Just because you like cats, it doesn’t mean that you like your neighbor’s cat when it makes a mess in your garden or spends the night on a cushion left on the terrace. Here are some things you can do about it.

It is understandable that all owners love their cats. But it is far from certain that the neighbors have similarly tender feelings for the kitten. What’s more, they may have an outright dislike for the uninvited intruder. Here’s why.

For cats, a fence is not a boundary line or an obstacle; just a comfortable springboard, from the top of which they can scan around the terrain and explore another exciting area waiting to be discovered. So if it happens to be your vegetable patch or flower bed, they will scratch small holes there to poop in.

Although there doesn’t seem to be one all-powerful way to keep cats away due to their unpredictability, we’ve put together a (non-exhaustive) list of possible methods that have a good chance of being successful.

Above all, the most important thing is to make it difficult for the cat to get through the fence or, at best, to prevent it. A wire mesh stretched over the top of the fence or thorny vegetation can be a solution.

Many people praise automatic water sprinklers, or bio-repellents, i.e. dogs that bark profusely at any cat.

If a cat gets into your garden, remember that it is much less likely that it will use it as a cat toilet if it does not find an uncultivated, bare area there.

Cats consider dry, dusty soil left bare as ideal cat litter. In such cases, prickly branches laid on the ground can help. And if there is a gravel area in your garden similar to cat litter, replace it with crushed stone or gravel that cats don’t like and don’t want to step on.

Various poisons or other solutions that endanger the cat’s physical integrity are out of the question! Of course, a number of options are also excluded if the garden is also a children’s playground.

Cats don’t like

  • barking dogs
  • spiky vegetation at the borders of the garden, e.g. blackberries, raspberries or other prickly shrubs
  • chicken wire mesh (metal or plastic) covering the vegetable patch
  • bird net stretched over the vegetable garden
  • rose or black locust branches laid on the ground
  • short twigs or bamboo sticks, stuck at an angle into the ground across the cultivated area
  • rock garden stones
  • mulch
  • garden soil kept constantly moist
  • water sprinkler equipped with a motion sensor
  • water gun, water cannon

Unpleasant odors for cats

  • blood meal fertilizers
  • garlic cloves
  • lavender
  • pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium)
  • common rue (Ruta graveolens)
  • cinnamon
  • citrus essential oils
  • peel of citrus fruits
  • moth repellent displayed in a jar with a perforated lid
  • Coleus canina, the “scaredy cat plant”