Baptising cats

Cats and water usually don't mix. Small children might find this out quickly. A few of the rest of us have some stories about it. (like our old beloved dude-cat, as a half grown kitten and he still had some claws, decided to sit on the tub edge and make a leap for my knees. Precarious perching, remember he had his terror rear shredders yet, and he tried to get footing. I of course dropped the knees and was turning the water red and he got a full immersion. He never tried it again and I did heal up)

Lately I have some very obnoxious stray cats trying to bully my yard boys. My yard boys are two cats born of a stray in my garage and two other younger boys that showed up and proved themselves useful in the bird and rodent control sector so they were allowed to stay (loved, petted, fed). I do not want a kitten factory but catching the one obnoxious little girl is being difficult, she's too smart for a havaheart. So.

Baptism. I took a gallon jug and cut the top open and fill it about half full of water. This allows me to jag-toss water about 10-15 feet. At least a quart. It doesn't hurt the cat, just annoys it. Usually a few direct hits and they decide to go elsewhere where flying water doesn't miraculously collide with them for skulking about.

Baptism also works on stray dogs at times, we have several smaller ones that come wandering through looking for the catfood.

The longer distance delivery is a garden hose and sprayer nozzle. Do take care on stream strength. The goal is to get the critter wet in the name of 'go away'.

Water balloons? Maybe?

The new robots that take care of calfs on big dairy farms use this method too.

Each calf has a tag in its ear that the robot can read. They also have heaters to help heat up the milk replacer for the calf. Yet one problem any farmer has is a young livestock animal getting too much bottle fed milk and getting milk scours (diarrhea) and dying. To stop this, the computer in the robot monitors how much time it has been since the calf took the last drink of milk replacer and if the time difference is too short, it squirts water in the face of the calf and discourages it.

It really has worked well and reduced mortality by at least 10%.

Water balloons leave burst latex bits that can be eaten by critters (birds and pets) and otherwise isn't a good thing.

For indoor kitties we use the squirt gun and spray bottle to train about a few things, like getting on the counters. Our old late beloved cat, (we had him for 19 years), was quite the terror on paws. We used a clean spray bottle to squirt him. One day it was sitting in the middle of the living room floor and he carefully, oh so carefully, stalked it. Snuck up. Pounced and gave it a mighty blow with his right front paw and whanged it over. He snuck up on it with a few starts like it might animate and move and got a sniff at it. It was dead, so truly dead. The mighty hunter sauntered off with head up and tail starched straight up. A little while later he did something, and was fearless to see the spray bottle, it was dead, remember? He was never so surprised and shocked when it worked just fine and soaked him one. He ran off letting us know all the way in cat-ese about NO FAIR foul foul foul!  

I always bought the transparent yellowish green neon squirt guns. In his later years, you just had to show  him something that color and he'd just shut his eyes and wait... it was a part of his life of I MEANT TO DO THAT and take his water punishment.

Still baptizing the unwanted stray. If she'd do the havahart (and I scrubbed the beejeezers out of it then rubbed it with sand to get rid of smells) I have a rancher that would take her for a barn purr. She is bold enough to come right up to eat cheek to cheek with my boys. I tried the siren call of tuna heavy cat food with gravy, that also means I have to stand with the fellows and feed them the same and keep them away from the havahart and nope, she wants theirs not that. There's a joke an Episcopalian friend told me: How does an Episcopalian priest get rid of bats in the belfry? He baptizes them and they're never seen in church again. There's no Episcopalian churches nearby, and I doubt Pentecostal would work... hm.