beloved cat run down by a hit-and-run driver years back. Because you or people you know have had young healthy cats stalk birds does not license you, or Trip’s neighbor, to injure a neighbor’s pet who was not stalking birds.
But I did get a kick out of looking through the MPSIMS menu earlier today – I thought to myself, “Well, Tripler was quick to find a possible use for that rural cemetery he adopted!”
There is, I think, a difference between driving away a cat who is at your birdfeeder on your property, and taking the same action towards an elderly cat with the temerity to walk past your house on the sidewalk.
Driven Snow, the neighbor who shot the cat KNEW whose cat it was, or really ought to have known. It is not Nawth Chucka’s fault his brain is so pickled he can’t even remember a daily event! Even you said you wouldn’t shoot a cat you knew was a pet…
Animals go to where the food is, right?
Birds go to the birdfeeder b/c that’s where the birdseed is.
Cats go to the birdfeeder b/c that’s where ‘food’’ (birds) is.
Driven Snow, I think the suggestion of fencing in the feeder area is reasonable (and boy, I sure hope fences don’t cost thousands of dollars!). That would protect the feeder from all kinds of danger, cat and squirrel and raccoon, etc. I love birds, too, though probably not as much as you! I personally rescued a finch from the jaws of a cat we had when I was a teenager.
. . . and I’ll politely counter that there is a difference between a cat who is at your birdfeeder on your property out of curiosity, and a cat at your birdfeeder out of hunger–neither of which you can prove. However, in this instance, I can understand the homeowner not knowing either, but snapping and kicking it up to the level of using weapons is beyond comprehension.
Driven Snow, I do admire your compassion and dedication to your hobby. I have dedications of my own. However, with your hobby, I will say two things: 1) You don’t own those birds. They come and go as they please, and are still subject to the laws of nature (which include predation). 2) Compassion and dedication are extremely valuable things, until they blind you to the consequences of your actions.
Snow, don’t get me wrong. I do understand. But the guy pulled a weapon. Allow me to turn the table and hypothesize that I yanked a 20 gauge on your cardinals because they wouldn’t quit crapping on my truck–a little communication before shooting started would have prevented a lot of heartache and misery.
Now that I’m back in Alabama, I did talk to the neighbors tonight, and they indicated they don’t want to make things foul between us. I also spoke with NC, and saw the e-mails (as posted before). They are willing to pay for the vet bills, and I think that’s a big first step. I told the lady of the house to come over and maybe be a neutral Switzerland peacekeeper and smooth things out to a common understanding before Jimbo comes to apologize.
I agree with Driven Snow on this. It is clearly the pet owner’s responsiblity (and the law in many places) to maintain control over their pets, and keep them from trespassing on the neighbors’ private property. If the pet owner needs to build a fence to control their animals, they should do that. There is no reason why the neighbors should have to build a fence to keep your pets out.
The OP’s neighbor used a pellet gun, not a bb gun.