Cat Handrail Deterrent / Stopper

thingiverse

Our cat Elsa loves to stay on the balcony. And like any other cat she loves to walk as far as possible, including going to our neighbors' balcony. She only needs to walk along the handrail. But my neighbors' aren't happy about it, and got a couple complaints that she was sniffing around their clothes left outside to dry. We couldn't block the passage either with a physical wall, as we'd need permission from the homeowners association. So our only option left was to keep Elsa inside, always keep an eye on her whenever we wanted a bit of fresh air. Definitely not a win-win situation. I was thinking about hugely complex, costly and probably unsafe options, including a motorized water spray activated by an IR sensor triggered by her presence on the handrail. Then we found this Cat Deterrent thing from mschrock. Looked simple enough to give it a try. So I edited the OpenSCAD to make it fit better for our handrail, printed it with PETG filament, attached with couple zipties, and lo and behold, Elsa just stopped going there. She would just sit in front of the spikes, finding no viable way to go over without touching the spikes, and stopped there. We couldn't believe our own eyes! So here's the thing, sharing it with all of you, hoping it could solve a similar problem. Enjoy!