04/28/2026
Dear Laurie,
Help! My beautiful garden is being destroyed by the neighborhood cats. They are constantly digging and eliminating in the garden and ruining my plants. I have an indoor cat and can’t understand why folks let their cats run wild in all the neighbor’s yards. Are there some humane ways to deal with this?
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Cats may not only be wreaking havoc with your garden but cats wandering through your yard can upset your indoor cat as well. Also, if you have a bird feeder in your yard, you don’t want the neighborhood cats feasting on your birds for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
Here are some positive strategies that are both effective and humane and that can serve to keep cats out of your garden. There are both natural and electronic solutions that will make your yard unappealing and unattractive to wandering cats. Try one or several of these to see what works best.
The first strategy I recommend calls for placing garden netting at or slightly below the ground level of your garden. Holes should be cut into the netting to allow your plants to flourish. You may also want to lay some large decorative rocks on top of the netting to secure the netting in place. When the cat intruders walk on the netting or attempt to dig in the dirt, the feel of the netting will be uncomfortable to them, and since cats need to cover up when they eliminate, and digging isn’t an option, they will move on. (Hopefully back to their own yard!)
There are several electronic devices that you can buy to detour “cat traffic” from your yard that are both triggered by the cats movement. The first of these is a motion-activated lawn sprinkler. When the cat comes within the range of the sprinkler, he’s sprinkled with a burst of water (surprise!) which isn’t strong enough to hurt him but just strong enough to scare him off. The sprinkler can either be permanently installed or a moveable version is also available. One other choice is an ultrasound device which emits a high-frequency sound that cats hate but humans cannot hear. Both of these offer an alternative to actually changing your garden arrangement.
Having offered you some positive solutions, I would also like to make sure you understand what not to use. One tactic folks seem to use is to lay moth balls around the garden. Please do not do this. Mothballs are extremely toxic to cats. Simply inhaling the fumes from the mothballs can cause cats to have liver damage.
One last thing I would like to point out is to always remember to wear gardening gloves when you are working outside and wash your hands when finished. An illness called toxoplasmosis can be passed on to humans through cat f***s.
Hopefully, utilizing some of the above strategies will allow you and your neighborhood cats to live in peace and harmony!
©2026 Laurie A. Penca
All Rights Reserved
