Catscram Electronic Cat Repellent (No Adapter)

This is a review for both the Tattle Tale Sonic Pet Training Alarm and the Catscram Electronic Cat Repellent . I have a needy cat who HAS to be on the other side of any and all closed doors at all times. If she is inside, she wants out. If she is outside, she wants in. You may think this would be cute, until you're trying to sleep inside the room with the closed door. An open door is not an option because I can't have my eight year old walk in on her step father and I in the middle of the night either. This had been going on for almost a year. I felt my sanity slipping away from me due to lack of sleep. I would regularly pass out sitting up at my desk at work, and get caught in the act! I was on the verge of giving her away (which I hated to do, but I didn't know what else I could do). Then I came to Amazon with my problem, which I do for all my product needs. I had first bought the Tattle Tale Sonic Pet Training Alarm after reading reviews and comparing prices. It worked...very well. I attached it to my door with some command strips. Any time that she pawed at my door the alarm would sound and she would stop. The problem is that it has a very loud tone that is audible to humans and would wake me up. The up side is that she would not continue to paw at the door the rest of the night, so it was a good trade off...I would only be woken up once during the night. It has 2 settings, High and Low. I only used the Low setting which seemed to be very sensitive. I can see how this would be EXTREMELY helpful for dog owners who want to keep their pooch off the couch when they are away. I plan on trying it on my counter top on the High setting to see if it keeps my sister's counter surfing kitty off (update to come). I decided I wanted better. I have to say, I was very skeptical about the Catscram Electronic Cat Repellent at first. The reviews were ok but the price was nearly double what I paid for the Tattle Tale Sonic Pet Training Alarm . I decided to take the plunge anyways and I am so glad that I did! I followed the instructions when I first turning it on then set it up in front of my door frame facing across my door. I could tell it was working because my cat was sitting on my bed staring at it with her eyes dilated, which was a good sign. I set her outside my bedroom and closed the door. I went to sleep and woke up 6 hours later! Could it be?! Did I really just sleep 6 hours straight with no interruptions?! You have no idea how happy I was. Maybe there is hope for my sanity yet. The motion sensor on it is sensitive enough to sense movement in very dim lighting conditions so I can also put it inside my bedroom to keep her from trying to get out in the middle of the night and we can still get our cuddle time in. The manual for the Catscram Electronic Cat Repellent does mention that it may not work for white cats because their range of hearing is by nature very limited, and also older cats or some exotic breeds may not be affected by it. It works for my little calico though. So the verdict is: Both are good devices, but one may be better than the other depending on what you need it for.

I bought three of these. The first one worked fine and is still going strong. The second one stopped working after a couple of months. Now it just blinks the red light constantly even with no motion to be sensed, so it runs the battery down quickly. I've tried swapping out fresh batteries, turning it on and off, nothing works, it just keeps blinking and blinking. I bought a third one thinking the failure of the second one was just a fluke, but now the third has the constantly blinking light after about a week. I've given up on these things. They seem to work as they are intended for a while, but obviously the construction or design is shoddy, and at this price I would expect them to work more than a couple of weeks! Don't waste your money on Catscrams unless you plan to buy them by the gross and hope one or two actually work.

This is the second Catscram that I have purchased. The first one got misplaced/thrown away a while back. We are taking care of 2 kitties that belong to a family member that can't have them right now. This is the third time we've had them in our home for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, one of them has a very bad habit of urinating on the stove during the night (we know it's one of them, as it never happens with our cats when the visitors aren't here). The first Catscram I purchased worked instantly - from that night forward until the kitties went back to their rightful mommy, we didn't wake up to a mess on the stove. The only problem we had at that point is one of our older dogs could hear it go off, and it drove her nuts, so after the kitties went back home, we took it down and stored it - and I think it got thrown away. When we got our 2 visitors back, the urinating started again - after realizing we didn't have the Catscram anymore, I ordered another one. The same result - haven't had one mess on the stove. Our dog that it had bothered went to the rainbow bridge a bit ago, and our current dog can hear it (he cocks his head at it when it is activated) but it doesn't drive him insane like it did our poor old girl. The range is pretty impressive, as our stove is at one end of our counter, we plug it in and place it on the stove, and it will go off if a cat jumps on the other end of the counter - about 15 feet away. It works well for keeping all the cats off the counter entirely (including our 2 visitors, we have 7 cats). I have read that it doesn't work on all cats, but it definitely works on all 7 in our home. I highly recommend this product - I think that the percentage of cats it doesn't work on is pretty low. My only complaint is that the AC adapter doesn't come with it and you have to purchase it separately; it is still well worth the price even with that complaint. After we put away the first one, it was a good 6 months before our own cats would even attempt to jump on the counter again (they usually just sit at the end, but still, would rather not have them up there at all).

