February 4, 2021
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  • How to Keep Cats Out Of Your Yard, 6 Proven Methods

how to keep cats out of your yard & garden

If you are a gardener with abundant love for your plants and yard, cats can be a big menace for several different reasons.

  • First, all cats, whether feral or pets have absolutely no respect for fences and property lines — they will walk into your yard and wreak havoc.
  • Second, cats will eat and destroy the grass bed.

They do this for a reason — other than being a natural laxative, grass also contains the necessary enzymes needed to break down many of the things in a cat’s digestive tract. It also contains folic acid, an essential vitamin that allows cats to support hemoglobin production within the body.

Thus, cats have a natural affinity for grass, which compels them to be unwelcomed intruders in yards all the time.

How to Keep Cats Out Of Your Yard, 6 Proven Methods

Cat in Garden

Fortunately, you can do many things to keep cats away from your yard without causing them any harm. In this article, we try to answer an often-asked question: how to keep cats out of your yard?

Start by Making Your Garden Bed Repelling to Cats

Pinecones in Yard

Like any other animal, cats prefer to walk on soft soil. Thus, one of the best ways to make your yard less inviting to cats is to cover your yard with prickly solutions.

One of the easiest things to do is placing prickly things, such as pine cones, holly cuttings, or eggshells in your yard. You can even use twigs or broken wooden chopsticks.

These commonly available items make it difficult for cats to walk on the garden bed and therefore, keeps them away.

If your feline neighbors continue to visit you often, try placing a chicken wire mesh or plastic mesh vegetable bags over the soil.

However, make sure to cut the mesh in places so that you have ample space to place your plants. You can also choose to cover your garden bed with mulch.

Create Smell Barriers

Lavender Flower in Garden

Here’s an important fact you should know: cats have approximately 200 million odor-sensitive cells in their body.

The massiveness of this number becomes more apparent when you compare it to the 5 million odor-sensitive cells that exist within the human body.

This gigantic number is also the reason that cats are extremely sensitive to smell and thus, smell barriers are quite efficient at keeping cats away.

Cats cannot bear the smell of many plants.

These include lemon thyme, lavender, pennyroyal, rue, and Coleus Canina.

Soooooooo – planting these will help you keep cats out of your yard.

Similarly, if you want to use only natural ways to keep cats away, you can plant citrus fruits, such as oranges and lemons, in your yard or use a blood meal fertilizer as cats cannot stand the smell of dried blood.

Brewed coffee works well too. If you are up for using artificial smell barriers, it is quite easy to find commercial odor barriers that keep cats away.

Most of these cat repellents come in granular form — simply sprinkle the product in the area that cats visit often and the product will do its job.

However, while buying a commercial cat repellent, make sure to put your money in a non-toxic repellent that won’t harm your plants.

Create Sound Barriers

high-frequency cat deterrent device for garden

Cats’ ears are designed in such a way that they draw sound directly to the ear canal. This body feature allows cats to stay aware of anything happening within a radius of 30 feet or more. Unfortunately, it also makes them highly sensitive to sound barriers.

You can buy a high-frequency cat deterrent device to keep cats away. These devices are designed in such a way that the sound they produce cannot be heard by humans but is unbearable for cats.

Place the device close to the area that the cats visit often. Similarly, it is also easy to find motion-sensitive devices that go off only when a cat is close.

Water Barriers Work Well Too

cat sprinkler deterrent

Water barriers are quite effective against cats. There are two ways in which you can use water to keep cats away from your yard.

First, install a sound device, such as a wind chime or bells, or a box full of pebbles that will alert you about a cat walking into your garden.

When the cat, walks in, use a sprinkler to squirt water over them. This exercise will reinforce the idea that they are not welcome in your garden.

However, since wind chimes and pebble boxes are not a hundred percent effective in alerting homeowners, it is a better idea to invest some money in an automatic water sprinkler that starts squirting jets of water as soon as it feels an intruder walking in.

Pick yours up over at Amazon.com.

Try Proposing a Truce

shaking hands with a cat

You don’t necessarily have to chase off the cats to protect your garden. You can keep your garden safe by proposing a truce.

How?

If there are too many cats and you have failed at controlling them, try building a cat enclosure outside of your yard.

This way, the cats will still frequent your yard but will stay away from your plants and grass bed. Similarly, you can also put out a litter box where the cats can come and do their business and leave.

Since cats love honeysuckle and mint, putting these two around the enclosure and litter box will help restrict the cats to these areas.

However, do remember that building a cat enclosure and litter box is easier than maintaining them. Thus, adopt this method only if you are willing to put in some work every alternate day.

Keep Your Garden Clean and Create a Fence

cat deterrent garden fences

Cats, like most other animals, choose a single spot to take care of their business and they keep using the same spot over and over again.

Thus, an effective way to keep cats away is to wash your yard daily to get rid of the urine smell the visiting cats must have left behind.

Using a little bit of castile soap will help you get rid of the smell more easily.

You can also try erecting a fence. If you are using a fence to keep the cats away, make sure the fence is at least 5.5 feet in height with approximately 5-centimeter-big holes.

The Final Word

Whether you like it or not, cats and other small animals will often pay a visit to your yard and sometimes, even ruin your hard work.

Thus, if you have a yard, you must take measures to keep these animals away.

We hope the suggestions discussed in this article will help you get rid of all the cats that have been frequenting your yard for some time now.

By the way, if you’re still looking for a new Lawn Mower, or Lawn Mower Reviews, we have several buyers guides on this website dedicated to helping you with that decision, so have a look around!

Daniel Simmons

About the author

TheLawnMowingKing.com brings my 25 years experience as a professional gardener and landscaper to you!

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