How to keep cats out of your garden?

Just wondering how people manage to keep cats out of their garden?

We have wire fencing and conifer hedging around quite a bit of the garden and this seems to work quite well but they are still getting into the garden from other areas.

Last night about 3:30 am Max suddenly started barking furiously we rushed downstairs and saw that he was barking at a cat sat in our garden.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike cats but I am a keen vegetable grower and nothing makes me crosser than finding that someone's cat has dumped in my dinner!!

Has anyone ever used one of these and if so did they work, they do say they do not deter any other species but has anyone found they irritated their dogs?

http://www.conceptresearch.co.uk/cats_1.htm

Best way to keep all the neighbourhood cats out of your garden is to get one of your own! They'll keep all the others out, and one cats poop is better than lots.

Mind you our cats don't go in our garden at all because of the dogs.

You could try the old trick of burying mothballs or extra strong mints scattered around your veggies.

Hi Becky

I'm not too keen on getting a cat myself as our garden backs onto a railway and the front of the house is on a busy road so I'd end up spending all day worrying if it was safe!

The mothballs and mints are a good idea, although I know a certain dog who is very partial to his mint dental chews who would probably find all of the mints and eat them! But that's given me an idea - bury some mints when I need the patch digging over and let Max do it for me!!

You have my deepest sympathy - I don't grow vegetables, but I do have a dog with a partiality to cat s**t

I'm not convinced about cat repellants, but I'm trying to put them off with a good old hedge. I've gone for a mixture of our native hedging plants, which include lots with really businesslike thorns (hawthorn, buckthorn, blackthorn) which are supposed to help deter cats. Best of all they provide food and shelter for many of the gardener's best friends, the kind of birdies, hedgehogs and toads which are going to eat the naughty bugs and slugs that want to eat your vegetables.

Ive heard putting orange peel in your vegetable patch deters them from leaving presents.

I have 4 cats. Two of them (Paddy and Murphy) are 'kings of the area' so between them and the dogs, other cats don't even come in into our garden.

Anyway - orange peel isn't bad. Lemon juice is good too. The pepper stuff works well but the best thing (but hard to come by) is meant to be lion or tiger poo.

I've used 'Silent Roar' before and it works for a while - until the rain washes all the scent away. You just have to keep re-applying.

I got mine from Robert Dyas.

Lion poo!!! Wouldn't you be better-off with ordinary cat poo?

OMG how big a litter tray do lions need????

LMAO