Fucking foxes - coming into the house through the cat flap..

[FlamingoJane]

My old boy cat is tearing his fur out in stress because foxes have been coming in through the cat flap. For a long while me & the vet couldn't fathom the hair loss? My cat who has always been very timid, made a large section of his back bald. (turned out he was hair-pulling due to stress). I finally got suspicious after ruling out medical reasons for hairloss & set up a web cam to see if other cats were entering the house. Imagine my horror to see it's a bloody fox! There is no food left out but it had been on my kitchen worktops! Foxes just don't give a toss these days do they? I'm now probably going to have to brick up the cat flap & make my old boy an indoor-only cat. Anyone else had this problem?

Another who just doesn't understand why you won't get a microchip catflap. It'll keep the other cats out too.

UnicornBrexit
That’s grim... which bit of London?
My Borough is graced by Europe’s largest police station (when Operation Trident was running we were a target area) & I’m less than a mile from it, so can’t imagine anyone round here would risk it. I know technically it’s legal (though the British Association for Shooting & Conservation say you shouldn’t use air-rifles to shoot foxes with) but if the police can get you for ammunition leaving your land; or you being a tenant & not having consent of landlord; or not being necessary 15m from road & causing alarm &/or whateveritis...

Foxes just don't give a toss these days do they?

Feel your pain, OP, but that made me laugh. Possibly foxes never gave a toss.

Can you get microchip cat / dog flaps that let two animals in e.g our dog and cat

We have a microchip-activated cap flap and according to the instructions it can "read" up to 32 different chips and each one can have different options set eg one could be totally free flowing for all hours of the day and night, another could be programmed not to let the poorly cat out for a week, one could be daytime only etc. Our cat loves to sit inside and stare at other non/resident cats on the other side. If she's feeling mean, she'll use her paw to bounce the flap into the other cats face.... she is a tortoiseshell mind you. Oh, and we have it fitted into a double glazed patio door.

I don't know how people manage without some kind of control on a catflap, very briefly when we moved in we had a plain one and other cats came in so we quickly changed to a microchip one. And YABVU. Foxes are brilliant, and I say that as someone who lost several hens to them.

Do you have a male living in your house? If so, they need to do their first pee of the day in a bottle, which you then sprinkle near the cat flap, stops them entering, as they believe the territory has been marked by an alpha male - it really works!

Blimey hadjab / not sure I could cope with that stench.

Just get a microchip cat flap. They're great.

not sure I could cope with that stench.

Can't be any worse than the stench of fox piss!

marie

I'm not surprised your cat is stressed, imagine if someone took your nice lockable front door off and replaced it with a revolving door...

As everyone says, change the cat flap to a microchip reader one. No need to brick up the cat flap. And if your cat isn't microchipped, get that done too. There are a number of animal deterrents on the market that you could put in the garden, it might not drive the unwanted visitors off permanently but should make your garden less appealing in the long run.

We don't have a cat flap because our cat catches prey and brings it back into the house. I have a horror of dead things so I'd rather she has to wait for us to let her in or keep going to the door to let her out, instead of having to remove a corpse from bedrooms... If there's a microchip reader cat flap that can detect when said cat has brought a guest along and stays firmly shut, I would like to know

Thankfully, the presence of my dog seems to deter foxes, and we're almost rural (edge of a small town but only about 50 yards from open countryside). We have a dog flap, so they could come in and party if they had a mind to. Our foxes seem to be of the timid variety.

They went through a phase of using the front lawn as their own personal lavatory though, and it stinks. Cheeky fuckers.

TeddybearBaby

Vile!! The thought of them on the worktops with all those diseases as well!

Eh? Which diseases?

Microchip cat flap.

Also I've heard if you have male human living with you get them to wee or save some wee in a bottle then splash it about on fences etc outside. It's effectively marking the garden as another males.

If you try it let me know if it works I'd be curious. It's a bit but depends how desperate you are.