France in Focus

Recently a rather large ginger cat has decided to treat our garden as it's own. The resulting lumps of cat poo in the potager are causing a problem. We want to plant tomatoes, courgettes and lettuce in the next few weeks so are looking for an effective way to deter this feline menace - Has anyone got a practical and effective solution please.

Ultrasonic devices - at a cost - seem to work OK

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1

Get a cat-hating dog, or two
No cats guaranteed.

How about some chicken wire over the veg? Cats don't like wire. It's flexible enough to curve it over plants.

Sorry its the only thing I can think of

If the poo is not being buried, this is indicative of the cat being an alpha Tom. He is marking his territory.

Each time you come across his presents, move them about a foot or so towards the edge of the potager and eventually into the area beyond.

Dogs are fine but unless you let them roam free overnight you will find his gifts in the morning.

The other thing you can try if you see him regularly in the garden, is to get a super-soaker water pistol.

They absolutely hate the smell of citrus.

Here's some tips I've just copied from our friend google - I'm going to implement them too, as we sometimes have this problem, but I also see the peelings are great to deter other unwanted creatures, and beneficial to the soil:

"Easily ward off those annoying neighborhood cats when you scatter small orange peel pieces throughout your garden's soil. Also, aphids and ants really do not like the scent of oranges, so you can bury the peels shallowly in your garden soil, or shred pieces of it and scatter that across your garden."

"Citrus peels contain sulfur, magnesium, calcium, and more nutrients your garden will thrive off of. Stir some of these nutrients into your soil. To add citrus peel to your soil, dry the peels and then blend them into a fine powder. Stir the powder directly into the soil and let the magic happen."

used coffee grounds worked for me

I borrowed a couple of pieges, traps when we had a problem with a particular Tom. When he finally succumbed, I took him for a little drive. Two weeks later either him or his identical twin returned, by which time I had returned the traps, so I thought I would invest 50€ in one off EBay, certainly did the trick, since shelling out I have not seen any infiltrators.

Thank you everyone, what a wonderful response. We are trying coffee grinds at the moment but to no avail so we will pop into LIDL on Wednesday when they do a promotion on Ultrasonic solar powered devices for €15 and buying oranges by the bag full. I'll keep you posted.

I'm glad you posted this, @Oldblueraincoat because we have the same problem. Not to be confused with hedgehog poo which is smaller. We're going to put 50cm chicken wire round the veg patch which should also keep our old doggie out. Cats tend not to jump over wire, but I've seen one come in over a 2m high wall (Spiderman in disguise ?).