Thanks, Mama_Zappa.
Thanks everybody, for all the interest and the responses.
First, to address some of your comments & concerns: our feeders are 5 or 6 feet off the ground, except for one. The birds that use them kick enough feed out onto the ground to keep the ground feeders happy. We have a lot of ground feeders, including quite a large population of quail, so that’s going to happen regardless.
We do have raptors around here, but I don’t think that’s who dispatched our recently deceased diner.
IIRC, raptors like to take their meals ‘to go’ rather than eat them where they find them, and I have had to chase two of the neighborhood cats out of our back yard myself. the 6 foot fence hardly even slows then down.
And these cats are plenty well fed at home.They don’t need to hunt to survive. They just enjoy killing, like the little sadists that they are. (Actually one of them is reputedly ‘feral’. But I have seen the woman across the street feeding it, so I think that’s not exactly accurate. It’s certainly well-fed.)
I will probably get my wife a super-soaker water gun. I don’t expect it to be a 100% solution, but if it makes her happy, then I’ll be happy.
Hopefully that’ll be a final solution.
Thanks again.
There have been numerous news reports about the devastation that cats wreak on birds, which are a vital part of our ecosystem. I agree that cats belong indoors.
On behalf of my species, I question both the wisdom and the veracity of statements like “cats are great”, but I suppose we’re all entitled to our perverse opinions! 
When I was a kid I used to have something called a “tracer gun” - it shot small, light, disc-shaped projectiles. I don’t know if they still make them, but I don’t think they had the velocity to hurt a cat as long as you don’t hit them point-blank in the face with it.
They also make guns that shoot larger, foam projectiles, but these probably wouldn’t deter a cat. My cat used to love the stupid thing - he’d chase the projectiles and carry them around the house!
https://www.amazon.com/ArtCreativity-Launcher-Shooter-Activities-Backyard/dp/B08BTCGTRL?th=1
Again, it’s difficult to be sure that you won’t. Cats move unexpectedly and fast; people don’t have perfect aim; and toys are rarely designed to produce perfect aim in any case.
If it makes your wife happy to punish the cats that invade her territory, great. But I don’t think it’s going to significantly change the mortality rate of the birds, unless she camps out from sunrise to sunset with that water gun.
I hope an “Amen!” is welcomed here.
I walk my dog as much as I can. He and I (it’s about even, at this point) have come upon no end of dead rabbits, squirrels, birds, and … even the severed leg and talons of what was most likely a hawk.
Could it be something other than outdoor cats? Possibly. Not likely, though.
But every time I bag up and discard a carcass (or a limited sampling of it constituent parts), I think the exact same thing that your wife said.
Yes, that’s true. I’m a huge cat lover, so I would never do anything that even had a chance of hurting a cat. If I wanted to get them out of my yard (which I wouldn’t–I love “visitor cats”) I’d try to come up with a way to startle them without actually touching them with anything.
That was almost certainly not a domestic cat. Hawks hunt cats, when the cats are small enough (most grown cats are too big for them, but kittens are in danger.) I’ve never heard of a cat hunting a hawk (other than wild cats of much bigger species).
And given that you’ve got somebody else out there hunting – my guess is that some of the other parts of creatures are also due to whoever’s hunting hawks.
Philistine!!!
:::checks username:::
Now c’mon. Depending on your definition of “great”, they really are. A wolf might think they taste great, right?
FWIW, if I were not hideously allergic to them, we’d have at least 2. Best combination of “easy to care for” and “likes humans” of any animal (if you choose the right cat, that is). Dogs worship us, but need to be walked. My birds are easy to care for, but are terrified of me; they’re more like live decorations than companions. An affectionate cat requires food and a clean litter box, neither of which takes much time or effort, and you can play with them without leaving your chair.
But getting back on topic: the neighbors who “own” those cats are being irresponsible. 40+ years ago, that was the standard thing to do: let the cat outside whenever it wanted to roam (people also let their dogs roam free). Even ignoring the bird situation, cats left outside face a host of perils far worse than an encounter with a super soaker.
It took me over two years, but the neighbor’s cats stay out of our back yard now.
I bought motion detecting sprinklers that I set for the fence lines and a gizmo that I attached to the outside tap between the tap and hose that allowed me to manually turn a rain bird sprinkler on with an app on my cell.
The cats probably knew I had something to do with the water because if I was outside and saw them, I would spray them with the hose, but they also learned that they would get wet even if they couldn’t see me.
The cats still hang out in our front yard, but that’s OK because I don’t have bird feeders in the front yard. It is also safer for them because there is a Red-tail hawk that visits the feeders on a regular basis and it looks big enough to take a small cat if it can’t get a dove.
Question is unclear. Do you not want to harm the cat, or to you not want the cat to feel pain?
It’s part of their nature. Wild animals are prey to most other living things, even domesticated predators.
Do you have an opinion about mountain lions or coyotes that attack and kill deer and other wild grazing animals?
Yeah. I don’t think cats are capable of sadism, though they’re certainly capable of behavior that would indicate sadism if a human did it. I think what they’re enjoying is the game of playing with a little moving thing, and then the flavor in their mouths; I don’t think what they’re enjoying is the other creature’s fear and pain.
Yes. Predators in the wild have to hunt and kill to survive. That’s the way the world works.
That being said, if one of them tries to kill one of my animals I will do my best to stop them, up to and including killing them.
Cats that are being regularly fed by their human subjects do not have to kill to survive. They just like to do it.
And I doubt that their motivation make a lot of difference to their victims.
Not just survive. Predators in the wild also kill because it is their instinct to do so. They do it to protect their territory and ensure their breeding accessibility. Many predators kill more than what is needed to eat.
And many house cats kill birds and small game, to bring back to their humans to show them what they killed because they consider their humans part of their pride, just like lions.
Anthromorphizing human motivations to animals isn’t a healthy way to look at nature.
I highly doubt that the local birds that fly in and out of your yard are counting on you or your spouse to be their protectors.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that we have an obligation to protect the animals that are under our care, such as pets and livestock, but other animals in the wild, not so much.
I’ve spent a lot of my many years in the company of animals, and it is my considered opinion that our motivations and theirs are not all that different, at least at their basic level. We all want to eat, breed, and survive. Love is nice too.
Yeah, any solid projectile that you can launch from a decent distance could do eye damage if that’s where it happens to land. I used to keep the cats off my garden with a homemade catapult (slingshot), firing dried peas as ammo, but I used to shoot wide of the cats just so the noise would startle them (I also got peas growing all over my garden).
A water gun seems like the least-likely to cause an injury.
“What to shoot a cat with that won’t hurt it”?
A dirty look. They’re completely unfazed by it; at least, my little tuxedo monster is.
“5:17 a.m. is a great time for breakfast, hooman!” my ass…