Repel Cats From Your Garden - Seven Organic Ideas

Want to keep cats off your garden? Just put wire netting across the soil, on top of bricks. Cats will avoid it. But the best organic gardening ideas are the simplest. Just lay some thorny rose clippings or brambles on the ground.

Other organic gardening tips to repel cats are to post sticks steeped in garlic paste, chilli oil or chamomile essence around your beds. Or grow fiercely scented French marigolds (Tagetes patula). Or build ramparts of curry powder or garam masala. Cats hate strange fierce scents.

Alternatively, you could take some hot chilli pepper seeds and steep them in olive oil for several months. Soak cardboard strips in this fierce cat repellent and put it about your seedbed or most precious plants.

Another organic gardening tip is to shake up this infusion with water in a 1:6 ratio. Add a small amount of washing up soap. Spray it on the plants themselves. Cats will avoid those plants and so will a lot of insect pests.

The simplest cat repellent is citronella oil, available at health food stores. You need just 100 drops of citronella to a pint of water. Scatter it daily around your garden till the cats learn to keep off. A quick substitute is fresh lemon or grapefruit peel.

An idea that's hardly organic - but it works - is to sink small plastic bottles about the plot with a few teaspoonfuls of ammonia in them. It's harmless to cats because they won't come within ten paces of that strong smell.

It's easy to make a more permanent cat repellent from a larger plastic bottle. Pack the bottle with any absorbent cloth that won't degrade, such as old nylon stockings or socks, even glass-wool insulation. Tease out a length of this material to form a wick. Add a cupful of one of the odorous liquids already mentioned.

That weather-proof bottle will stay effective for a long while. You need sink only four or five of those little bio-repellents around your vegetables or flowers to scare off cats, dogs, badgers and almost any animal pest.

A wicked way to repel cats from a garden

Here's a tip that's not for the fastidious. Scoop some dog faeces into a plastic margarine pot with perforated sides. Seal it. Place around your plots. Cats won't come near the stench of a strange dog.

Of course, you wouldn't use the dung of a meat-eating animal directly on the soil, even around a flower bed. It poisons the soil and can lead to serious illnesses, not least among children.

One tested repellent for cats and dogs is the urine of a 'large cat' like a tiger, cheetah or lion. It deters just about every animal. Maybe a local zoo could provide this exotic deterrent!

Cats can be a nuisance if you have a bird nesting box. Simply grow some thorny thing like roses or brambles around the post or tree.

Another natural gardening idea is to obtain a large metal drum that once held cooking oil or food products. Slice it into a sheet and wrap this shiny, slippery metal around the tree or post as a collar. Cats can't climb that; nor will squirrels or small boys.

All these repellents are harmless to cats, dogs and beneficial insects. Just keep inquisitive children away from the ammonia bottles!


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Dr John Yeoman PhD is chairman of the information network for natural gardening ideas, the Gardening Guild. Discover dozens of ingenious plans to grow more food in your garden with less cost and labor in his practical book Lazy Secrets for Natural Gardening Success. Acquire it entirely free at:
http://www.gardeningguild.org/lazy