One of the big challenges for pet owners with indoor-only animals is keeping them mentally engaged and stimulated. I know I face this problem with my kitty. The apartment is her tiny kingdom, and she is like its fat tyrant, drunk with power. She has grown indolent and unmotivated, and her subjects both love and fear her. But her life is, by all accounts, sort of boring.

It’s not that she doesn’t want more. She loves attention and stimulation and is at us to play and interact as soon as we walk in the door — then she’ll chase her cork toy or talk to us for as long as we’re willing. So how can we keep things interesting for her while we’re away?

My friend Catherine, a fellow city-dweller with two apartment cats (that’s salty Raleigh pictured above), had the brilliant idea of attaching a window-mounted bird feeder outside her living room to entertain her cats while she’s away at work all day. Although the window faces a courtyard the feeder sees plenty of action, and thus the cats get to watch plenty juicy flitterings and flutterings of the (mostly unaware) birds. Here’s what she had to say about her experience and how to pick the right feeder:

I got this idea initially from my friend Rhiannon who sent me one in Brooklyn as a birthday present for me and my kitties. It never attracted birds — I was just on too busy a street with too few trees and too  many windows for any birds to find it and it wasn’t *quite* urban enough for pigeons to find it (a good thing I guess!). The other thing was that the window that pushed up was the exterior layer so opening the window resulted in shoving at the feeder. After accidentally knocking it to the sidewalk 2 floors below too many times when I’d come home to an overheated apartment, I finally decided to throw in the towel.

I was excited by my apartment in SF because there’s a little garden nearby and I see hummingbirds in the area pretty often. I knew I would need a feeder with strong suction cups, and I also wanted the one-way mirror so the birds wouldn’t get too scared but the cats could still easily see the birds. I ordered the Super Songbird One Way Mirror Window Feeder (picture above) and installed it. The birds run through all the seed in about 2-4 days.

(N.B. on seed selection: it’s very important to pick an appropriate one for your region. Also, try to get ones with less hulls as they can make the grass/area beneath your window really messy. I like Kaytee Waste Free Wild Bird Food.)

My cats LOVE the feeder. The cats stare and stalk and pounce. Raleigh has banged her head against the glass a lot. It may hurt, but I think it’s worth it for the fun. The feeder has been in for over a year now.

A note about placement for the feeder: in order to keep both birds and cats safe, Catherine recommends NOT putting the feeder near a window that you keep open or that has a screen in it — bloodthirsty kitties have been known to bust through and commit murder.

(Thanks to the excellent and lovely Catherine for the write-up and the picture of Raleigh, and Rachel’s Robin for the image of the feeder)

3 Responses to “Window Bird Feeder Entertains Indoor Cats
Pet Projects”