richl@daemon.UUCP (Rick Lindsley) (04/15/85)
Thanks to all you who responded. Here is a summary of the responses I got by mail. Opinions which were submitted to the net were gratefully read but are not repeated here. My choice (and results so far) are at the end: I've found most cats absolutely hate the smell of orange peels. It needed a re-treatment every few weeks, but worked great. I have a couple books about cats and how to train them. One thing NOT to use is moth balls. I don't know how much they will deter the cat from using your planter, but they will destroy the cat's liver. I think one of the books mentioned that a wire mesh covering the planter would do the trick. we put 3-4 mothballs into each pot. Seems to work and hasn't harmed the cat or plants. Make sure you use the naptha-type mothballs, if you try this. There's another type, but its odor our cat doesn't mind. I use balloons to keep my cat away from things; showing her a few times what it was to pop a balloon with her claws convinced her that they aren't too much fun to play with. Unfortunately, she's not easily discouraged and gets around them, but perhaps this will be helpful. You might try the trick I used to convince my cats that attacking toilet-paper was a no-no: Soak the offended object in Szechwan hot oil. Sprinkle lightly with cayenned. Serve. Try putting black pepper in the planter so it gets in their noses when sniffing around. Or better yet try bananas that have been opened. My cat heads for the hills at the smell of a banana. I had the same problem 2 years ago, when the cats decided my carrot patch made a good litter box. A friend tried the mousetrap approach, to no avail. She found the cats digging around the mousetraps. I guess they're pretty smart creatures. Here's a non-physical, non-injuring solution: go to the zoo and talk to one of the zoo keepers about getting a bit of dung from one of the cages of the larger cat species. Bobcats are fine, tigers even better. Spread a little of this around your planter. You don't need a lot. A little goes a long way. Just ask the tigers how often they get bothered by domestic cats. Anyway, I know this works on gophers and moles. I spread a little around one of the mounds in our yard and the next day we had an earthquake which I assume was from the underground stampede of moles leaving the county (can you tell I come from Texas??). Try keeping the planter really wet for a few days. I used this method successfully in the same situation -- fortunately there were no plants in the planter yet. Well, I have two cats who used to get their jollies by uprooting my palm plants and all it took (for my relatively-easy-to-discourage cats) was a thin layer of gravel over the potting soil. Didn't even look bad! -------- I chose the mothballs, despite the warnings of the one person that they might harm the cats. They did great, except that the cat(s) then decided that my garden must be a MUCH NICER spot. Looks like my garden will have to be mothballed too, for a while. If you got this far, I've another question for you: can I grow things in the garden or planter while the mothballs are there? Rick