Gardening - HELP - CATS!!!

[Recently_Awoken]

My raised beds have become the local litter box for a few local cats. What's the best way to deal with this headache (short of shooting or trapping - though both options are beginning to appeal to me as I see more of my plants being killed!!!)?

[meesa]

Deterring cats from garden beds is a very tough thing to do short of fencing with chicken wire, but that can get expensive. My solution would be to create a garden bed specifically for kitties Attract them with Cat nip and make it extra sandy !

[Skyowl's Wife]

I was looking to repel cats from my front flower bed and ran across this: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/...205302836.html

It has a bunch of ideas!

[paintball]

Not sure if it works but have been told that hair around the garden will stop animals from entering... was told that going to the barber and getting bags of hair for this is not an un common thing.

[mjbaker]

My friend had the same problem so he pepper sprayed the cats then sprayed some on the fence around the garden. They came back once and smelled the spray and ran. He never had trouble again. It's kinda cruel but better than killing them I guess.

[Oscar Wilde]

Cayenne pepper .... spread all around the perimeter.

O.W.

[Recently_Awoken]

Thanks for all the great ideas and leads.

Shopping trip last night yielded:
- Plastic Poultry Netting (flexible and pretty cheap)
- Cayenne Pepper
- Tack Strips

Lost an entire section of peas, much of my carrots, all but 1 row of beets, and half my melon plantings to these over-sized vagrant rats. They're lucky I don't shoot them. (for the animal lovers out there - I think cats are okay indoors. "Domestic" cats left to wander out doors in a suburban setting... I consider wild, and their owners lazy and intentionally oblivious to any damage they create).

I'd approach the owners for help, but what's the point... if they were going to keep indoor cats, they'd already be keeping indoor cats. Besides, they're too busy with their boats and vacations to care. Wonder, if I sent my dog over to take a dump in their new inboard and dig up their front yard... if that would breech any barriers of understanding with them. Probably not.

I guess half a garden is better than none this season. Lesson learned.
Anyways, thanks for all the help. I really appreciate it.

RA

[Brother Bill]

We had the same issue a few years ago. After many failed attempts we ended up spraying 3 of them with pepper spray. For about 2 weeks after we sprayed the area around the garden every 2-3 days and they never came back.