- Image by JumpyJames via Flickr
Let me start off by confessing that I’m a scientist. No really, my day job is “research scientist”. So when the chance came to actually test a piece of equipment in the field, as it were, I jumped at it.
I’ve already posted about a neighbourhood cat that favours several spots around our garden for use as a litter tray. One of those is in a flower bed that runs along the front of our house. At the start of the season I was getting ready to put some plants in this bed when I discovered a stash of little cat turds in a shallow grave. There must have been 30 or more in there – filled a good sized (bio-degradable) carrier bag. A few days later we saw the offending cat using this spot. Plants had never thrived in this part of our garden and I now had an explanation for that. So I decided to buy the Big Cheese Cat Repeller – I was shocked to find that it was going to cost me around thirty quid from an un-named high street electronics store and wasn’t much cheaper in a rather well known DIY store. So, I bought it from Amazon.co.uk instead, where it’s known by it’s Sunday name – “Defenders Mega-Sonic Cat Repeller”.
I installed the cat sonic repeller device at the very edge of the flower bed offering protection, according to the manufacturer’s claims, along the full length of it. I give it 3 out of 5 for installation instructions. Although I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, I’m notoriously bad at working out how to fit things together (Jigsaws are my nemesis. As are shoelaces. And if you’re a bit of a snob, you might say “words” are as well – hey, I write from the heart). The cat repeller device comes with a mounting stake and I couldn’t for the life of me work out how to attach this. There was nothing else for it – I would have to read the instructions (I don’t “do” instructions). So I was soon good to go. The mounting stake was in the ground, the batteries were fitted and the device tested (there’s a button giving you an audible and visual signal to show device is working).
Then, after several weeks, I finally got to see with my own eyes the effect that the Big Cheese Cat Repeller had on our furry wee visitor. I watched the cat in question walk up to where the cat repeller protection starts on my other neighbours front path. It waited a few seconds before deciding not to walk across our front lawn. It walked down my neighbours path, along the pavement avoiding my front lawn altogether. I have to say I was astounded. Now as I said at the beginning of this long, looooong post that I’m a scientist. And I hate telling people about observations without backing them up with evidence. So I arrived home from work the other day and watched this little cat hovering around the edge of our front law, just beyond the reach of the cat repeller IR sensor. I got my mobile phone out and began recording with the camera. At that point, I painfully banged my elbow on the inside of the car window and startled the poor wee thing. It scarpered right past the sonic cat repeller. I’m now waiting for the chance to film the cat’s modified behaviour again. The element of surprise is now gone so I won’t be able to post videos of cats leaping 9ft in the air as reported by others using this device but the flower bed has remained cat poo-free all summer so I think that’s 15 quid well spent. Don’t you?
The Big Cheese Cat Repeller is available from Amazon.co.uk
