How to Keep Cats Out of Your Garden (8 Humane Methods)

Neighborhood cats often treat garden beds like litter boxes. Beyond the unpleasantness of grabbing cat feces while weeding, there are real concerns: cat waste carries pathogens, digging damages plants, and cats kill billions of songbirds annually.

You don’t need poison or traps to control cats in the garden. These eight humane methods make your garden unattractive to cats without harming them.

Quick Summary: Keep cats out of your garden by removing food sources, using motion-activated sprinklers or sound devices, installing digging barriers, and planting cat-repelling plants like Coleus canina and rue. Combine multiple methods for best results. Read time: 10 min | Difficulty: Easy to moderate

Jump to: Problems Caused by Cats | Humane Methods of Control | FAQ

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Why Are Cats a Problem in Gardens?

If you’ve ever been tending your vegetable patch and grabbed a piece of cat poop with your bare hand, you’re probably well aware of why the presence of cats in your garden can be an issue. But did you know it’s more than just gross?

Cat Lovers Take Note! Did you know that several vegetable plants in your garden are poisonous to our beloved cats? For example: Eggplant, Onions, Garlic, Chives, Leeks, Scallions, and Shallots!

How to Keep Cats Out of Your Garden: 8 Humane Methods

Cats can be extremely annoying, but there’s no need to harm them. but there’s no need to harm them. Poison, chemicals, shooting, and the like are illegal, cruel, terrible for neighborhood relations and sometimes dangerous to other pets and even children.

So what can you do? Actually, a lot. Here are 8 handy tips that will help you make your garden as unattractive to cats as possible. Try implementing as many as you can for the best results.

1. Remove Food Sources

It’s also a good idea to remove or block access to any comfy hang-out spots. Cats love to bask in the sun and curl up in warm and secluded places. This can include cushioned garden furniture, bins and boxes, cloths and tarps, and especially sheds and greenhouses.

Lastly, do you grow plants like catnip and other species in the mint family, a kiwi bush, silver vine, or lemongrass?

Some popular garden plants are irresistible to cats. If you’re struggling to keep your neighborhood felines out, it’s worth considering whether you should get rid of these.

2. Sound-Based Repellent Devices

Cats and other critters can hear higher-pitched frequencies than humans. This means that one very neat and cruelty-free solution that will help get rid of cats is a motion-activated, sound-based repellent device.

Basically, when a cat stalks into the range of the device, it starts producing a very high-pitched “EEEEP”. You can’t hear it, but the cat can, and it’ll soon get so annoyed by it that it prefers trying its luck elsewhere.

Some devices even emit light flashes (visible and infrared), imitate owl noises, and more.

Results vary. Many gardeners report success, and others find cats ignore it. It’s worth trying given the low cost.

Many sound-based repellent devices will also scare off martens, rodents (including rabbits and squirrels), raccoons, foxes, deer, and more.

The downside is that they’re also highly annoying to dogs, so if your furry friend has access to your garden at night, that can pose a problem.

3. Motion-Activated Sprinklers

Speaking of motion-activated devices, here’s another good one: sprinklers. The only thing a cat hates more than water is water that comes unexpectedly!

The concept of motion-activated sprinklers is similar to the aforementioned sound-based devices. A cat or other animal gets in its range, it shoots a jet of water (and optionally makes an annoying or threatening sound), and the intruder hopefully decides it’s not worth it to stick around.

4. Digging Barriers

Cats like soft surfaces like dirt flowerbeds. It allows them to dig, which they do to bury their excrement, and they like the comfortable feel on their paws and to lay down and take a nap.

As such, one great way to make your garden much less attractive to cats is to add annoying, uncomfortable spikes. A system that prevents them from digging into your flowerbeds altogether, like the classic pointy “scat mat“, is an effective option.

For a homemade solution, some folks have had good success with simply sticking chopsticks, plastic forks or kebab sticks in the ground. Laying down chicken wire can also help prevent any digging from taking place.

5. Scent-Based Repellents

Cats have extremely sensitive noses. Although this can cause them to be attracted to your garden, like if there’s garbage out or you grow plants they like, you can also use it in your favor.

First off, there are different types of commercial scent-based cat repellents out there:

• Granules and sprays with botanical oils and other scents cats dislike
• Granules and sprays containing mountain lion, coyote or wolf pee to scare cats

Aside from this, you can also use natural essential oil concentrates and various spices that cats dislike. They’ll avoid a bunch of different scents:

• Spices: cayenne, black pepper, mustard powder, cinnamon
• Oils: citrus and citronella, lavender, rosemary, pine, eucalyptus

Scent-based repellents, both store-bought and DIY, tend to have mixed reviews. Some folks are highly enthusiastic, others say the cats didn’t care at all!

Since most of these potential solutions don’t break the bank, I’d say they’re more than worth giving a try.

Tip: Some essential oils, like tea tree, are unattractive but unfortunately also toxic to cats. Even if they don’t eat oil-covered plants, they can get the oil on their paws and ingest it while grooming, so check first to avoid accidentally poisoning the neighbors’ beloved kitty. Always dilute essential oils.

6. Cat-Repelling Plants

Cat-repelling plants won’t solve the problem alone, so I’d recommend using them alongside other methods.

Remember, it’s all about combining different strategies to make your space as unattractive to them as possible!

Just as there are plants that cats adore, there are others they hate. The one to start with is appropriately named the scaredy cat plant, scientific name Coleus canina.

Although as with most methods, there are unfortunately no scientific studies that prove or disprove its effectiveness, gardeners generally report that most cats really don’t like the scent of this plant.

You do need to wear gloves (and maybe hold your breath!) when handling it, though, because it emits a skunky odor that’s noticeable to humans when the leaves are disturbed.

Other plants you can try include:

• Rue (Ruta graveolens)
• Lavender (Lavandula sp.)
• Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus)
• Citrus trees

7. Fencing

Not having much success with the methods we’ve discussed so far? If you’re exasperated and don’t mind spending a little to keep your garden cat-free, install fencing.

Now, I can hear you thinking: how does a fence keep out a cat unless it’s about 15 feet tall? You can of course place spikes at the top, but you may unintentionally end up hurting a cat this way.

The trick is to angle the top of the fence outwards. You can go for a pre-slanted fence, but there are also angled fence toppers available that you can attach to an existing one.

Alternatively if you already have a fence, but it is not effective in keeping neighborhood cats out, you could try this kind of cat prevention conversion kit from Amazon.

Aside from this, I also really like the following:

8. Fence Rollers

Fencing alone not working or you don’t want to have an unsightly angled fence or fence topper? There is another solution: Oscillot® cat-proof fence kits.

It’s simple but kind of genius. The system is little more than an aluminum bar with paddles that spin when pressure is applied. When a cat jumps up in order to try and gain a foothold on the fence, it instead hits the paddles, which will roll and cause it to fall back down unhurt.

These fence kits are generally used to keep cats in (as in the short video graciously provided by a friend of mine below), not out, but there’s no reason they wouldn’t work the other way round.

It can be pricey to install one of these fence rollers along your property line. Still, if you really need to keep cats out, like if you keep chickens or other birds, it’s a highly effective solution.

Cat Video Below

FAQ

See the Grow Your Own Food category for over 75 guides for fruit and vegetable gardening.

References:

Kanine, J., & Mengak, M. T. (2014). Managing wildlife damage: Feral cats (felis catus).