Cats & cars - EE question

[Trekman8]

voltage enough to jump through paint will prolly manage to ruin all electircal systems ground to the car, including your ecu = car wont work anymore.

[lolito_fr]

Ecu & airbags...
Intuitively yes, it does look dodgy
Technically though, there's still only 12v across the batt terminals, even if one side is at 10000v. I guess the risk is if the spark jumps from the "wrong place" eg one of the ECU wires. (would need to have the hood open?)
no?
just theorising anyhow, not gonna go any further with this one obviously

[mogwai]

Originally Posted by lolito_fr

...there's still only 12v across the batt terminals, even if one side is at 10000v. I guess the risk is if the spark jumps from the "wrong place" eg one of the ECU wires...

If you run a wire to earth ground connected to the negative end of a 10kv transformer, and raise the potential of the chasis to 10000v the 12v electrical system will have 10012v (with respect to ground) so yeah it will have 12v across the termainals. It should not break anything unless you start touching things under the hood with a grounded metal rod. How you will get the cat to touch ground and the car though? Don't they tend to just jump up? If you don't have a return path for the current, nothing will happen to the cat. Think of a bird on a power line. Petting that cat while it is on the car should be interesting though.

[lolito_fr]

A way around the ground return problem (and the spark damaging the paint) would be to run a few parallel strips of aluminum foil over the roof/hood and electrify that, not the car. 230V would be perfectly adequate, considering it would have a nice chance of following a "front paw - body - rear paw" path.

If I get 'round to installing the motion sensitive sprinkler, I may as well just electrify that instead

[mogwai]

Originally Posted by lolito_fr

A way around the ground return problem (and the spark damaging the paint) would be to run a few parallel strips of aluminum foil over the roof/hood and electrify that...

Damn, you are serious arren't you!?

Poor cat...I did think about strips, but did not want to give you any ideas. If you do this, connect it through some large resistors so you don't kill anyone/thing. At least 100kΩ.

[bobkoure]

How about a
Catwatch or Catguard?
The catwatch couples an IR "presence detector" with high frequency sounds cats find annoying - looks like the catguard just stays on.
No idea if these work, but it sounds like the right kind of deterrent - no damage done to the cat; they don't want to be near your car.
Bob

[gudis]

Perhaps a dog would work.
No, not geeky enough, how about
a robot dog.
or some of these babys:
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hope you're a decent shot.