Any ideas to stop next door's cat pooing in my raised beds?

[sybilfaulty]

Hello there

Title says it all really. Every morning we come down to see more presents from next door's cat. If I catch him in flagrante I bang on the window and he shoots off but usually I am there too late. It's vile.

We have bought some organic-y non toxic pellets which are safe for him, but he is now used to them and takes no notice. Does anyone have any suggestions which we could try?

Many thanks

wooden bbq squewrs (sorry can't spell today) sticking out of the soil at jaunty angles work fairly well and are cheap and non toxic

orange peel they don't like smell need to renew every few days though

Thanks - will try both of these today.

Supposedly cats hate eucalyptus as well, though my old cat LOVED it and would roll in tissues with olbas oil on them.

We tried everything (citrus, pepper, sharp sticks) and had limited succes with black pepper. So we covered our raised beds with weed control fabric and now we do 'no dig' which is fab.

Shotgun?

You can buy a squirter thing that is movement activated that attaches to an outside tap and sounds great fun, I was going to get one of those but I tried the weedcloth first.

You can apparently buy tiger and lion poo from zoos to repel them, but that seems to me like just having to work around bigger poos than the cat poo! I have tried spiky sticks laid over soil but looks awful! Orange peel did nothing but did make the garden look delightfully squalid... I have now gone for really, really dense planting wherever possible (appreciate may not be a good option in a vegetable bed) and covering exposed soil in pots with gravel (which also helps retain water).

I have had the same problem for years now and tried everything. I am sick to death of cleaning up cat shit because some lazy bastard on our street can't be arsed getting a litter tray - so we are getting a dog! that should sort the problem out.

Have you tried sticking twigs in the ground? Invisible from a distance but leave no space free.

You can get lion dung infused pellets, called Silent Roar (so not just great big lumps of lion poo), which are pretty effective, at least I haven't noticed any cat crap on my veggie plot for a while.

A hose works well but you have to catch them. They also don't like walkinh on tin foil but might look a bit space age.

Is this veg beds or flower beds?

For veg beds, I have all mine covered as standard with nets, to keep off birds and cats.

Part of the problem is that the cat now thinks that's the correct place to poo, so he's going to have to learn new habits. I think that netting the beds would be an effective way to do this.

If it's flower beds, if you have them planted more fully, without a lot of soil showing, the cat will be much less keen on pooing there, and the beds will look better.

grendel, they are veg beds, so netting might be the way forward. I love the idea of foil, but skewers probably would be a good start. I'll see what I can do tomorrow.

Thanks everyone

my cat has a litter tray but it doesnt stop him going al fresco

Oh, definitely net them. It's well worth it for the birds as well as cats. I have plastic netting cut to size for all the beds, and I just drop them onto the bed in spring, and take it off and store it in the shed in winter.

mine is barricaded on all sides with about 2 ft of netting held up by bamboo sticks, so they can't get over it. Means I can access the soil to weed/plant easily. Also do the sticks/skewers sticking out of pots when I've just sown seeds in them.
pepper doesn't work IME, not strong enough and rain washes it away.
I also found leaving the rose branches i'd trimmed from the garden over the soil pretty effective, although they'd always find a bare patch to poo on!

I would agree with the sticks. I had great fun playing the keeping my cat out of my veg patch game - the freshly dug over soil was totally irresistible to her.

I put up a 3' fence - she jumped straight over it
I put a net over - found her curled up asleep on top of it, squashing my beetroot.
I dug over a nice patch on the opposite side of the garden - she started pointedly avoiding that area.

Finally, I stuck little twigs in between the plants all over the place. This worked amazingly well! I was overzealous quite thorough and stuck loads and loads in

I won!

I have just read that cats hate vinegar so maybe sprinkle that around your garden. Worth a try!

My Dad swears by chilli seeds scattered everywhere.

Personally, I use lemon rind and used tea bags.

Same problem, neighbour cats pooing in raised veggie beds - not a happy preggo woman! Bought some ultrasonic cat repellers from Amazon for about 14 quid a piece and so far these seem to have done their job - not seen the little blighters for a while . Like the wooden skewers idea...