Dear Sven

We moved into our house nearly 4 weeks ago and we have a lovely long garden that has needed a lot of work. This is taking longer than expected due to next door having at least 4 cats which roam around our garden leaving deposits everywhere. We don't have a lot of money and have two children aged 3 and under so we are very limited to the preventions available. We want a presentable and child friendly garden so we cannot use anything that may harm our kids and we don't want to use methods that may make the garden look untidy or smell. I appreciate that the cats have to go somewhere and that they will not use they're own garden, but it's unfair that next door should have a nice smelling garden whilst ours is being used as a toilet. Can you recommend a cheap, tidy and unharmful method we could try?

Thanks

Tara Bradley


Our Gardens Expert replies:

Hi Tara

This is an age old problem that most of us face most of the time and there are hundreds of different products and methods available all with different levels of effectiveness. The first thing I can advise is that gravel is a definite no no! Any gravel area in a garden invaded by cats will usually just become one giant cat tray, larger cobbles and pebbles will usually be ok just avoid finer aggregates. The most popular product I have come across is called ‘silent roar’. Now this is going to sound a bit mad but they are basically pellets soaked in lion poo essence. I have just checked their website and due to EU law they have to sell the product as a fertiliser and not a cat repellent. This has something to do with the fact that they cannot control the exact make up of the product due to the fact that every lion poo is different depending on what they eat. But anyway, it really does work - cats are territorial and what cat is going to be brave enough to enter the territory of a much larger lion?! It costs about 9 quid a box so is fairly cheap and also harmless.

There is another product called the catwatch ultrasonic cat deterrent that has an infrared sensor that when tripped emits a high pitched noise (inaudible to us) that scares the cat off. It costs around 50 quid and is proven to be really effective. It is also accredited by the RSPB who recommend it as being effective. You may need a few of them to cover the garden and also they are more effective when plugged into the mains as opposed to running on batteries so you would need to buy the mains adapters and possibly run cables into the garden which means it is not the cheapest method.

There are many other alternatives such as spreading ground chilli powder to lemon peel around the garden, but these are really short term solutions seeing as it would need to be repeated regularly to remain effective. So I would try the lion poo!

Good luck

Sven