For those with barn cats, do you have problems

[Thinking small]

with cats from other farms coming over? ugh i had to break up a fight this morning with my 3yo Cat and one of the neighbours cats.. i still don't quite know who the heck he belongs to. Mine wasn't hurt or anything but still it left me a bit well feeling like yikes.. you know?

I know some of you probably have huge acreage so it would be unlikely a trespasser would come but for those with the small farms, what do you do? Oscar(my boy) is all UTD on vax's and Neutered..

 

[Matt73]

When we had our unfixed barn cat we had the occasional male show up. They were mainly wild, feral, nasty things. Kev "took care of them". Now we only have our 8 month old girl, Tabitha (she's a hoot and a great mouser); she was spayed last week, so I'm hoping to not see any roamers for a while. They tend to stay away from our barn etc. as our two Berners are in there at night.

 

[StarRidgeAcres]

Yes! At my current place I have one heck of a time with "stray" cats coming around. I've reduced (can't ever say for sure I've eliminated) the problem of the foxes and possum, etc. coming around, but the cats are still a problem.

I started feeding my personal barn cats at my back door and never at night anymore. That has helped to reduce the number of free-loaders who came around for food. They just don't want to come that close to the house. But I do still have one that will come up to my door and hangs around my yard and does cause fights with my cats. I've sprayed him with water, yelled at him, thrown rocks at him (don't actually know the sex of the cat) and have asked around my neighbors to see who "owns" him. No takers.

I'm really at the end of my rope with this guy and I'm afraid he's going to have to be perm eliminated if this keeps up. I just can't risk the injuries to my cats or the risk of viruses, etc. My cats are vaccinated and neutered/spayed. I don't need any outside viruses coming in. It's hard enough to keep everyone healthy as it is.

Good luck with your case. You may have to resort to removing him perm if it keeps up.

Keep us posted.

 

[Minimor]

Oh yes, we do have problems. Most of the cats haven't been a problem as far as fighting, as they come for food & in most cases they are young cats not yet ruled by hormones. In most cases they come from one of two neighbors, neither of whom believe in spaying/neutering or FEEDING their cats. A few are older toms that stop in here during their travels--some of those come a few times and then we never see them again, others keep coming back. With the young cats from the neighbors, if they are no problem, not picking fights with our cats, we have taken them in to be neutered/spayed. Most of them simply move in here permanently; the odd one does go back "home" and just comes here regularly for food. If the cat is a fighter, we euthanize him. The same two options apply to any strays/drop offs that show up here--the nice ones get fixed, the mean ones get euthanized. In the case of the wild toms, if they are fighters, beating up our cats (and there have only been a couple of those) they get live trapped & sent to animal control. If they are not inclined to beat up our cats, they get left alone for however long they stay here. If they stay indefinitely & end up getting sick or injured, then we have to trap them & have them euthanized.

We have a cat door into the house and it's not uncommon for the strays to find their way into the house--we've had a couple wild strays that will sneak into the house to sleep on cold winter nights. It's a little startling to walk into the bedroom & turn on the light & have a cat come streaking out from under a dresser & race down the hall to the cat door!!

I have no idea why certain people in the neighborhood keep getting cats when they have no interest in feeding those cats.

 

[Marty]

I thought once the strays found out mine were spayed and nutered they would stay away. No such luck. They still show up. So now what I do is not leave the cat food out all day long. My cats are on a feed time schedule. The dishes come out and get picked back up when they are done and put away until next feeding. Its helping.

 

[weebiscuit]

with cats from other farms coming over? ugh i had to break up a fight this morning with my 3yo Cat and one of the neighbours cats.. i still don't quite know who the heck he belongs to. Mine wasn't hurt or anything but still it left me a bit well feeling like yikes.. you know?

I know some of you probably have huge acreage so it would be unlikely a trespasser would come but for those with the small farms, what do you do? Oscar(my boy) is all UTD on vax's and Neutered..

We do have huge acerage, so no other cats come around EXCEPT a cat from our own son's farm! His farm is just across a four acre hayfield from our barn. I have two lovely barn cats which have been neutered, but my son's male cat is intact and it's constantly at the barn! We lock our cats in the barn at night and they are free to roam during the day. This other cat was locked in the barn with our cats all winter because I felt sorry for it in the cold and snow, and it evidently didn't want to go to its own home.

But a month ago I got fed up with this cat. He's mean and constantly fights with our cats, so I stopped letting him into our barn at night. Didn't matter. He'd come in all day and eat, so I had to start locking up the cat food during the day and that meant my poor cats could only eat at night. Three different times I've put that cat in a crate and taken him back to my son's and stuck him in with the other cats there, but he ends back up at my barn within four hours. I'm just sick to death of it.

My barn cats get rabies shots, deworming, and the other feline vaccinations, but that other cat doesn't even get a rabies shot. I just don't like him and wish he'd get it through his head that he's not going to get any more food at my place! He's a very pretty cat... Long hair, all white. My son told me to shoot it in the butt with a BB gun, but I can't bring myself to hurt it. Hopefully, with day after day of no food here, it will sink in and he'll go back to his own place.

 

[Matt73]

The food for Tabitha is up in the loft. That inhibits strangers, who have to pass by my "ferocious" Berners (inject heavy sarcasm lol).

