Guide

Is your garden the neighbourhood cat toilet? Here’s what you can do

26.5.2023

Translation: Veronica Bielawski

Crap! They’ve done it again. Many garden owners are no stranger to the struggle of clearing cat poo from their lawn or flowerbed time and again. Here’s what you can do to keep the felines at bay.

Cats are to take care of then some other pets – for one, because you don’t have to walk them. They do their business independently. This can, however, prove a nuisance to others – for example, to one pet-less reader in the Galaxus Community. In the comments of my interview with an animal psychologist, a reader asked how they could stop the neighbour's cat from doing his business in their garden. For said reader as well as anyone else plagued by cat faeces, here are some tips. Disclaimer: as a friend of felines, I probably couldn’t bring myself to implement certain of these.

Communicate

The simplest option, which also costs nothing, is to seek out a conversation with the cat owner. Perhaps they could do something against it, like set up a litter box outside for their cat to use instead of your garden. But neighbours can’t always influence their cat’s toilet habits – or may not want to.

Chase them away

If your neighbours don’t want to hear you out, then maybe their cat will. Another option that’s free of charge is to scare the animal away from your yard using auditory cues such as a hissing sound or clapping.

Hose them down

If noise doesn’t faze the cat, perhaps a little spray down with the garden hose will do the trick. But keep in mind that some cats, such as the Turkish Angora, the Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest Cat, are real water lovers and probably won’t get the memo. In addition, you won’t always be in the right place at the right time to catch the cat red-handed. If that’s your main issue, a motion-activated water jet animal repeller might be worthwhile. If it detects the cat, it’ll spray water in his direction.

Scatter away

If that doesn’t work either, you might try taking a trip to your kitchen. Why, you ask? Well, something cats don’t like at all is the smell of coffee grounds and pepper. So, it’s worth a try to put some out in little plates in your garden or to scatter some in the affected flowerbeds. This is an inexpensive option that should have the added benefit of acting as a fertiliser and attracting earthworms. But it does have one drawback: the effect quickly fizzles out in rain or wind. The same applies to cat-repellent sprays, powders and granules.

Animal care + Supplies

Swisspet Keep away spray for cats

Cat, 175 ml

Plant away

If you’re looking for a longer-term solution that doesn’t cost much, you can fill your garden with plants that cats don’t like. These include the Plectranthus caninus (colloquially known as the Dog Gone, Scaredy Cat Plant), lavender, peppermint, rue, crane’s-bill or scented geranium. In addition, spikey plants such as roses may prevent cats from doing their business in your flowerbed. You can also use plants that cats especially like – think catnip, cat thyme and valerian – to lure them to a specific portion of your garden so that they leave the rest of it alone.

Seeds

EUR16,37

Click and Grow Lavender

Herb seeds

Seeds

Samen Mauser Peppermint

Herb seeds

Sound the alarm

Certain cats are a tough cookie to crack – neither scaring them away or hosing them down, nor coffee grounds or repellent plants will deter them. In this case, there remains a slightly more expensive, but quite effective option: an ultrasonic cat repellent. It comes equipped with a motion detector and emits high-frequency sounds when movement is detected. These sounds aren’t audible to humans, but are extremely unpleasant for cats (and other animals as well).

Alas, if the neighbour’s cat proves such a Rambo that it continues pooping away in your garden despite all attempts to deter it, then I suppose I have just one more (not-so-serious) suggestion for you: perhaps it’s time to drive your neighbours away with hissing sounds or clapping instead of their cat. But you didn’t hear that from me.

How do you manage to keep cats out of your garden? Let me know in the comments!

Header image: Shutterstock

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Darina Schweizer

Senior Editor

Darina.Schweizer@digitecgalaxus.ch

I love anything with four legs or roots - especially my shelter cats Jasper and Joy and my collection of succulents. My favourite things to do are stalking around with police dogs and cat coiffeurs on reportages or letting sensitive stories flourish in garden brockis and Japanese gardens.

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