Cat Behavior Article

How to Keep Cats from Invading Your Garden

Few things are as relaxing as working in your own home garden. Many homeowners take pride in having their own home garden to not only enhance the beauty of their home but to also provide outdoor activity. One thing for certain is that if you have a home garden it is going to attract animals of one type or another.

You don't have to live in the country to have a home garden become a haven for an animal. Cats seem to love gardens, and will frequent them on a regular basis. While some garden owners would have no problem with cats coming by once in awhile, some gardeners find cats to be a nuisance and would rather they not come by to pay their respects at all. If you find yourself facing a cat problem in your garden, there are a few things that you can do to help dissuade wandering kitties from setting up camp in your garden.

One of the most common means to keep unwanted visitors out of a garden is to put up a garden fence. When doing so you must ensure that your garden fence does not have any gaps in its protection of your garden. Cats are natural athletes and can leap very high. Usually fences do not propose much of a problem for most cats leaping abilities. If you decide to use a fence as your primary means of keeping unwanted animals out of your garden, you may not succeed if you have a particularly determined cat.

If you do not want to use a fence or if already have a fence put up around your garden and still have cats coming into the fenced in area, you will need to employ other methods of cat repellant. Some individuals like to use the old tried and true cat hates dog method and, and simply release Rover into the garden when the cat happens to be there. After a few times being chased through the garden some cats will decide it's too risky to come back, however there is the chance that Rover and Kitty may trample your precious plants.

One sure fire way that is a bit more humane than letting Rover loose on Kitty’s tail is to use water to repel unwanted cats from your garden. You can use one of several methods to deliver the water to the cat. You can use a bucket filled full of water and give him a real good dousing that way, or if you're pretty good shot you could use the water hose and shoot him with a burst. This method works fairly well and will only have to be repeated a few times.