 

[3bays]

I had trouble with "other" cats coming in the barn, eating all my cats food, and males spraying the barn

, etc.I used to hear cat fights at night and it would make me nervous, thinking it was my cats getting beat up. THey were afraid of the other cats and would run and hide when they came around. Mine were UTD on vax, spayed, neutered, etc. Freeloaders were all feral. I tried picking food up, feeding on the house porch, etc but it didnt work, The freeloaders would come up to the house and eat. I got very attached to my "barn cats" and when two of them got hurt somehow (we think one fell out of the loft and one had a bite wound abscess onhis foot that took 2 months to heal) I ended up bringing them in the house and made them house cats. They havent been out for 2 years. So yeah, no more barn cats, but surprisingly, I havent had a mouse problem. I very rarely see the feral cats anymore.

 

[Molly's Run Minis]

oh yes! my grandmother started with her one spayed male cat, and now 5-6 yrs later she has over 30 wildcats with 3 females heavily pregnant this year

my gram never listened to me when i told her this would happen when the first three showed up outta nowhere! she pretty much turned into a hoarder, only she actually takes good care of them. when she FINALLY realized she had a problem a local organization helped her catch and spayed and neuter them, but the wildest/most nervous cats didnt get caught. Her numbers skyrocketed when the economy got really bad, so i think alot are drop-offs from people who didnt want them anymore. i actually have one of her kittens whom i saved when he was 4 weeks old and my cousin took home a really friendly male cat that was obviously dropped off. my kitten was half dead and cost us $200 in vet bills. most of the kittens, when caught(by me of course, i have some scars to prove it!) are dehydrated, malnouished and full of worms. the cat food also attracts raccoons, possums, and even a groundhog! But the cats are the biggest problems. now that they are used to her, if she's late feeding them they come right up to her glass door and scratch and yowl until she goes out to feed them. ocassionaly she'll get the rare stupid/brave cat that decides to run into her house when she opens the door, she gets them out eventually. a male wildcat once ruffed up her cat so bad she had to take him to the vet. he was half bald, covered in bite and scratch marks and had the tip of his tail missing! i would've thought it was a fisher cat or something if i wouldnt have seen it for myself.once she even found a litter of newborn kittens in her GRILL! how the female got in there to have them is beyond me....

Catch or kill them while you can before they take over! Seriously! No joke! Wild cats around here are, honestly, worse than barn mice. they'll fight with your cat and stink up the place with scent marking and spraying if they're males. i would rather have barn mice than barn cats anyday!

ETA: wanted to add that it doesnt matter if you put out food morning or night they'll come anyway.

 

[Ashley]

I have 7 cats in the barn. All but one is fixed, the one that isn’t I can’t catch and she outsmarts the trap. Most of them are a result of strays or drop offs. That said I haven’t had any strays in a few years now. I would see the males come in before the females got fixed, but even they haven’t been around in a few years. I do have some pretty aggressive cats toward strange things out there. They don’t even put up with the dog when she comes to the barn with me. I feed them once a day in the garage and they normally have it all cleaned up by later in the day so no extra creatures coming in here and if they do the cats take care of that.

 

[Thinking small]

Thank you all for sharing your experiences. No sign of him.. er it today... maybe the fight was enough to clear it off?( i know wishful thinking ) i don't think it's feral i believe it belongs to one of the neighbours, looks in good shape and always heads back the same way but there are two choices of farms not sure which, i'm leaning towards the one that also has horses but who knows.

My food is all locked up, my cats are locked up at night to... we actually ran into the cat 2wks ago on a walk with the dogs it still barely took off... of coarse our dogs are very 'cat friendly' being they have all been raised with them but i would have thought that would have scared it

I am seriously considering dropping a note in the mailboxes asking if it belongs to one of those farms.. does that sound crazy?

 

[wildoak]

It kind of comes and goes, but we have strays periodically. My 6 are all neutered so I think the strays are primarily looking for food now. If it gets to be a problem I start putting the leftover food away at night.

My cats earned their keep last week, or at least one of them did. She was stalking something in the feed room back behind stacks of feed bags - I went to look, expecting a mouse NOT a 4 foot rattlesnake!! Doubt I would have seen it had she not spied it first, so she sure earned some extra goodies that day.

Jan

 

[LAZY J MINIS]

I ALWAYS HAVE STRAY CATS HERE AS PEOPLE DRIVE BY AND PITCH. THE LAW HERE IS IF YOU EAT AND HAVE THE JEWELS YOU ARE CAUGHT AND FIXED. NOW ALL MY CATS RUN OFF UNWANTED VISITORS. I WORK AT A SPAY AND NEUTER CLINIC SO I GET A BIG DISCOUNT ON SERVICES. I CAN'T BELIEVE PEOPLE JUST DRIVE BY AND DUMP THESE POOR CREATURES OUT TO FEND FOR THEIR SELVES. MOST ARE VERY YOUNG KITTENS NOT EVEN CATS YET, I CAN'T LET THEM STARVE OR FEND FOR THEM SELVES.( SUCKER ME) SOFT HEAD AND HEART TO MATCH.

 

[Thinking small]

It kind of comes and goes, but we have strays periodically. My 6 are all neutered so I think the strays are primarily looking for food now. If it gets to be a problem I start putting the leftover food away at night.

My cats earned their keep last week, or at least one of them did. She was stalking something in the feed room back behind stacks of feed bags - I went to look, expecting a mouse NOT a 4 foot rattlesnake!! Doubt I would have seen it had she not spied it first, so she sure earned some extra goodies that day.

Jan

um, omg!

yeah i'd definitely say she earned her keep!