Are cats getting into your garden? Are they digging your plants up? Are they causing any other sort of issues for your flowers, vegetables, et cetera? Whether it’s your cat, a neighbour’s cat, or a stray, cats can wreak havoc on your garden if you are not careful.
The good news is that it is relatively simple to put a plan in place to protect your plants and keep these feline friends away. To get you started, we have the details about five of the most popular ways to keep cats out of your garden.
Create an Outdoor Litter Box
As you likely know, cats love catnip, as well as honeysuckle and mint. You can easily keep them away from the rest of your garden by planting these items and creating an outdoor litter box (try using simple sand) a little ways away from your garden. While you will still need to regularly empty this area, as you would with an indoor litter box, having a specific spot for the cat will help keep it away from other things.
Wash Area Well
Cats tend to choose the same spot for their business, because they can often smell their scent (usually urine) on the area. This indicates that this area is theirs! With that in mind, it is a good idea to wash your garden well, particularly in any areas you notice the cat frequently visiting. Removing their scent can work wonders on preventing recurrences.
Try Animal Repellent
Strong smells can dissuade lots of animals from your garden, including cats. We recommend trying Animal Repellent Scent-A-Gone, which contains a pepper-based repellent. It works for repelling cats from your garden and lawn, as well as dogs, raccoons, skunks, and groundhogs. This can prevent digging in your garden and from the cats trying to mark their territory.
Make It Prickly
Cats do not like to walk on prickly surfaces. To keep them out of your garden, try putting some sticks, pinecones, and similar items on the soil in order to make it hard and prickly. You can also try out woodchips for this! Place them strategically so the cats do not have a place to lie down in your garden. This will greatly decrease the chances of them visiting again, once they figure out what is going on.
Physical Barriers
Of course, you can always build a physical barrier around your garden to keep the cats out. Sometimes you can get away with a simple mesh fence. That said, sometimes cats will jump to get where they want to go, so keep an eye on how tall you build the fence as well as what you build it out of. If you combine the fence with some of the other methods listed in this article, however, the cats are far less likely to put in the effort to jump over it to get inside your garden.
