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We have a pretty decent hawk and owl population so perhaps that discourages cats from sleeping out in the open on a serving plate.

Cats like to have a perch to see the comings and goings in their territory, at least during the day. I believe in the big viral photo the cats in the dish have a heated cathouse nearby, which they only use at night.

if it's possible to put a plastic dome, can we just make the dome such that the snow won't build up?

(which will probably make self-heating unnecessary... or are there temperature requirements?)

Starlink dishes don't have a dedicated heater inside to melt snow. I don't know where the author of the article got that idea from. They are just power hungry and produce enough waste heat that it's not a problem.

I think the idea is they can run extra-inefficiency to produce even more heat if needed.

It would have to be a pretty sharp shape to deter a cat, perhaps a traffic cone type configuration would work well.