I’ve been growing some vegetables over summer. Next door has about fifty million cats ( :rolleyes: ) which seem to take great pride in shitting everywhere apart from their owners garden. My freshly dug ground seems to be a great draw for them, and they’ll trample over everything, carrots, onions, fennel and tomatoes, to get to it. At the start of summer I had forty onions, now I’m down to seven. This isn’t a minor irritation - it’s starting to seriously piss me off, not least due to the inordinate amount of money I’ve spent trying to keep them off the beds.
I’ve bought an ultrasonic cat alarm that did nothing (they just turned and stared at it when I tested the alarm on some cats lying in the undergrowth), special cat pellets that have a special smell (i.e. they stink) that also do nothing, netting which seems to do nothing (they make holes in it) and finally I’ve put down carpet grippers all over my ground which also don’t deter them.
Other ideas that people have suggested, like spraying the cats with a hosepipe whenever you see them, are impractical - we never actually see the cats shitting and the tap is miles away at the other end of the garden anyway.
Trying to talk to our neighbours about it won’t do anything - we’re in a small village surrounded by farms, the idea of an “indoor cat” isn’t something that will go down well around here. The situation is compounded by the fact that the neighbours seem to enjoy being difficult a lot of the time, they’ve had feuds with more than a few people in the street, including us.
Are there any sure fire ways of getting rid of these revolting pests short of a rifle? The cheaper the better, I’ve already spent too much time and money trying to protect my property from these vermin. :mad:
If chicken wire proves too expensive, surround the garden with aluminium foil, wide enough so they can’t jump over it. Most cats positively hate to step on foil.
I usually get in trouble suggesting less-than-legal means of cat control, so try this legal one that’s worked for me (even though I’m in favor of the illegal ones, I’m not actually a creep enough to implement them):
Humane trap --> trip to animal control --> destruction of cats || large boarding fee when they’re claimed by negligent owners
The downside is it will take a while to trap them all.
A rifle has the same disadvantage as spraying with a hose: it requires you to spend your time hanging around there as an unpaid guard waiting for the cats. (Though it has the advantage of only having to be used once on any specific cat.) And cats are smart; they will soon learn to avoid your garden when your are around! Unless you can be ther full-time, 24 hours a day, this isn’t a useful solution.
You need something that works automatically, all the time.
You can purchase motion-activated water sprayers, which connect to your hose and activate when a cat or similar animal comes in range. But they cost money, and won’t work if you have no hose connection available near your garden.
Or you can get a dog. Dogs will chase cats, and keep them out of your yard.
But there are costs involved with this; feeding & caring for a dog. Plus dogs, too, gotta shit somewhere. You might just be trading one problem for another, unless you can train your dog to use one specific spot.
As an alternative to a rifle, you might wish to consider a paintball gun. It won’t kill the cats, but it will sting them pretty good, plus make their fur icky…
So depending on the type of paint used, it might just make them sick, or might poison them completely. Wouldn’t it be more humane to use a gun to kill them quickly, rather than letting them die in slow agony from poison?
Cats love veggie gardens, especially in the summer when the rest of the garden may be too hard for them to dig in. You could dig over a corner and not plant, so they can go there. OR put plastic bottles filled with water next to your plants, people here swear it keeps the cats away. I know it sounds silly, but give it a go!
But seriously, I have faced this problem from the other side – my cats were bothering my neighbors garden.
Cats seem to be more determined, and willing to put more time & effort into this than the humans are. So I’ve found the only real effective solution is to provide a better spot for them than your garden.
In my case, that meant picking a couple of non-grassy spots in my yard and digging them up for the cats. These were closer for them, and nice, sunny southern exposures. Then I asked the neighbor to keep her garden soil damp for the first few days. The cats soon found my new spots preferable to the neighbors garden, and began using them. Now I just have to rake them to keep the soil loose every couple weeks, and after rainstorms. They seem to find these spots preferable, and the neighbor hasn’t had any problems since then. It seems to help to have at least a couple of such spots, so the cats have a choice.
Since it’s their cats, it should be the neighbors responsibility to make such an outdoor litterbox for their cats. You might suggest it, but they don’t sound like they are the responsible neighbor type. So you might do as Butterscotch suggested, choose a couple of spots in your yard for the cats other than your garden. It might be worth it to relieve your stress – a garden ought to be relaxing, not something that gets you pissed off.