I had the same problem and used an induction coil on the cat food bowl. Doesn't hurt the cat but they never go back to that bowl again! I wouldn't cut the cat's whiskers (or claws) off. That is really harming them.
On Thursday, December 27, 2012 11:07:29 PM UTC-8, Raymond Weisling wrote: > > About 1977 I had two cats and a 24/7 cat flap, but a stray was coming in > during the night and getting food left for the residents. I breadboarded a > cat discriminator. It used two telephone relay coils that could detect a > small magnet passing between them, added to the cat collars and a light > bulb plus detector (photoresistor). If the magnetic signal was triggered > and a cat entered, it was a resident, if the non-resident entered, not > wearing the magnet, it sounded an alarm. I added larger flap made from > cardboard and a solenoid that allowed the large flap to fall and close off > the smaller flap so no exit was possible. The no-exit flap solenoid was > actually manually energized by touching two wires together on the end of a > cable that ran to my bedroom. Everything was rather crude. I expected that > I needed it once. > > After I installed it I tested it with my cats with and without collars and > it seemed to work well. > > That same night at around 02:00 the alarm sounded, I touched the wires > together, the larger flap fell and I went out. The non-resident, hearing me > stirring, made a mad dash for the door and hit the large flap covering the > bidirectional flap. I tried to catch this panicking cat, and in the process > the breadboard and the lamp, photoresistor and coils all came undone from > their temporary mounts. It was a jumble. > > The non-resident had to be chased around the house, leaping up at closed > windows, and eventually I caught him, and trimmed off his whiskers with a > scissors. This is a very powerful yet harmless reminder since they depend > on them for feeling for passages that their body can get through. (A fellow > cat lover told me that once they trimmed off their cat's whiskers and the > can would be ware of going from room to room in the house especially if the > door was partly closed leaving a narrow gap.) They will be disoriented for > some months until new whiskers grow back. A good reminder. > > I finally opened the door and released the non-resident, who seemed to > traverse the back yard that was a least 15 meters (or 40-some feet) long in > three or four leaps. He never again appeared. The damaged cat discriminator > was summarily taken apart. I remember using LM324 and LM 339 in the circuit. > > One of the cats was a great hunter, and I lived north of the San Fernando > Valley in foothill areas (Newhall, CA) where some ground squirrels lived. > My hunter cat, a gentle calico, would bring home slain squirrels and leave > various parts somewhere in the house as a token of her skill, for me to > find and clean up when I got home. This happened on a nearly daily basis > one spring. Eventually it stopped and I found that the nearby colony has > been totally exterminated by my calico. For a while I had wondered what it > would take to build a prey discriminator that could block her entry only > when she carried a victim, but even now I suspect that that is a much > greater challenge. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neonixie-l/-/0BcqG-UuPrYJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
