There is nothing more annoying than finding little “presents” in your vegetable garden, left there by your own or some neighbor’s cat. The unmistakable odor of spray markings is equally distasteful and those middle-of-the-night fights under your bedroom window cause loss of sleep. It is not just for these annoyances that one should consider steering cats away from your gardens, it is also for health and sanitation reasons.

Cat feces can harbor pathogens harmful to humans due to their carnivorous diet, most notably Toxoplasmosis which is dangerous to in vitro human fetuses. You definitely do not want this in your vegetable garden or be stirring it up between flowers, and do not put it in the compost.

Not only do outdoor felines foul and fight (often a precursor to breeding), but free-roaming neighborhood cats can start turf wars raging inside your own home. Since a feline’s territory includes everything within sight though a window, strangers in the yard may upset indoor cats so much that marking and fights may start within.

Short of completely fencing in your property with special cat-proof barriers or digging a moat, what can one do? There are some ways to deter the neighborhood felines from visiting your property and marking it as their own, but it may take some experimentation to find the solution which works for you.

One thing I came up with that works is covering my vegetable garden with those plastic trays you get at the nursery with your seedlings. I’m talking about the ones that have the 3” holes for the plastic pots. These holes are the perfect size for planting young plants and the tray can stay in the garden all during the growing season and be reused. They have an added benefit of keeping low-hanging vegetables from touching the dirt. Best of all, they are free for the asking.

As a cat barrier in other places, chicken wire works great, is inexpensive and easy to install. If you have not yet landscaped, use it to cover the dirt or mulch in your flower beds, cutting holes with wire cutters as needed for flowers and shrubs. If plantings are already in, lay the wire down between them and stake in place.

Landscaping with crushed rocks or gravel will deter cats from digging and even walking where it is. My sister made a garden path with crushed walnut shells left over from shelling her harvest. It was attractive, made a nice crunching sound when walked upon, and was a very green idea. It should work equally well for keeping cats at bay.

Planting roses, holly, cacti and other spiny specimens unattractive to cats will help. Or try plants giving off unpleasant (to cats) odors such as lavender, rue, pennyroyal, and Coleus Canina (“Scardy-Cat” variety) as alternatives. Use the trimmings of the roses and holly elsewhere in the yard for mulch to extend their affectivity.

Commercial repellants, either in spray, granular or pellet form, need reapplications to be continually effective. A simple granular one is blood meal fertilizer which lasts quite awhile and is beneficial to some plants. Another is called Shake-Away with the odor of fox and coyote urine, hopefully only detected by cats.

Water is a great deterrent. There is a product called the Scarecrow, which is motion sensor activated and shoots a water spray at any intruder, including you if you happen by. I’ve been told that it is very effective and works much better than a squirt gun as it’s on duty 24/7; you want the cats to associate water with your yard and not you.

There are some tech products out there that emit high frequency sounds supposedly unbearable to cats. I have no idea if they work or not but check out CatStop and Bird-X YG Yard Gard if interested.

A canister-type called Ssscat! which emits a “pssht” blast of air is supposed to be effective and can be used virtually anywhere. Convenient, but will need to be replaced when the compressed air runs out. This would be good for training cats to stay off kitchen counters, however.

I’ve also read that mothballs work, however I did not find them very effective in keeping a neighbor’s cat from hunting birds on my front porch as they came to drink and bathe in a fountain. The mothballs just made my front door area smell like my grandmother’s closet. If you do try them, be sure to enclose them in a glass or plastic container with holes in the lid as they are toxic.

One of my readers told me she sprinkles her old spices around the garden and the cats have gone away. I’ve also heard from several sources that citrus peels do the same.

If any one out has other solutions proven to be effective, I’d love to hear them and so would my fellow cat columnist cronies.