For the price of this thing I don't understand why they don't include a power supply. It's not cheap and it's really nothing more than a high-pitched sound maker with a proximity sensor. Using a battery in this thing is ridiculous. First of all you need a SCREWDRIVER to pull out a SCREW to just access the battery compartment. What is this? 1974? When were snap-shut battery doors invented? Is that just too high-tech for the engineers to design in? Second of all the battery only lasts about 4-5 days in operation. So more than once a week you are going to have to put in a NEW battery and pull that screw out and then screw it back in again. This is asinine. A wall-wart 9v supply costs what? $.50 wholesale? $.25? It can't be much. They should have included one when this thing eats batteries like they are candy. While this unit works quite well to discourage cats it isn't exactly silent to humans. I'm sure I'm not hearing the ultra-sonic waves with my mortal human ears but I can sure as heck hear the electronics that generate the wave making a high-pitched squealing and squawking. I can hear it make a noise with every flash of the red LED that shows when it is activating. It isn't very loud but we have our box on the kitchen counter and in the middle of the night when I go out to the kitchen to make a snack for myself I can really hear it going off. When there are other sounds like a radio going or traffic noise coming in from the street it drowns out the squeal but it is certainly quite audible some of the time when it is quiet like in the deep of the night. It also takes forever to warm up if you turn it off. You can't just turn it off when you come into the kitchen or wherever you have it and expect to turn it back on when you leave. It takes a few minutes to go through the warm-up cycle. If your cats are smart they will figure this out. Also the switch is VERY tiny and hard to manipulate. Turning it on and off is a pain. That's why we leave ours on all the time. Conclusions: *Get yourself a power supply unless you work at a battery factory and get free batteries. Otherwise you are going to go broke buying them. It's a pain to change them with the SCREW in the battery door. *Be ready for this to make audible squealing noises. If high-pitched electronic sounds like your old TV sometimes makes bothers you this will probably bother you too. *It does work to keep the cats off the counters. Since we put this in the cats stay away from the kitchen counter and the tell-tale kitchen curtains never are messed up so I know they are not up on them. Before I got the power supply I knew when the battery was dead without even checking the LED light to see if it came on by the curtains being messed up. So I know it is working to keep the cats off the counters with their litter-yucky feet where food is prepared.

After my recent move, the nighttime vocalizations of my 2 Bengals has gotten to a point where my husband and I decided we would try to keep them out of the bedroom all-together. One of our girls has huge issues with this, and resorts to even louder guttural howling. We have tried muting this with white noise machines, and even stuffing a towel between the door and the floor. She will promptly dig the towel out from the other side of the door and howl under the door. We looked into this device as a way to keep them away from the bedroom door area. When I got the device, I immediately tested it to see what their reaction would be during the day. I am pretty sure they heard something, but it was NOT a deterrent. In fact, ears popped up, they both stalked over to the device. My louder cat sniffed at it and promptly knocked it over with her paw and started batting it around on the floor. She thought it was a wonderful toy!! Sigh!! We are about 2 weeks into negative reinforcement of the night time howling. We are absolutely ignoring the behavior, no rolling over, no yelling/ groaning when she starts up, no squirt bottles, and certainly no petting (which is what she wants at 3am). We are almost through the extinction bursts (I hope!!), but this was due to persistence of my husband and I. ZERO help from this CatScram device! Thanks for taking the time to read my review, and I hope you found it helpful in making a purchase decision.

I was very excited to receive my shipment of 2 Catscrams, one for each side of the kitchen island to keep the cat away from the stove and sink. They worked beautifully for about 2 days and the cat was staying away from the kitchen. On the 3rd day, however, he ignored them to enter the kitchen when he heard me open a can of food. They no longer bother him at all - he somehow developed a tolerance to the sound and is back to entering the kitchen at will and jumping on the counters.

This was a purchase made out of desperation. If we weren't able to control where our cat could go in the apartment, we would have had to give him away. Frankly, I assumed this thing couldn't possibly work as advertised, but I was willing to risk the $ because we were out of options. It is working like a charm. We've put it at the bottom of the stairs, and the cat will not go past it. When he gets in range and trips the detector, he scrambles back up the stairs like a cat possessed. I suspect that, as other reviewers have written, it may not work this way for every cat. In fact in the instructions that come with it, there is a disclaimer reading: "Hearing Impaired Cats--White cats are by nature hard of hearing in the upper and lower hearing range. Older cats 8 years + will lose some of their upper hearing range. Some exotic breeds have dog like hearing and will be less affected." Our old man (13 years) can evidently still hear well enough to be strongly deterred. The only weak point for us--it basically has to be within range of an outlet because it evidently devours batteries. Fortunately, it takes a standard 9v adapter that you can get for $5-10 if you don't already have a spare one lying around like we did. With a little creativity and a couple of extension cords we've worked it out, and we couldn't be happier that we can keep our little buddy.

For the last 4 1/2 years our cat, Tony, has been wanting food at 3am - 4am. Well, Tony is extremely smart. He knows how to knock on doors and wake people up. Our son was born 4 1/2 years ago and Tony figured out that when the baby wakes up he gets food so at 3am - 4am every day Tony would go knock and scratch on the baby's door waking him up knowing that we would get up to take care of the baby and he would then get fed. This did not make us happy and we have not had a good nights sleep in years. We have tried water, keeping him in the garage, setting out food at midnight and the list goes on and on and on and nothing worked for this cat. We love Tony and didn't want to get rid of him but didn't know what else to do. We decided to take a gamble after reading the rest of the reviews on the Catscram. WONDERFUL!!! The first night Tony went to go to our son's door knocked on it once and ran off. Every night since Tony stays at the very end of the hallway and doesn't come to the door. We have the catscram on batteries right next to the door and he never comes near it. We turn it off during the day and turn it back on at night. This is an outstanding device and would recommend but as the other reviews have stated it doesn't work for all cats but it did work with ours. Wayne