cats

Are they using the garden as a latrine? This is what annoys most people.
1) Get a dog
2) Get a bigger, grumpier cat who uses Kitty Litter!
3) Borrow a handful of toddlers!
4) Get a big squirty water sprayer - spray the visitors when they are digging their hole. (Dont give children this job - they dont need to be taught to be cruel to animals)
5) Chuck snowballs
6) Chuck handful of soil.

Cats usually follow regular paths - identify this point on the boundary and treat with an alien scent - olbas oil, eucalytus or pepper spring to mind. Dont use bleach or citrus smelling liquids - thats very attractive to male cats especially.

Block holes under gates or in fences. Attach cheap trellis around the top of fence. Make it difficult to get in.
Cats are pretty lazy and dont often bother to dig.

Good luck.

Ann

Hi, I have a friend who had the same problem and solved it with a sonic scarer.Can,t remember the name but it was somrthing like "Scardy Cat". It cost around £11 and she is really pleased with the results. Oh nearly forgot she bought it from a sunday newspaper, Worth a try I think.

Some people on the site have had success with the sonic animal repellers, moved around the garden. There are also plants called 'Coleus canina' which apparently cats won't go near. There's a spray you can buy, too, from B&Q called 'Animal Repellent'to spray arounnd the gateway or where the cats come in.

You can get get those deterants from B Q for about £20 and they keep the cats out of your garden without doing any harm to them.

Most of my garden is densely planted, so cats can't find any exposed soil to dig in. But on my veggy patch, I use 'Scoot' which is a powder which you mix with water and water it on with a watering can. It has proved very effective. Can you pursuade your neigbours to provide their cats with litter trays? Even older cats will revert to using a tray rather than have to find a place outdoors, if the owners can be bothered to take responsibility. Tut.

One of my neighbours has a sonic cat repellant and I never see Blodyn going into that garden.
Or your sister could get a cat of her own. I've never been plagued by cats because my own cats have always chased the others away.

teabags soaked in olbas oil (eucalyptus) works very well with my cat .

Due to one of my neighbours having five cats and no soil for them to 'use' I have become quite an expert in methods of keeping cats off our gardens below is tricks I have tried and tested;1) Berberis cuttings laid on top of any open soil areas they have a nasty spike on their branches these worked well until the cats found out how to swipe them aside. 2) Teabags soaked with almost anything I was told deepheat would do the job sadly it had no effect. 3) Sticks put into the ground sticking up the theory is that the cats would sit down on it and get the shock of their lives...it never worked! 4) Water pistol to fire at the cats if you ever managed to catch them although didn't work for us as they did their 'thing' at night! 5) We have two terriers who would chase the cats off the garden as I said before this worked great but our 'girls' sleep inside at night and that was when things was deposited!
6) Finally got one of those sonic devices ours run on batteries so can be placed almost anywhere in the garden (although we did have to buy rechargeable batteries for them after a while) these things work incredibly well within days we noticed cats who didn't visit out garden give the whole area around us a very wide berth and then returning over the road once they were well out of our garden's range it gave us such a laugh. They worked so well we even brought two more, B&Q has them in but they cost £30 from them we brought two of ours from Ebay and the third off a carboot for £4 blooming good bargain I thought.
******************************************************************* Another thing we did in between getting the sonic devices was garden watch at night we saw which cats was doing their thing and waited until morning scooped up the mess to return to the owners garden the following night, after all when we had cats we made sure that they used a special toilet area in our garden instead of using neighbours lovely gardens. I know I might get some stick for returning the poop in such an underhanded way but the owners of the cats wouldn't like it if I took our 'girls' round to their lawn and told them to go toilet would they? Hel.xxx.

Thanks to everyone for all of the suggestions. I'll pass them on. They tell me they bought a sonic cat scarer ...and the cat went and sat next to it!!