And of course the cat would pick the one week I actually remembered to refill the sunflower seeds, right? I'm convinced that feral cats have a sixth sense for when you've finally got everything perfect (probably to spite us, if you ask me). The motion sprinkler thing is genius though, I did the same thing after a stray started treating my yard like its personal buffet. It took about two days of the cat getting a face full of water before it decided my yard was haunted or something and moved on. Still, I felt like a total idiot setting up a sprinkler just to scare off a cat that wasn't even mine, but hey, it worked.

Never tried salt. Vinegar soak works pretty good too though.

Was the downtime even that bad once you factored in the learning curve for the next time? @the_nina probably should have just pushed through the repair instead of cutting it back, cause that extra cut just creates more weak spots. Short term pain for long term gain is how I see it, and now you've got two seams to worry about instead of one.

Three shutdowns already? That's insane.

Claire already touched on it but how long do you typically let the vinegar sit before flushing with water? I tried this on a cutter head once and left it on for maybe 20 minutes then rinsed, still got good results but wondering if a longer soak would do even better on really thick clay. That citric acid idea Kelly mentioned is interesting too, might have to test that side by side next time I'm fighting rust scale.