The ones I see are about four inches down from the top of the fence.  They
are not near as heavy a wire as the ones for cattle and don't have anywhere
near the charging power.

Something coming to the top of the fence and jumping over may miss it
altogether.  As Dan said they only have to encounter it a couple of times to
not do it again.  I only know Dan through Lee and her DH but I assure you,
he would not do anything to hurt his babies.

Hey, did you phone the thing in school where you all joined hands and the
teacher hooked up a telephone battery, for science class I think.  Well,
this was not as strong as that.
On May 22, 6:34 pm, "Granby" <s...@joink.com> wrote:

Ok, then, educate me. I fully admit I've never seen a working electric
fence
for cats. I have zero frame of refeence.
Are you talking about one of those invisible fences that's regulated
by a collar
the cat wears?  Are you talking about a single-wire contraption that's
designed for livestock, run by an electric charger?
It just seems to me that the hunting instinct is so strong in a cat,
if he/she sees
a rabbit, bird, squirrel--he's going to plow through that "invisible
fence", electric shock be damned.  And he's *sure* not going to go
back through the fence to come back home.  It just seems to me that
the cat's going to end up lost, or neurotic, or both.
With the single-wire theory, you've obviously got to have some other
kind of fencing, or the cat's going to leap right over it. I assume
the single-wire method would work with some other kind of fence, along
the top of it, and it zaps the cat
when he tries to climb over. This is the one I think is the most
dangerous, becuase with the mental picture I have, the cat is going to
panic, and risk ending up tangled in the fencing, injured and
neurotic. I've seen a cat with his paw hung up dangling from a
chainlink fence.
It wasn't pretty.
Now humor me, please, and enlighten me further....is there some reason
an enclosure wouldn't provide a safer access to the outdoors?
I'm truly not trying to be wet blanket on this deal. I just *firmly*
believe, in my heart of hearts, that cats and eletric fences are not a
good mix.

Sherry

Allow me to clear this up a little.

Electric fences have been around for a long time. There original use was
to keep cattle and horses from destroying the fences that were intended to
contain them. Many of the the cattle fence chargers in use today put out
some extremely hefty voltage at enough current to cause burns. I brushed
up against one once. It was a pulsed fence, where the juice is on for
about a second, off for around four seconds, etc. During the second that
the juice was on I was unable to move off the wire. I have no doubt that a
fence like that could do serious injury to a dog or cat, and I wouldn't
want to have such a fence anywhere near where my kitties could get to.

The small animal fencer uses the same concept but on a smaller scale. Most
of them are still pulsed, but they put out quite a bit less voltage at a
lot less current - not enough to do harm. I've grabbed my own fence wire
intentionally several times, and I do not have a problem with having a
wire charged to that potential where my cats can get to it (at least, not
where they can get to it if they're being bad).

The feeling you get when you touch the wire is similar to stepping on
something sharp. When a cat touches the charged wire, it will feel like
the wire bit them. When you touch something and it bites you, you learn
not to touch it any more. If something really unusual was to happen and a
cat got stuck with a paw in contact with the wire it would be
uncomfortable, but would not do any harm. My background is electrical
engineering, and I'm familiar with the established standards for what
levels of electrical current are considered to be dangerous. I don't have
any worries about a small-animal fencer of the type I've used being
harmful to my babies.

In fact, here's an anecdote that you might find interesting. Since I am an
electrical engineer by training, I know what kind of damage electrical
things can do. Nancy goes crazy some times because of my weird hangups
with electricity. If we buy a new electric appliance, I won't allow it be
left plugged in until we have spent an entire weekend at home with the new
thing plugged in - I want it to do a 48-hour burnin with humans nearby
with fire extinguishers in case the device was poorly manufactured. I
can't go to sleep with an electric blanket plugged in anywhere in the
house - I'm too worried about the fire hazard and freaked out by the
potential electromagnetic effects. When a wonderfully kind soul donated a
surplus heated kitty bed to Miss Cleopatra, I wouldn't agree to leave it
plugged in overnight until it had spent two weekends running ok under
supervised conditions. I have too much experience studying how electrical
things work and how they are built to trust them on a wholesale basis. But
in spite of that wariness, small animal fencers have proven themselves to
be safe to my satisfaction. I know beyond a reasonable doubt that they are
safe in the sense that they won't catch fire and burn the house down, and
safe in the sense that they won't electrocute one of my precious kitties.

By installing the charged wire a few inches down from the top of the
fence, the cats can be catly and climb the fence if they really get the
urge, they'll just stop before they reach the top. If a really acrobatic
cat just jumps to the top of fence without touching the wire, he can
easily hop down from the top without touching it either. If you have a cat
strong enough to jump to the top of your fence, you've got no choice but
to use an enclosure.

I don't like the "invisible fence" collar-based systems, for much the same
reason you outlined. If a cat sees a bird or a squirrel and gets up a head
of steam, they could charge right through the protected boundary area in
such a hurry that they might not even notice the collar shock. But when
they started to come back home they would be moving slower, and could well
be dissuaded from returning to their own yard because of that same shock
collar.

As for the fence vs enclosure question - yes, an enclosure would be an
excellent idea and would be far superior to being indoors all day (if,
that is, you have a cat who is interested in the outdoors). However, I
know that in my back yard in Iowa we have trees, bushes, flowers, and
other interesting things that the cats love to explore. There's no way I
could put up an enclosure that would encompass all of those cool things.
I'd have to pick which of the fun spots the cats could get access to, and
my choices would almost certainly not be the same as what the kitties
found most interesting.

In my current yard, the entire electric fence question is moot - electric
fences don't work well on wooden fences. We are relying on mechanical
methods to keep the cats in the yard. But if I had a chain link or other
metal fence, I wouldn't hesitate to use a small-animal fencer to give them
safe access to the outside.

Dan

Whew!!

It's still unfortunate that someone else accepted your generosity
without bothering to thank you. I'm just glad I wasn't that rude!!!