Cat digging up our garden

Just saw this cat dig up our garden this morning…just planted in recently too. We have an ultrasonic monitor too as we get cat poo everywhere too and it’s causing such a headache as I can’t just let the kids out and play without doing a check…any other good solutions?

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It’s unrelenting. You need to have no bare patches of soil or they will use it as their toilet.

You can have small stones all through the top layers of the soil. I’ve laid down chicken wire flat across all my bare soil areas. That seems to work. Although it looks ugly.

Ive also built another enclosure surrounded by chicken wire for my more sensitive vegetables / strawberries.

Pee on it. Seriously.

https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/grapevine/allotment-advice/human-urine-gets-rid-cats-foxes-rabbits-etc_27706.html

I hear getting a cat can also an effective deterrent…

The other thing is that if you have mice or rats nearby or in your garden, that can attract interested cats so worth checking out.

Water gun. Don’t know if it will be effective but it will make you feel better!

As Hollow has advised, it’s best to try to cover bare soil to dissuade them from using it as a toilet. Not much good if they’re using the lawn though. Do you have problems with foxes and squirrels too?

The new earth around plants is just too tempting. There’s a spot in my garden that’s always being dug up and i’ve got my own mog. Water guns are fun too.

I think when something is recently planted, it’s tempting for cats and foxes (and indeed squirrels at this time of year) to scratch the earth away.

I have read that buying in some form of tiger or lion poo from zoos etc can help.

Or indeed from @Shannonsgc - see http://www.shannonsgardencentre.co.uk/in-stock-now/

Silent Roar is a lion dung based product which is good deterrent for cats - on the premise of a bigger cat in the area! We have had lots of feedback on it being very effective and also working against foxes …an animal that in this area seems to have problems with.

aww, cute kitty

I really wanted this to work… but it didn’t. I have ended up using branches from pruning (whichever have the sharpest leaves) which I lay over the areas they particularly like, much like @Hollow … won’t work on the lawn though.

I also read that leaving stored water around (in say upright buckets collecting rain) can attract them.

@Hikoki, did the ultrasonic work at all?

Thanks for the responses! The ultrasonic did seem to work for a while as when the batteries died, we quickly saw some more rummaging. New batteries in, but still seeing nuisance…

I’ve heard the lion pee, haven’t tried it. Perhaps a super soaker is handy! I’ve tried spiky stuff but they seem to even like it…maybe is a good scratcher for their bums.

Spikes didn’t work for me either!

Another angle

An ultrasonic device didn’t work for me. But admittedly it was the front garden we tried it on and the traffic kept setting it off. Also I’m told some cats can’t hear the nose.

The back garden is enclosed, so we put plastic prickle strips all around on the top of the fence and that seemed to work.

But the front garden is a nightmare. I’m not a fan of cats anyway, with their habit of killing birds and being host to the toxoplasmosis parasite but I’ve never lived in an area before where so many people have cats and just let them roam. I just don’t see the attraction. But I get that some people like them.

We’ve tried all the smelly deterrents - pleasant (citrus smelling) and not so pleasant (Silent Roar and Jeyes fluid. We’ve tried chicken wire and invested in huge quantities of expensive slate and pebbles. I’ve even resorted to sticking bits of holly in the ground. One particular bruiser has moved slate and stones and decorated the holly with poo, like some bizarre Christmas nightmare.

There is a device that you attach to a hosepipe and is movement sensitive. If it weren’t for fear of soaking the postman I’d try that. It may be worth investing in one for the back garden, if only for the entertainment value.

Good luck.

We have the same problem

What has not worked

• cat pellets
• chicken wire - they always find a way in
• putting gravel/bark on top of soil
• cat alarm only partially worked

What has worked

• making sure soil is compacted - less likely to dig
• water gun - this has worked the best BY FAR, and is the most fun
• chase them every time you see them. It puts the fear into them!

Lots of broken bamboo cane. In corners of our concrete beds we have put upright broken cane in the soil and also sprinkled some over any bare corners of soil. We have loads of curry leaf plants in our garden. Cat Sonars are ineffective.

We had to resort to covering the pebbles/ flagstones in the side return with netting as they started treating it like a massive cat litter tray!

Local cats are now forging their own Hollywood Boulevard on my lawn

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That looks more like fox shit.

And count yourself lucky. Growing up if we found cat paw prints it was one of these big boys.

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Cats normally bury their poo & foxes really really smell… maybe that will give you an indication of who is the culprit!
I’ve been told weeing on the spot deters, but we haven’t tried it personally

I thought it was just smushed by the rain. I’m fairly sure it’s cats that use our lawn. My eye has been trained by observing the differences between the fox poo on my front path with the dog poo on the pavement and the cat poo on my lawn.

I can post more pics to be sure tho

If that’s cat poo I’ll be a dutchman’s uncle! Nor fox poo either. Looks like dog diarrhoea. Is it a front or rear garden?

Gross to have to say this, but it looks like a not well cat to me. You’d be amazed but some owners put their cats on a vegetarian diet. Not only doesn’t it work, as cats will still catch birds and scavenge for scraps, but it has a terrible effect on their health. I’ve seen that kind of excrement before when it has definitely been left by a long term veggie fed cat. That cat’s leavings didn’t look like that all the time, but became more and more frequently like that. It didn’t bother to bury it either but it’s worse when they do as it can surprise you.

This is the sort of motion (no not that sort of motion) activated water sprayer I mentioned in an earlier post.

There are loads of this sort of thing on the Internet and I picked this link at random. There was a brilliant video for one of these devices online, which I can’t find now. You saw a man raking over a fresh seed bed while a cat lurked in the background. No sooner had he walked off than the cat walked in. Whoosh! It got a good soaking, did a bit of very funny acrobatics and legged it.

Looking again at your photo, at least you can take comfort in the fact that the cat has trodden in it and will take its icky paws back to its owner’s furniture.

Having seen @Beige’s DIY endoscope, I’m waiting to see what he invents to solve this problem himself

I’m thinking along these lines

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rear garden… oversized parakeet?

Hi there, I wondered if anyone had tried putting the peel of citrus fruit on their garden to deter cats ? Thank you!

I tried that. It did nothing to deter the cats, but the ants loved it.