Sometimes, if you live in a wooded area, or if you feed your pet outdoors, you may start to notice their levels of food are dwindling quicker than normal. There are a few common animals who go out at night and look for human scraps to munch on, and they won’t say no to pet food either!
Don’t fret—if you notice your cat’s food is being thieved by a sneaky possum who is getting greedy, there are several ways to keep them away from your cat’s food.
Top 10 Ways to Keep Possums Away From Cat Food
1. Keep Cat Food Indoors
The first and easiest way to stop this from occurring is to bring your feeding habits indoors. If you happen to have an outdoor cat who likes being fed on the back porch, for example, then this may be what is drawing in those pesky possums or raccoons. If you notice your cat is asking for more food after mealtimes, or if they devour the entire bowl in one sitting, keep an eye out for possums and bring their food bowl inside.
2. Keep Food Away from Exits
If you bring your cat’s food bowl indoors but you still notice that something is getting into their food, you may want to move it somewhere else in your home. For example, if their food bowl is by a window or backdoor, possums may be crawling in and stealing their food on a regular basis. If there is nobody out and about at night and they can catch a scent of cat food from just outside, they will not hesitate to grab a bite!
3. Keep Their Food Elevated
Another great way to avoid possums getting into your cat’s food is to make it inaccessible for them. This means keeping their food bowl on a high surface that your cat can get to, but a possum won’t. Keep their food bowl elevated up on a shelf, a cabinet they can hop on, or something in a closed-off room that only your cat can access. Possums will more likely look for food elsewhere rather than prance through an entire home with the fear of being caught.
4. Fence the Area Around Food Bowls
If you are a pet owner who has an outdoor cat or maybe you feed a neighbor’s cat on occasion, and you notice that possums are stealing their food, you can create a perimeter around their feeding area. This means building a fence, creating a blockage to their food, or maybe even getting a small cat door that only they can access (via a collar or microchip) for their feeding area. This will help to make the process of stealing their food much harder and maybe even keep them out for good.
5. Watch Your Cat While They Eat
Try and watch over your cat while they eat and remove leftovers when your cat is done. This will usually completely scare them away and stop the behavior, and hopefully make them seek out food elsewhere. Possums might not want to be watched while they commit the act, so they might choose to leave on their own from now on.
6. Trim Back Foliage in Your Yard
Possums are wild creatures who are used to living amongst trees, bushes, and other wooded areas where they can nest among the foliage. This could be why they are attracted to your home and stealing your cat’s food! If you can, trim bushy and wooded areas around the perimeter of your home regularly so that possums have nowhere to hide and no desire to hang around for long periods of time. If the environment is less comfortable for them, they will start to seek safer areas to find food.
7. Set Up Possum Traps
If the possum is returning no matter what you do, you can set up ethical traps and try to catch the possum and have them relocated to a preferable environment. There are many different options for animal traps out there, and you can ask for assistance from animal wildlife experts in your area. There are experts in the field of catching displaced wildlife who know where to relocate them and safely. This will stop them from stealing your cat’s food and get them to a safer place as well.
8. Avoid Feeding at Night
Another option you can investigate to avoid possums or other wildlife stealing your cat’s food is to start feeding them at a time when possums are not active. This can apply to any nighttime critters who steal both human and pet food at all hours of the night. It’s difficult to catch them when they are more active at a time when everyone is asleep, so it can become very frustrating when you can’t figure out who keeps stealing your cat food!
Start feeding them earlier in the day when there won’t be any nocturnal animals out hunting for food, and they’ll have nothing out to steal.
9. Clean Up Other Food
Possums, and other wildlife, will eat human food as well as pet food. A great way to keep them from stealing your cat’s food is to make sure you don’t have your garbage out that’s easily accessible to them. They are hunting for any type of food, so if your garbage can is standing out back and full to the brim, they will gravitate towards your residence.
Try to keep wires or straps on top of your garbage bins to make it impossible for possums to get in. If they see there is no accessible food for them, they will stop coming.
10. Install a Motion Sensor Camera or Sprinkler
This last tip for keeping possums out of your cat food is to install a camera or sprinkler that will either scare them away or at the very least alert you to movement around your home. You can even add a motion-sensing camera in your yard to see where they’re coming from and what times they decide to pounce!
Something like a sprinkler is great because, at the most, possums will just be wet and uncomfortable, hopefully causing them to leave.
Conclusion
In summary, there are numerous tips you can use to keep possums and other night creatures away from your cat’s food. Whether you get some advice from wildlife experts to set up an ethical trap and relocate them, change your cat’s feeding time and location, or build them an enclosed area to eat, you will notice the possums will change their tune eventually.
Featured Image Credit: Scottslm, Pixabay
