Keeping kittens out of engine bay.

[wtd]

One of our barn cats had kittens and they took up residence inside the engine bay of my fiancée's 2007 Mustang GT. These kittens are as wild as they come and you can't get your hands on them. They are probably about two months old at this point. Today I found one sitting on the top of the engine in my 2014 Mustang GT. They had chewed on some of the wires in her car and I don't want them to start on mine.

Has anyone found anything that will keep them out? Any type of product that might work?

There are other older cats around so trapping them probably is not going to work. Thanks for any ideas.

 

[jagdriver727]

.22 LR worked well in the old days.

Seriously, two months is about the outer limit of when kittens can be tamed. Try to get in contact with a local “no-kill” shelter, they will trap the kittens and try to tame them and adopt, if that can’t be done they will at least spay and neuter them and keep this from happening again.

As far as the car goes, I used to have a magnetic pad that electrified the car body. Worked well. Just a little shock to keep them off, not enough to hurt anything. I have no idea what effect this might have on the electronics in new cars.

 

[JohnnyJohnson]

Just start the engine a couple times a day the smart ones with a learning curve will get out the other well that's the breaks!

 

[earlyre]

dunno if sprinkling something like fox urine around would discourage?

Just Scentsational 4 oz. Red Fox Urine Repellent Animal Deterrent FU-4 - The Home Depot

Red fox urine is the all-natural, organic and humane way to deter most yard and garden pests including deer, rabbits, skunk, ground hogs and small rodents. Long used by gardeners, this proven non kill

www.homedepot.com

 

[samven]

You might have mice getting in and chewing the wiring and the cats are just hunting them. I have had cats pull wires off when chasing mice but not chew on them. When I see feral cats around the work shop or truck I start looking for mouse nests.

 

[wtd]

.22 LR worked well in the old days.

Seriously, two months is about the outer limit of when kittens can be tamed. Try to get in contact with a local “no-kill” shelter, they will trap the kittens and try to tame them and adopt, if that can’t be done they will at least spay and neuter them and keep this from happening again.

As far as the car goes, I used to have a magnetic pad that electrified the car body. Worked well. Just a little shock to keep them off, not enough to hurt anything. I have no idea what effect this might have on the electronics in new cars.

We live out in the country so there is no local animal shelters around here. These things are so fast that getting a shot at them would be next to impossible. Lately they have been coming out onto the back deck where the older cats usually stay and if you go out the back door, they jump off the deck and head for either the carport where the cars are or under the shed. If you try coming around from the front door, it's the same scenario.

We tried to tame these in the beginning but you just couldn't get your hands on them and they would hiss and try to attack you. I did end up catching one a few weeks ago after I trapped it in some cinder blocks. I put on some welder gloves to catch it and it still bit me through the gloves until I could get it in the carrier.

 

[wtd]

You might have mice getting in and chewing the wiring and the cats are just hunting them. I have had cats pull wires off when chasing mice but not chew on them. When I see feral cats around the work shop or truck I start looking for mouse nests.

I don't think it was mice since we have a lot of cats around and you could see the puncture holes in the wiring that was from something with teeth bigger than a mouse. We have never seen signs of mice under the hoods of any of our vehicles, probably because we have had cats for years.

 

[wtd]

dunno if sprinkling something like fox urine around would discourage?

Just Scentsational 4 oz. Red Fox Urine Repellent Animal Deterrent FU-4 - The Home Depot

Red fox urine is the all-natural, organic and humane way to deter most yard and garden pests including deer, rabbits, skunk, ground hogs and small rodents. Long used by gardeners, this proven non kill

www.homedepot.com

Thanks. I have been doing some reading and they say cats don't like citrus and vinegar either so I put some vinegar in a spray bottle and sprayed up under the cars as a temporary solution for now since I had it handy. The fox urine would probably work too. I may have to try it if the vinegar doesn't work.

