We live in a tiny country village, our cat spends much time outside and is a hunter. Unfortunately she does sometimes catch birds, which I hate, but mostly goes for mice and the occasional rat. We generally keep her in at night, especially around this time of year to avoid the dawn chorus and busy bird activity. Our neighbour across the road is furious as she found a dead bird in the garden and assumed our cat is the culprit. She probably is but there are a couple of other cats on the street which also might have been guilty. Normally we are fairly friendly, but she's very much the lady of the village, and we are the plebs in the tiny cottage opposite. I have seen her be very unpleasant to a perfectly innocent dog walker before now, because his dog, on a lead, barked at hers. She can definitely be tricky.
Her garden is surrounded by hedges and she likes to encourage birds so I do understand her being annoyed at an invading cat, but she has raged at my husband and been quite unreasonable, demanding we either keep the cat indoors or get rid of her.
I made the mistake of purchasing a toy water spray gun with a long range for her to use as the cat is intelligent and quite cautious, I do believe she would quickly learn to avoid the garden if she was shooed and sprayed every time she ventured in. But in hindsight I might have expected the tacky plastic toy from China would be unwelcome. It basically inflamed her more. She doesn't have plastic in the house and doesn't have time to be running around spraying our cat and she's even more furious.
I have looked at smelly things to sprinkle around the garden to discourage cats, but Amazon reviews are not particularly encouraging, and I'm guessing she would object to them as well. Likewise a sonic type thing, that makes a high pitched sound - seems to be effective but also discourages birds and dogs so that isn't an option.
We put a collar with a bell on it and the cat went demented, she always vigorously fought against collars from kitten hood. But she is now settling down with the collar without the bell. Apparently being bright and fluorescent means birds are more likely to see it.
Now I'm looking at trackers - they are quite expensive and a bit big, I'm not sure she will accept it, but maybe if we persevere with the collar, an additional item on it will be accepted. I like the idea of one that we can make buzz or ring if she goes outside a preset boundary, so we can possibly train her to avoid the garden. Plus being able to see where she goes and get a history, which might show whole days when she hasn't ventured into the garden that we can bring up as evidence.
I can't really think of anything else to do. Any ideas?
These are the trackers I'm looking at. You have to buy a subscription to the app, but I think a one of for the year would do it, hopefully things would settle down and it's not something I would need to use longer term.
https://amzn.eu/d/cQ7KtsK
https://amzn.eu/d/5kQtJDU
https://amzn.eu/d/4vVhM0Q
There are some others but they variously seem even bigger and more expensive. She's a small, dainty cat, so even these do look quite big, it will take some getting used to for her.