Houdini reincarnate redux

[fireheart]

So I have two cats: Mitchell and Oscar. Both are well past the "kitten" age. They're also both desexed.

AFter the last round of escape attempts courtesy of Oscar, we strung up a somewhat "crude" cat fence around the backyard that fenced the cats in to a particular area. THe cat fence consisted of plastic mesh strung across supports that were sloped inwards (which also had the somewhat positive effect of preventing cats coming IN the yard). This was eventually extended to any area that was visible from the backyard and could be used as a springboard. Dad also rigged up an old shed door to prevent the cats from running down one side of the house. We THOUGHT that was enough.

This morning however, I couldn't find the cats anywhere and I was panicking big time. After 2 and a half hours, I finally manage to locate them. SOMEHOW they'd managed to get around the shed door/cat fence rig down the back end of the house. Oscar was hiding along the side (and mewing his head off which is how I found him), then Mitchell was hiding in the neighbours backyard. He jumped over the fence and onto the garden shed roof before crying for someone to get him down

Oscar wouldn't stop headbutting me. Mitchell was feeling very sorry for himself

[sms001]

Yeah, whoever said cats won't enter a space their whiskers scrape against had his head up his arse.

And speaking of hijinx, my mother-in-law adopted one of her strays after the following scenario. We're gazing out into the backyard from the kitchen and see a huge squirrel on the neighbors garage roof. No nearby trees, freestanding garage, no way to get up there. We're quite amazed. Closer inspection made us more amazed, it was a CAT! To this day we've no idea she got up there, but Mew waited there patiently while we scrounged a ladder and brought her down.

Glad your escape artists are safely home.

[fireheart]

Yeah, whoever said cats won't enter a space their whiskers scrape against had his head up his arse.

And speaking of hijinx, my mother-in-law adopted one of her strays after the following scenario. We're gazing out into the backyard from the kitchen and see a huge squirrel on the neighbors garage roof. No nearby trees, freestanding garage, no way to get up there. We're quite amazed. Closer inspection made us more amazed, it was a CAT! To this day we've no idea she got up there, but Mew waited there patiently while we scrounged a ladder and brought her down.

Glad your escape artists are safely home.

Oh they've gone up the roof and the tree as well.

The roof one was interesting. We had no idea how they were doing it initially until dad figured it out. We had a gazebo (and still do) strung up over his car so that the cats don't jump on the roof of HIS car, then onto the roof from there. The cats had been jumping through the gap between the gazebo and the actual carport itself. Dad put some wood up in that gap. When the cats figured out they couldn't get through now, they gave dad a dirty look

As for how they got out in my OP, turns out that there was a hole in the mesh along the shed. They'd been jumping up onto the old grate we had set up when we had a fireplace and jumping on the roof of the shed from there (the grate was a solid one-piece cast iron thing)

[RayvenQ]

Tell me about it, Yesterday I had the fortune of thanfuly getting to my indoor cat in time, after i cought him hanging upside down from the freaking frame of my open window, scared the crap out of me considering it was a few meter drop and he was upsaide freaking down.

He was literally like this

http://files.dogster.com/pix/wcdcs07...ists/36213.jpg

With each paw on one side of my window frame

[AccountingDrone]

I had to go outside and remove a screen from my living room window once.

We had just gotten Banzai of Blessed Memory, he would have been about 10 weeks old. He was laying on the window sill of the open window, I was sitting on the sofa in front of the window watching TV. Did you know sheep like to watch TV? Opal decided to complain about the program and baaaah'd loudly. Banzai about jumped out of his skin, and launched straight up between the window and the screen, and somehow got into the area of the glass, and couldn't get back down because the springiness of the screen had him pinned with all 4 sets of claws in the screen and wedged by the glass.

[fireheart]

Well we had TWO more escape attempts by the same cat over the last two days. Dad finally figured out how he was escaping and WHY he was doing the escape route.

The WHY: he was wanting to track down another cat who tends to hang around and tease our two. Because of the cat fence set up, he can't get in, so he'll sit on top of it and tease our two down below (surprisingly the fence HASN'T warped from that).

The HOW: OK, biggish background time:

We have a garden shed set up down the side of the house where some equipment is kept. We also have an old shed door (made from a section of fence) that blocks the rest of that area off (in case of emergencies, we can open the bolt and get through). The other side of the shed has a section of retaining wall there and dad put a screen there to prevent MORE escapes. The tops of all three of those had the mesh cat fence rigged along them, although the one over the door was stapled to itself rather than the door.

Attempt #2 we suspect involved him jumping from the windowsill onto the door and jumping through a hole there. At least this time it was only ONE of the cats, the other one came back meowing his head off. We eventually found #2 on the ROOF of all places and we had to coax him down onto the same spot as last time.

Attempt #3 involved dad actually WATCHING him do it. Turned out that he'd been climbing onto the screen along the other side of the shed near the fence and then poking through the hole there. Dad finally solved it by putting a board there.

The cat wasn't happy and gave him a dirty look for that :lol

Dad thought initially that he'd been climbing up the gazebo (since it's mesh) and using those claws of his to do so. This was based on the fact that the cat had been on the ROOF. I told him "don't give them any ideas"

[dalesys]

Your cats wanna be dogs and run over the neighborhood cats...