09-10-2004, 03:07 AM
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In article , wrote:
Priscilla H Ballou wrote:
Gardeners' Supply sells a gizmo that you can put on the dirt among your
plants. It's a grid of hard plastic spikes sticking up. You buy lots of
them ($$) or move their placement around. It doesn't hurt the cats, but
it does make the area inhospitable to them, and the idea is that
eventually they become habituated to disliking the area and then stay
away.
I cannot testify to its efficacy, since I don't mind cats in my garden and
even feed and provide shelter for local ferals (whom I've TNRed).
Priscilla
Who told you about this? Elvis?
While wasting money on plastic spikes seems more than a bit silly, & would
look tacky as all heck, & would take a two or three hundred of 'em to
cover a smallish garden, the same general principle can be achieved by
planting groundcovers.
Even soft short groundcovers deter cats, but if one wanted to deter both
cats & dogs from digging or squatting, go for a slightly taller & cruelly
spiky selection of groundcovers, like dwarf euphorbia crown-of-thorns,
groundcover creeping roses or dwarf shrub roses, crimson pygmy barberry,
vining raspberries or small creeping rubra cultivars, smilex or greenbrier
(sometimes called "cat briar" because of its usefulness in stopping cats
from shitting in the garden).
If you already have large roses, when pruning those, foot-long lengths of
thorny branches (fungus-inviting leaves removed) can be included in
topcoating surface mulches so cats can't dig easily.
But vengeful groundcovers aren't essential. Cats want to dig a hole for
their poops in loose unplanted soil. Any groundcover will discourage them.
Cat poo could also just be trowled to the compost pile & be regarded as
free soil enrichment & just stop being so crabby about cats. At last count
I'm visited by four neighbor's cats. It annoys me they get some birds but
their poo is way too trivial to go get ****y about.
-paghat the ratgirl
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com
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