Bit of a gross subject matter for today’s post, but I can’t be the only one with this problem.
Yes, I’m talking about cat poo. Specifically cats pooing in my garden and the different ways I tried to stop them.
With the sun coming out, the neighbourhood cats have been taking absolute liberties in the various sunspots around my garden. I’m pretty sure one of them peed on the electric car charger, too. It’s got something nasty on it that I will need to clean anyway…
I get it. Cats are great pets and they like to roam, but they’re not my pets, so why am I cleaning up after them?
I got fed up with it. After talking myself down from taking a week off work and buying an airgun, I took a deep dive into the subject of cat poo prevention.
There are loads of approaches out there, and some are totally impractical – who wants to cover their entire lawn with mesh for God’s sake? – but after trying a few more realistic methods, I will tell you what worked and what didn’t.
Cat Poo Prevention Fails
What I quickly learned, is any method that is easy is unlikely to work. Quite a few that aren’t probably don’t either. I read stories about people who had redesigned their gardens full of apparently cat deterring plants, only for it not to work.
Anyway here are the options I tried that failed.
Bottle of Water
My Nana used to do this. That was probably the first clue that it wasn’t going to work – those old wives tales never do, do they?
Anyway, it was quick, easy, and free, so I tried this method first. I force fed my fella the last of his Dr Pepper, filled that 2 litre bad boy with water, and laid it out on one of the most badly hit garden beds.
The next day? Cat poo literally right next to the bottle. These moggies were mocking me! 😹
I think the idea is that the light reflects off the water and scares the cats away or something, a bit like those videos of cats being scared by cucumbers.
Anyway, it didn’t work.
Chilli Seeds or Powder
Some of you might tell me that this is cruel because it hurts the cats by burning their bums. Well it can’t have hurt them that much because it didn’t work.
Alright it sort of worked, maybe. It’s hard to say.
I put a mix of chilli seeds and chilli powder around the areas the cats seemed to like best, and to be fair I didn’t notice any more ‘presents’ showing up for a few days.
However, it’s not a long term solution because the seeds and powder get blown or washed away over time. I have no way of knowing if the lack of additional cat poo was down to the chilli or just because the little buggers hadn’t been in the garden for a few days, either.
The smell combined with a sting in the behind when they sit on the chilli is supposed to put them off. Maybe it’s true, but I can’t be spending my weekends throwing chilli powder all over my garden.
Cat Poo Prevention Successes
What works for you will be dependent on your garden to a point. However, the key thing to do is isolate the areas the cats love and attack them first.
For example, if they love a particular sunspot but you don’t need it to be a sunspot, block the sun with a bush. That might not be possible, but this is the right way to think about the problem. It’s trial and error, but this is what I ended up getting success with.
Spikes
Calm down, I’m not suggesting impaling the poor little things.
This did work for me, but it comes with a caveat – it only works under gravel. It’s not practical to put spikes throughout your whole garden, but if you have a small area of garden stones it’s a winner.
I have a thin bit outside my living room window which is just loose gravel before it becomes the garden wall. It’s also a sun spot and the cats loved it – it was one of the most pooed on places in my garden. The worst thing was it is also right next to my front door so the smell… wow…
Anyway, you can buy spikey matts that sit underneath the stones which the cats don’t like walking on, or more importantly, sitting on (insert an h after the s if you like 🤭😇).
Rake the stones back, lay the matt of spikes, rake the stones back over so just the tips of the spikes are showing, and voila. Cat poo be gone!
Motion Activated Sprinklers and Ultrasounds
To prevent cat poop on grass, literally the only thing that worked was a combination of motion activated ultrasound machines and sprinklers.
I bought some ultrasound thingies first. You know, they make a high pitched noise when you walk past them. Kind of irritating at first but you get used to them.
The first set I bought were cheap and sort of half worked, so I got some better ones and things improved. However there were still a few areas the cats still seemed happy to use as their toilet.
So I went the whole hog and bought a sprinkler.
Same concept: cat walks past, motion activated sprinkler triggers, cat gets sprayed. How do you like it moggie!? 🚿
This did the trick. It was a bit of a pain to set up, and we have to switch it off to use the garden ourselves, but at least now we can use the garden ourselves with no fear of sitting in next door’s cat’s mess.
The way we have them positioned means it keeps the cats of the flower beds too, so with the spike matts under the stones and the ultrasound and sprinklers keeping the grass and flower beds safe, our garden is now a cat poo free zone.