After my previously free roaming 8 year old cat went missing for nearly 5 weeks, and then found in quite a poorly way, I wanted to find a way to keep him and his cat brother safe! Having researched and compared a few cat proof systems/companies, I decided to go with Purrfect Fence. Danielle was extremely helpful and responsive to the many questions I had before I purchased the system. Although their system can be installed as a DIY project, I wasn't confident in doing so and went with their recommended 3rd party installer, Fraser @ Suffolk Logistics. The ordering and installation was quick and easy and the overall price very competitive. I had a mix of the freestanding system in front of the neighbour's fence and along the width of our garden (we wanted to keep part of it separate from the cats) and the brackets and netting system on our own fence, on the other side of the garden. The morning after installation, one of the cats escaped within 3 hours of being in his new cat proofed garden by digging into the couple of inch gap between the ground and the bottom of the netting. This was by the freestanding system, which, as it turned out, needed an overlap on the ground to stop any determined cat being able to dig under the netting! This wasn't a fault in the system, as such but, for anyone going with any freestanding cat proof system, please purchase extra netting to ensure there's at least half a foot either side of the netting, pegged into the ground, to stop any cats digging their way out. Fraser was brilliant and arranged a swift re-visit to fix this. The second issue we've had is that we've had a neighbour's cat visit our garden a couple of times, getting trapped and being stressed until we could let him out. This has then led to one of our cats realising he could escape by the same way and climb through a very spikey bush, pull the cat netting down and easily walk over it and over the wooden fence to freedom. Luckily he came back over the fence the same way but I had to keep both cats in until a fix was agreed by Purrfect Fence and Fraser. Fraser came back and replaced the standard brackets with the extended brackets, thus increasing the overall height of the fence. I don't think the issue was the system, nor the installation, and not even the height of the bush, as the neighbour's cat started coming in before our cat decided to find his own way out. The issue was that the brackets we should have gone with were the extended ones that would have raised the overall height of the cat proof fence quite considerably, rather then the shorter brackets which made the netting come only just above the fence height. This wasn't suggested to us, even though Purrfect Fence had lots of photos and videos of our garden, ahead of us placing our order and they're the experts in ensuring cats are kept safe with their system, not the buyers. Probably an oversight on their part? If we'd have gone high in the first place, and had the overlap netting on the ground, where the freestanding system was installed, it would have saved the wonderful Fraser from returning twice. That would be my advice to anyone planning to cat proof their garden space - think of any escape routes carefully and go as high as you're able to and overlap any freestanding system that go to the ground. Overall, I'm so happy I had the cat proofing done by Purrfect Fence and even though they've been some teething issues, I'm finally confident my cats are now happy, healthy and most importantly, safe.
