God I hate cats. I don’t mind the pampered pussies who stay inside all day and act cute. I don’t even have that much of a problem with the mainly feral felines who keep rural rodents under control. It’s the ones in the middle I hate – the domesticated cats that consider my garden to be part of their territory.

It was bad enough yesterday morning when I discovered that the only thing worse than discovering cat shit in your raised beds is discovering cat diarrhoea in your raised beds. I can tell there’s cat shit in the garden ages before I find it – the pong is unbelievable.

After I cleaned up yesterday’s mess I took the offensive, donned some rubber gloves, and crumbled up dried chillies into my largest raised beds. Hopefully any cat crouching there will get more than he bargained for!

Cat-astrophe

But this morning there is worse news – something, presumably feline, has trashed one of my forest garden beds. Yesterday the sweet violets, Egyptian onions and sea kale were thriving at the base of the Japanese wineberry. This morning they’re all severely damaged. It doesn’t even look as though they’ve been scratched up in the search for a suitable toilet site. Pete says he heard two cats fighting last night, so presumably they were having their rough and tumble on my poor plants.

Cats are a perennial problem in this garden. Episode 40 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden (recorded back in 2007) details some more of the ways you can deal with them, as well as presenting a balanced view with some stuff about people who welcome cats in their gardens.

The six foot fence deters the older, fatter cats, but the neighbours keep buying new kittens that are more athletic. In despair I have placed an order with the Organic Gardening Catalogue for cat repellents of various sorts (we have a PIR scarer, but it doesn’t seem to be doing the job at the moment) and will report back on whether any of them work.


If you’re having problems with cats leaving you ‘gifts’ or otherwise trashing your garden then have a look at my ebook – My Garden is Not a Cat Toilet: 101 ways to stop cats wrecking your garden.