How to keep this monsterous creature away?!?

[chickerdoodle]

My recommendation is to secure your coop. If a domestic cat can get in it then any wild predator can easily get in and kill the flock.

FYI calico is just a color and not a breed as Domino 7said. They are always female (rare exception if they have an extra chromosome) as well. I do love the calico's colors!

 

[GarlicEater]

Quote:
I have to agree. Box trap can be a Hav-A-Hart trap and I highly recommend these in fact I consider one just as essential to chicken-keeping as a feeder, waterer, etc. But a lot of cats are wiley, I've only caught one, well, OK two, but one was one of our dopey cats lol. OK so, especially if you're in a rural area, but in general, trapping in a Hav-A-Hart then turning the cat in to the local shelter is completely politically correct.

I had a young bird dog get loose and come in over here, worried a couple of chickens and killed one, I wasn't sure what to do with her and was considering whether to just keep her until I noticed she had a name plate on her collar with a phone number so I called, her owner's just up the street. The 2nd time she got loose, I simply charged her owner $20 for the dead chicken and said that would be the standard charge, I've not had a problem since! He knows the alternative is that I take her to the shelter and he's got to bail her out, for even more. Nice dog, the guy's decent too he's just not that good a dog trainer and whenever I even think she might be loose I go out to the road because she loves me and she'll come right to me.

OK so with the cats, here's my real *advice* instead of rambling. Learn from the crazy cat-ladies, there are "capture and spay/neuter" programs all over, and those people know how to catch cats. The Hav-A-Hart trap works fine on an animal that's not familiar with it, but once they learn it they shy way. That's where the good old box trap with a person watching, and triggering it manually comes into play. That's what these folks are forced to do, there are cats that learn about traps, so they just make a box trap with a string you pull and spend a little time on a stake out.

You can find the sites and learn from them how to trap these cats.

Then take to the shelter, for me, at this point in time, SSS only applies to possums etc.

 

[Moochie]

I saw the cat myself today! It was walking around the house across the street from us, no one lives in it, and when I walked toward it scrurried off to the house to the left of it, on the next street over. I usually see a cat or two there when my mom drives on that street. I tend to stay away from those neighbors though. I hear alot of 'noises' and cussing from that house.
I hope we never get neighbors who try to run me over, steal our dog food, steal our gas, pee in our water gallon tanks, and have large rottweilers. They were seriously like that. We didn't do anything to them, but someone else complained about them and they assumed it was us

 

[TrystInn]

I realize Calicoes are a coloration and not a breed, but I'm telling you - it works! Calicoes make the best barn cats, in my experience and that of many farmers, as their coloring makes them very hard to see in daylight or at night. Their natural camouflage works tremendously to their advantage. If one has targeted your birds, you may have a really tough go at finding and capturing it.

Good luck!

 

[GarlicEater]

I worked for a vet for a few years and I can say, different kinds of cats have different personalities.

DSH - Domestic Short Hair - your basic, "blah" kind of cat, not gonna give you any trouble unless it's a tom the owners waited too long to neuter. Even then you know what you're in for.

Siamese - they are intelligent. Hence, they can be talked into most anything. They are the ones who like baths, if someone introduced them to bathing early on. They can be a real problem if they don't agree with you on something, for instance, being in a strange place in a cage. But they are intelligent, they can be reasoned with or at least respected.

Persians - if possible, even more "blah" than the DSH's. If they are mean, or amenable, they are "blah" about it. Most are pretty mellow, or is not, too lazy to be much of a problem.

Calicos - They're crazy. Every time we had a cat get loose, we're hunting around with the net, etc., it was a calico. They are wild. They can be very nice, but fundamentally, they're wild.

 

[elmo]

You can trap and/or kill this particular cat, but you're not solving your real problem. Your real problem is that your coop isn't secure. This cat today, it'll be a raccoon or something else another day. And your chickens will likely not be so lucky to come out of an encounter with a raccoon with only a few missing feathers, believe me.

Fix your coop, fix your problem for good.