If like us you own a collector car or three – be it an antique, a street rod, or just an old favorite – this time of year marks the end of what a friend calls “car season.” The special cars get tucked away for the winter, and we are left driving something that we think of as more disposable, suitable for exposure to snow, slush, and salt.
But there is more to putting a car away for the winter that just putting it in the garage. Most of us already know the popular tips regarding fuel and moisture and oil and moisture and upholstery and moisture and paint and moisture. What we want to address today is critters, and specifically, a popular critter-control technique that can go very wrong.
Mice and others rodents love parked cars. They’ll build nests, they’ll chew wires and upholstery. They’ll pee and poo in the car and you will develop a near pathological hatred for them. There exist many popular ways to discourage them before they move in to your car, one of which is to simply have a cat.
If you have a cat in the garage, the cat will keep the mice at bay but if the cat ever pees on the car cover you will not only throw the cover away but you will buy a new paint job for the car. Cat urine is astoundingly corrosive. Make sure the cat has a litter box in the garage and keep that litter box fresh. Cats can be very finicky – if the litter box is maintained like the cat version of a gas station rest room, kitty will find another place to go and that place may be the nice soft car cover or the box of NOS parts or one of the drawers in your tool cabinet.
Ever since an otherwise sweet pussycat did serious damage to a friend’s stored car some years ago we have experimented our way to a successful mix of rodent-control techniques that do not involve a feline. In particular we have had excellent results using a product called Fresh Cab, but there are countless other commercially-available and home-remedy techniques. It may take some trial and error to find the ones that work best in your garage — but be careful if your choices include a cat.
Image selected from Creative Commons.