🦨Skunks & Elevated feeding of nocturnal 🐈⬛ cats? 🐈
This is long, I apologize!!
Need ideas for a skunk-resistant, feral-friendly feeding setup that doesn’t make my house in my HOA neighborhood look like a junkyard. 😂
I’m in Central PA and care for a random group of TNR/community cats throughout my densely populated neighborhood. Around 50 cats have been TNR’d by my neighbors and me over the last five years.
Most are VERY feral and almost entirely nocturnal. They don’t show up at predictable times, won’t approach with people around, and rarely are more than 1–2 at my house at once. So unfortunately, the usual “put food out for 30 minutes and remove it” advice doesn’t work. I need food available for a good portion of the night.
The whole reason for this post: the skunks have discovered the buffet. 🙄🦨
I have two different situations:
FRONT PORCH — Gus:
Gus was bullied out back & now exclusively eats out front. He has a small heated deck-box shelter beside my tiny porch and eats on the porch. The porch is open on three sides, exposed to rain, and anything I put there can’t block the front door.
Eventually I’d like to build something like an elevated planter table that blends in rather than looking like a cat feeding station. I have neighbors who’ve already reported me to the HOA once for attracting wildlife via feeding cats, so appearance matters.
Unfortunately, Gus is currently injured and can’t jump or climb normally, so elevation isn’t an option for him right now. I’m working on retrapping him, to get him to the Vet again and he’s also FeLV/FIV+, so keeping his food accessible is important. He IS my favorite cat and the least feral. Other random cats eat out front as well but don’t bother Gus.
The skunks have recently discovered his food out front. 🤬
BACK PATIO — most everyone else:
I have a large 4’ deck box on the patio tgat originally started as a covered feeding station. When winter came, I turned it into an insulated shelter, put it up against the hottub (for extra heat) & added radiant chicken coop heaters to the ceiling & straw to bed in.
I’m considering putting the entire deck box on a sturdy table/platform high enough for the cats to jump into but skunks can’t.
*Has anyone actually tried this? *How high does it need to be to stop a skunk?
*What do the legs of the table need to look like so they can’t climb them like a ladder?
*Will cautious ferals figure out that they need to jump up to enter a box they’ve always accessed from the ground?
And since it becomes their winter shelter, would I ultimately need two deck boxes… 🤔 an elevated feeding box and a ground-level winter shelter that I don’t want the skunks to turn into a den…
I morally cannot hire an exterminator because they euthanize them in PA because they’re 🦨 a Rabies Vector Species (RVS).
I’m also open to humane skunk 🦨 deterrents that won’t scare extremely cautious cats away. Motion sprinklers, noises, alarms, etc. worry me for exactly that reason. I’ve even added solar lights around the feeding areas since skunks supposedly dislike light, but I’m convinced they do not bother them. 😂
I’m trying to keep everything compact, weather-resistant, inexpensive/DIY-able and, importantly, not horribly ugly. These are our actual porch and patio, and I don’t want my house looking like I’ve constructed a feral-cat shantytown. 😂 Also trying to keep my husband’s sanity or from thinking I’m losing mine.
I’d especially love pictures of setups that have ACTUALLY worked against skunks, along with heights/dimensions. And any ideas for protecting Gus’s ground-level food while he’s injured would be hugely appreciated. If I can get him repaired, it won’t matter.
Thanks from me, Gus, the shy ferals, and apparently every skunk, possum and raccoon in the neighborhood who thinks I’m running a 24-hour buffet. 🐈⬛🦨🤦♀️