After the recent nightmare where Chester cat went missing for a fortnight, we decided that before letting him out again, we needed to seriously reinforce our garden's boundaries.
Building an actual catio would be lovely, but isn't practical because I work from home and the location of the cat flap means it would block access for deliveries.
We identified four vulnerabilities.
- A narrow gap to the left of the back shed. This is where he escaped from last time; behind the shed the ground is riddled with holes dug by foxes.
- A space between the right of the back shed and the sauna.
- A fox hole under one fence to a neighbour's garden.
- A low fence leading up to the side gate, which enables cats to take a 2-step approach to getting over the gate.
So I went down to the local B&Q and picked up a few things. The plan is to make mesh fences in a way that is as low-impact as possible on the structure of sheds, fences etc. and that could be easily moved by humans but not cats or foxes.
Here's what I bought and the tools I used;
It's basically a roll of mesh, some wooden battens, and a collection of hooks, eyes and hammer-in staples.
Tools were simple; a saw, a hammer and a pair of pliers.
First step was to use hooks and eyes to hang battens off the sides of sheds and fences. The idea is to have a batten each side with wire mesh between them. Below is the shed-side batten attached to the narrow gap.
The photo below is the first step of attaching mesh to the battens. I cut it to width, then hammered in the "U" shaped staples every few inches. Simple but effective !
This is the point where the camera on my phone started to misbehave ! So I lost the shots of the completed mesh fitted to the narrow gap at the back and the side gate one.
The shot below is the right-hand batten hanging off the sauna of the shed to sauna gap.
Below is the completed mesh between the shed and sauna. Not too intrusive, and should keep Chester safe !
Now this is done, we can let him out again, but definitely under very close supervision for the first couple of weeks just to see if he has any other escape routes plotted out that we haven't spotted yet !