This is a national dilemma, but every day hundreds of cats are killed on our nation's roads. Fact! So how do we prevent our beloved pet cats from becoming another road traffic statistic?
A few years ago we moved into a quiet suburban area which backed onto a relatively busy road, but when our daughter begged us for a kitten it was too difficult to deny her. Her first kitten brought her much happiness until one night a few months later she didn't come home, the next day we found her kitten her lying squashed by the road only a 100 yards away from home. Once we had all recovered from these sad times I promised her another cat as long as I could cat-proof our garden.
I started to research cat containment products for a solution, this was obviously a huge problem as each day we were getting phone calls from other worried cat owners about the best way to contain a cat?
As our garden was contained by walls and fencing at the rear of the property I didn't think this would be too much of a problem, so agreed to my daughter having a new kitten called Maisie. I thought by the time she would be allowed out that I would have a cat proof garden. My first investment was to buy a reel of netting and some wooden stakes which I screwed to the fences and walls, after a weekend of fixing these you can imagine my dismay when within a week the cat just scaled straight up and over. Not to be out manoeuvred so easily I decided that my netting needed to be angled inwards at the top of the fence, so I quickly had some angled brackets made at a friend's engineering works and set aside another day to install.
This seemed highly successful and I was really pleased with my handiwork as the cat seemed beaten at last, that is until the cat decided to scale some 30ft fir trees at the end of the garden. Having spent over Ă‚Ĺ 400 on materials so far I was not to be beaten easily and looked at plan B. A friend of mine had told me about a range of cat containment systems manufactured by an American company called PetSafe. I contacted them and soon had a meeting with the lady that runs the UK branch of the company.
She soon explained to me that in America the properties have no boundary fences so these containment systems are the only way to contain cats and dogs within a predetermined zone. Basically the system works by emitting a signal from a wire that is laid around the property, as the cat approaches the zone the cat gets a warning beep tone and if he still approaches the boundary a short burst of static. This short unpleasant sensation starts to teach the cat where he can and can't roam as the small light collar that the cat wears gives the cat the signals to enable them to be trained.
When we installed the cat fence at home I was a little sceptical but couldn't believe how quickly Maisie learned that the boundaries were strictly off limits. By laying the wire on the top of the fence about 6ft from the ground the cat doesn't want to jump over any longer as Maisie gets a warning tone on her collar as she approaches the perimeter. Now we have a cat that can play safely within the garden without any worries at all, I fully realise that these type of containment systems are confrontational in some peoples eyes, but what we are talking about is a life and death situation. We now actively sell these type of cat containment systems through our website and every day I speak to a cat lover who needs to be able to securely keep their cat in a garden, I can honestly say that these systems saves cats lives and therefore I whole-heartedly recommend them to all cat owners. Lets cut down these unnecessary accidents.
