Gary:
Your solution is pretty much as bruceha outlined in post #17. The wooden fence is NOT a good ground, so a cat hanging on it and touching a hot wire is not going to feel the wrath. So you need to run a hot wire and some form of ground concurrent and next to each other. Something a cat (or other climbing predator) will touch both at the same time.
If you can handle the expense, an elegant solution would be some type of metal rail on top of the wood fence......perhaps just a light wrought iron rail.....that is your ground......something a paw would drape over to pull themselves up on......and above that.......a second rod or wire.......this one hot. A hot rod? These do not have to be a straight single run like we normally think of with long runs of hot wire. They can be short sections of rods that run parallel to the top of your fence. They only need to be insulated where they touch....then connected to each other so they are hot. They make insulating tubing that is used to bury hot wires and even short sections of insulating tubing designed to slip over hot wires and be nailed to wooden fence posts with staples.
Yet another option would be to use something like long strips of hardware cloth or heavier 1" x 2" welded wire......strips cut from long rolls. No more than a couple inches in height. One and hung from nail on insulators and an identical one below it cut from the same stuff, but that one connected to the ground of your fencer. These sections can be run parallel to the very top of your fence. These would pretty much assure your cat would be clinging to one when they touch the other hot wire. I would put these on the outside of my fence....not so much that you don't see them, but to repel boarders from the outside. A climber coming from the outside would almost certainly be on the grounded portion when the touch the hot section.
Your solution is pretty much as bruceha outlined in post #17. The wooden fence is NOT a good ground, so a cat hanging on it and touching a hot wire is not going to feel the wrath. So you need to run a hot wire and some form of ground concurrent and next to each other. Something a cat (or other climbing predator) will touch both at the same time.
If you can handle the expense, an elegant solution would be some type of metal rail on top of the wood fence......perhaps just a light wrought iron rail.....that is your ground......something a paw would drape over to pull themselves up on......and above that.......a second rod or wire.......this one hot. A hot rod? These do not have to be a straight single run like we normally think of with long runs of hot wire. They can be short sections of rods that run parallel to the top of your fence. They only need to be insulated where they touch....then connected to each other so they are hot. They make insulating tubing that is used to bury hot wires and even short sections of insulating tubing designed to slip over hot wires and be nailed to wooden fence posts with staples.
Yet another option would be to use something like long strips of hardware cloth or heavier 1" x 2" welded wire......strips cut from long rolls. No more than a couple inches in height. One and hung from nail on insulators and an identical one below it cut from the same stuff, but that one connected to the ground of your fencer. These sections can be run parallel to the very top of your fence. These would pretty much assure your cat would be clinging to one when they touch the other hot wire. I would put these on the outside of my fence....not so much that you don't see them, but to repel boarders from the outside. A climber coming from the outside would almost certainly be on the grounded portion when the touch the hot section.