 

[samven]

I don't think it was mice since we have a lot of cats around and you could see the puncture holes in the wiring that was from something with teeth bigger than a mouse.

Sounds like my squirrel problem. I found nesting material under the air cleaner and saw 2 small squirrels going under the truck and jumping up into the engine compartment. I dont tolerate that and anything other than poison is fair game. I dont want to accidentally poison birds of prey but I dont want to loose an ECM to a shorted cable harness.

 

[ABN_CBT_ENGR]

We live out in the country so there is no local animal shelters around here. These things are so fast that getting a shot at them would be next to impossible. Lately they have been coming out onto the back deck where the older cats usually stay and if you go out the back door, they jump off the deck and head for either the carport where the cars are or under the shed. If you try coming around from the front door, it's the same scenario.

No animal is that fast, trust me.

Study them, know their routine, select their path, mark and secure the KZ, make your hide and wait.

 

[JimPghPA]

Vinegar is a mild acid. But it is strong enough to interact with some things. I would avoid any aluminum or electrical connections if I sprayed vinegar inside an engine bay.

 

[JimPghPA]

Just to give you an idea of how susceptible some metals can be to mild acids or mild bases: Back in the late 1970's I worked for an energy research company, and one of the things they were heavily involved in was heat-pumps and refrigeration systems. They did some projects recovering heat that would otherwise be dumped into the air to pre-heat water that then was heated more by a water heater for use in places like restaurants, and dairy farms. One dairy farm they did a system on had a huge setup of pipes in a container the size of a decent size room and those pipes were inside water that was pre-frozen so it could cool the milk down fast enough when it was pumped through the pipes after it came out of the cows. ( There is a certain temperature that it has to be cooled to within a certain relatively short time.) The refrigeration system dumped the heat from a condensers into a pre-heat water to reduce the cost of making large amounts of hot water to wash the cows after they were milked. When the pre-heat water was too hot to dump more heat into it, an air condenser was used to get rid of the heat so ice could still be made. The air condenser with fan was located in a barn. And one of the horses figured out that if it urinated on the air condenser the fan blew the smell of its urine into the air, and the horse apparently liked that so it did that often.

One day we got a call that the system was not working. It had lost its refrigerant charge. The urine had etched a hole in the air condenser. The PH of urine can be a mild acid or a mild base, but it was strong enough to destroy the metal of the air condenser.

So the moral of the story is avoid getting the vinegar on the parts of the air-conditioning system of the vehicle, and anything else that you do not want corroded.

 

[PimTac]

I have been spraying ammonia to repel squirrels. It might work for the cats too.

 

[4WD]

I had one take a 12 mile ride under the hood of my rent car. I parked at a Denny’s for breakfast and heard it but could not reach it in the crowded engine bay. After breakfast I could still hear it, but under the hood of a Ram … went back inside and told the guys and they had room to reach in and remove it …

 

[slacktide_bitog]

a dog?

 

[TheLawnRanger]

This could be catastrophic.

 

[BlueOvalFitter]

My '77 Z/28 had a flex fan on it. Our barn cat had 5 kittens. One cold morning I started my Z's engine. 4 kittens then.
I would spray ammonia around my car after that. All kittens were safe from then on.

 

[Rhymingmechanic]

Mom had an 80-something RWD Buick that attracted cats to the fan shroud during the winter. One got lucky and was just barely clipped before she shut the engine off. It came out of the shroud stiff as a board, like it had rigor mortis. It slept for about a day, and then seemed fine. That cat would jump whenever a car started up, though.

 

[SuperSalad]

Have you tried hiding a dog under the hood?

 

[Jetronic]

Thanks. I have been doing some reading and they say cats don't like citrus and vinegar either so I put some vinegar in a spray bottle and sprayed up under the cars as a temporary solution for now since I had it handy. The fox urine would probably work too. I may have to try it if the vinegar doesn't work.

our cat really dislikes orange peels, so that supports the citrus thing.