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Keeping cats off my plants


bushbaby 3

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Q: How do I discourage cats from using my garden as a litter box?

 

A: That is, how can you get cats to stop answering the call of nature in your particular corner of nature? This is a matter to which I have applied plenty of thought and experimentation.

 

It seems uncanny that a cat always finds the place with the most fragile, recently transplanted plants, or the newly sprouting seedbeds, until you realize that these are the places where the soil is loose and easiest to dig. The freshest and most charming of cat litters surely seems a poor substitute for digging in the real thing.

 

I have found that if you can find a way to protect the soil until the plants fill in over it, or even until rain or watering have settled it a bit so it isn't so loose, cats will choose another place.

 

Because I'd rather solve a problem without having to buy or spray anything, I have used various homemade barrier methods to make my recently dug soil less interesting.

 

I have successfully repelled cats by sprinkling various types of cut-up plant matter over the exposed soil. I've used weeds, branchy prunings from a lemon verbena, or dead fern leaves. The ground didn't have to be totally covered with these materials, just enough to confuse the animals. These coverings can look fairly good, depending on what you use.

 

In part of my garden, I use a slightly overlapping arrangement of flat river stones as decoration. They are between 4 and 8 inches across, round or oval. Whenever I put in new plants, I move some of these rocks into the spaces between the new plants for a few weeks. The stones can be 2 or 3 inches apart or distant from a plant, since that isn't enough space for a cat to work in. You could use any kind of stone or brick the same way, even milled wood scraps sunk into the soil a bit to provide stability.

 

hope this helps Sarah x

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Gif lemon (or other strong citrus) around the edge of your bed, or garden will keep the cats away..

 

alternativly, keep a waterpistol or spray bottle of water to hand and if you see a cat, give it a squirt, its a none painful way of telling them to **** off... and they'll soon learn...

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Once heard, how a man who had the same problem fixed a sensor around his garden fence which triggered of a water spray every time cats came to "pay a call" He kept the cats at bay and watered his garden in the process!

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Once heard, how a man who had the same problem fixed a sensor around his garden fence which triggered of a water spray every time cats came to "pay a call" He kept the cats at bay and watered his garden in the process!

 

There is a system called the 'scarecrow' which you can get (just search in google for it) which does exactly this. Apparently very effective.

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