2002 - Volume #26, Issue #5, Page #37
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Cat In The Rafters Keeps Shed Bird-Free
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"We've had this cat around for awhile, and he stays in the shed most of the time," says the Oregon, Ohio, farmer. "And as long as I've had this shed, I've had bird problems. I've put up scare balloons and even owls trying to keep the birds away, but nothing worked."
Once he knew the cat, Felix, would go up and down a wooden extension ladder propped against a truss, Myers mounted a small plastic feed container in the rafters so he could feed him up there.
"Feeding Felix in the rafters encouraged him to spend more time up there. And the result was that birds didn't want to be around," he says.
While Myers' family was glad he found a solution to the cat problem, they were concerned that their 70-year-old father was going up and down that ladder to feed the cat.
To solve that problem, Myers' son installed a self-feeder with a lever on it that, when pulled, dumps the cat's daily ration into the plastic container. A rope attached to the lever runs through a pulley and then hangs down almost to the floor, so Myers can feed the cat from floor level.
"Now whenever Felix wants to be fed, he runs to the ladder and up a few rungs and back to me again," Myers says. "I pull the rope and up he goes. He doesn't spend all his time up in the rafters, but he's up there enough to let birds know he's around. They still come in once in awhile, but they don't stay.
"I don't know whether other cats could be trained to patrol the rafters of a shed like this, but I'd encourage people to try it," he says.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Ivan Myers, 6310 Cedar Pt. Rd., Oregon, Ohio 43618 (ph 419 836-9387; E-mail: notil1@juno.com).
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