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How to thwart cats

A question for cat owners: I just had to send my BAT VK-300x integrated amp back to BAT for what I assumed was a warranty repair after having it for 3 months--it had begun spitting out white noise and then sent sparks out the top grill. It turns out in fact that it was full of cat hair and--putting it as discreetly as possible--other cat-related material, which had caused it to short out. The cats have long used my audio gear as a sort of large, centrally heated cat bed, but those days have now ended. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to keep cats off your gear?

I keep the VK in a rack , with about 4" of clearance from the shelf above--it would be easy enough to add a piece of nonresonant material underneath it to reduce the clearance and thereby catproof it, but I'm wondering about the other components too.

Any thoughts? And no, throttling the cat responsible is not an option.
bradgregg
chadnliz
3,736 posts
 
Tin Foil keeps cats away from furniture, maybe lay some at the foot of your gear, it works for some pals of mine.
undertow
1,033 posts
 
Alright all joking aside... In order to not Use a SCREEN that will short things out, I have in the past taken Nylon Screen from your local whoever, and you take off the top of the unit and cut sections of the screen to fit nicely over the grates in the unit, attach with a decent electrical tape, the heat would probably dry out Duct tape and Masking tape won't hold anything...

You can get Grey or Black, Grey is pretty cool in contrast to black components looks sometimes.. But if your Tubes or unit run super hot electrical tape should probably hold up fine, but just in case make sure you have nylon or whatever plastic type stretchy screen material they have, cause if it falls a bit or sags it will not short anything out, but could melt a little on a tube I don't know. Currently i have nothing in my system that has anything that can be hairballed so I have not used the method in a few years.
richmon
226 posts
 
Put some balloons near your components. When the cats are hanging around the 'off limits' area, pop the balloon(s). They'll make the connection and avoid the area. You might have to repeat the lesson. My cat avoided the area like the plague, but sometimes you might have to leave a balloon around the amp to refresh their memory, depends on the cat.
Simple + cheap, just like me.
clio09
3,346 posts
 
Funny, my cats never mess with my gear and I never had a problem with them clawing at my speaker cloth.

On the other hand, I was at Dusty Vawter's house once doing an audition of his gear and watched his cat actually climb his speakers on a few occasions.
Ag insider logo xs@2x
jgiacalo
446 posts
 
I have three cats. One never bothers the stereo since he hates R&R so I suggest playing cat-ear-hurting music to annoy and negatively reinforce him/her to the stereo. Of the other two the lighter, more agile one likes to lay on the tube gear when it is on and the other is too morbidly obese to jump up on anything. Soooo, I'd suggest overfeeding the cat in question and hopefully the problem will eventually go away.
Or, maybe spray some CatBegone stuff near the gear to repell the little heat-loving sweetie.

Good luck.
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