Instead of the warning ‘you are being recorded’ or the tones, I’d love it if my camera went PSST! to get the neighborhood cats to leave my yard. I don’t want to harm them, I have chickens and so I’d prefer the cats to not bother them so much.
I assume this “Psst!” is intended to mimic a cat hissing sound? Fake hissing works pretty well for most of my cats to let them know what’s not okay for them to do.
Yeah, but that’s also more likely to make neighbors mad than a fake hiss. I have family who live in neighborhoods where people call the cops on everyone when they hear barking and get really mad and complain to the whole neighborhood about them and then try to be all passive-aggressive every way they can.
I’d just rather not add more potential drama in my life than necessary if there is an alternative.
Also, barking and dogs do not phase my black cat at all. He usually totally ignores both like they don’t exist. At my last house he’d purposely walk right through the neighbor’s backyard and ignore the furious dogs (big dogs I might add) barking at him like he couldn’t even hear them. I expected them to eat him, but he wasn’t scared of them at all for some reason.
In reality they should probably just let you record or upload whatever you want. I believe Ring has that on their doorbells, I know I walked into a business with one and it had a custom recorded message as you walked by.
In addition to the sound, though, what you really need is the compressed air cannon. When my cat moved in but began misbehaving, I read about using water pistols as a deterrent, but I didn’t want to be splashing furniture and have to wipe that up. I also read that if a cat starts biting you during play, then what you’re supposed to do is blow in the cat’s face and immediately cease play. I put 2+2 together and started using compressed-gas electronics dusters—not directly in his face but definitely aimed toward him if he was several feet away and scratching on furniture, for instance. That’s so effective that sometimes he’d stop just at my making a tsst! sound with my mouth, or he’d freeze and then run the other way if he saw a duster can in my hand. I wouldn’t even have to press the trigger.
I have also hissed at my cat. The first time I hissed back at him after he hissed at me, his eyes got wide , and he looked at me like, “What the ?!” He’s used to it now, but that first time was a real eye-opener for him, in a very real sense.
If you really want to put him into pre-flight mode, though, just make a ding-dong doorbell sound. That gets him into position where he’s trying to decide if it’s cool or if it’s time to scamper beneath a bed and hide out for the stranger danger to pass. Even doorbell sounds in TV commercials get his attention.
That might not work with your chicken bullies, though.
This reminds me so much of how my parents acquired a black cat.