Cat Deterrent Home Remedies

Whether strays outside or your pets inside, cats are adept at getting into places you don't want them and making nuisances of themselves. They seem to take great pleasure in using your garden for an outdoor litter box and eating your houseplants. But with a little planning and patience, you can deter them from their destructive paths.
  1. Outside

    • The fresh-dug, soft earth of a garden or flower bed seems to be a magnet for cats looking for a good place to eliminate. Their urine can severely damage plants and weeding becomes an especially distasteful chore when you have to deal with kitty's leavings. The best cure is prevention. In this case the most effective way to protect your garden is to keep the cats from entering it in the first place. Try spreading a roll of wire across the entry points to your garden and spraying it with eucalyptus or anise oil. Cats do not like stepping into the holes in the wire or the smell of the oils. You can also try placing a motion-controlled scarecrow sprinkler in the area; it runs loudly and sprays in an arc, scaring the cat away. Citrus peels chopped coarsely in a blender and spread on in your garden will also help repel cats, who do not care for the smell.

    Inside

    • Cats are inquisitive by nature; add the presence of food and you have cats on your counters and table. To be effective in preventing this behavior, you have to find ways of deterring the cat without her associating you with the negative reinforcement; otherwise, she will simply wait until you're out of sight.

      A good way of deterring your cat from jumping on surfaces is to booby trap them. Put a few coins or beans into several soda cans, tie them together and line them up along the edge of your counter or other forbidden area. When the cat jumps up there, he will knock the cans down, scaring him away. Another method of booby trapping your counter is to set several wooden mousetraps upside-down along the edge and covering them with a towel or thin layer of newspaper. The cat will be startled away from the surface when he sets off the traps.

      You can also deter your cat from climbing on counters or tables by making the surface uncomfortable for him to walk on. Double-sided tape is good for this purpose; attach it in a criss-cross pattern on a sheet of plastic (such as the plastic used to seal windows in cold climates). Set the plastic sticky-side up on the counter; if your cat jumps up there, she will find the tape annoying to walk on and won't want to stay up there. A plastic carpet runner placed with the points facing up will work the same way.