I am a cat owner and have a backyard "wildlife sanctuary" for birds, and I
have been very torn by this problem of cats vs. birds. I always used to
get angry at people who let their cats roam, since I had two perfectly
happy spayed *indoor* cats. My eyes got opened when I adopted a *neutered*
male cat. Keeping him indoors became a matter of his life vs. my sanity,
i.e. euthanize him or institutionalize me. Once I gave in to letting him
outdoors, I tried to "contain" him to my backyard several ways, but again
it came down to the life vs. sanity issue, so I finally gave up, and now he
roams.

OK, so that being said, here are some of the things I have succeeded at, to
some extent, to keep him and the neighborhood cats away from my feeders
and birds. First, I agree with what others have said re. making life
unpleasant for the cats every time you see them. My methods are (1) water,
if I can get to it, (2) yelling, and (3) I keep a pot full of pebbles or
*small* stones right outside my door and throw them in their general
direction. Most cats figure out there are more pleasant places to be than
in your yard.

But I still had two die-hard hunters who constantly stalked my feeders and
the ground-feeding birds. I moved some of my feeders close to my house --
cats on the wild side tend not to want to hang out close to people. With
the other feeders I used fencing -- not trying to fence the cats *out* of
the whole yard, but rather fence *in* the feeders and birds so that the
cats couldn't get close enough to grab a bird, or at least got slowed down
considerably, giving the birds a chance to fly away. I also fenced in my
ground-feeding area so that the birds could walk in and around, but the
cats couldn't get in there. I used a combination of garden fencing and
chicken wire, admittedly not the most attractive solution, but it seems to
be helping. An extra bonus -- it helps keep the squirrels from eating all
my bird seed too (along with the use of some baffles).

Marlene Penry
Seattle, WA
mpenry at compuserve.com