How to Keep Cats Out of Your Yard: 7 Simple Solutions

Learn how to keep cats out of your yard or garden with these kitty-safe methods.

Stray cats can benefit gardens by keeping voles, mice, and other rodents away. But when wandering felines prey on songbirds, dig holes in garden beds, and leave you deposits in said holes, they quickly become a nuisance. Here’s how to keep stray cats out of your yard with 7 effective methods that are purr-fectly safe for kitties and easy to do.

Why Keep Cats Out of Gardens?

Stray cats may make a mess of vegetable and herb beds by mistaking empty soil for a litterbox. Finding a few of a kitty’s leavings between your rows of carrots and lettuce is an unpleasant surprise that is also a health hazard.

Although chicken and rabbit manure can be safely composted and added to food gardens, cat and dog feces often contain parasites and bacteria that are unsafe around edible crops. This may be enough of a reason for you to deter garden cats. Visiting felines also sometimes damage plants or eat songbirds, hummingbirds, and the small frogs you’ve recruited for natural pest control.

Tips for Keeping Stray Cats Out of Your Yard

By making a few small changes in your yard, you can make your property less inviting to stray kitties and encourage them to move along.

1. Discourage Digging

Cats are more likely to dig and “do their business” in loose, dry soil. If you’d like to keep cats from using your garden as a litterbox, water the beds more often and add a layer of mulch that cats won’t want to dig through.

Rough wood and gravel mulches can deter some cats, but a soil covering of scratchy pinecones or trimmings from raspberry brambles, roses, and holly bushes can be even more effective. Some gardeners take soil protection even further and place chopsticks, bamboo skewers, and plastic forks (tines up) in tight clusters wherever they have empty spaces.

2. Try Deterrents

Deterrent products keep away stray cats, but some of these products work better than others. Predator urine spray, cayenne powder, dog hair, citrus peels, vinegar, and garlic spray often repel cats. You can also try a motion-activated sprinkler, spotlight, wind chimes, a noisy radio, or an ultrasonic cat deterrent. To get the most out of deterrent products, try a few different deterrents simultaneously and switch them up occasionally so the cats don’t get used to the ones you use.

Related: The 6 Best Motion Sensor Lights of 2024, According to Testing

3. Grow Strongly Scented Plants

Some scented plants can be just as handy for repelling cats as deterrents, and they don’t need as much upkeep. For a cat-proof garden, grow plants with prickly stems and leaves, like squash, globe thistle, and sea holly, or plant strongly scented herbs, such as lemon thyme, Russian sage, rosemary, and rue.

Two strongly scented plants to avoid are catnip and its cousin catmint. Both plants contain a chemical that attracts cats.

To make your garden even less inviting to cats, grow plants as closely together as their spacing requirements allow and plant a few groundcover plants. Cats won’t be able to dig if you keep the soil covered.

Related: Are Lavender Plants Toxic to Cats and Dogs?

4. Clean the Garden

Cats are territorial animals that mark areas with their scent and return to the area repeatedly. If you thoroughly clean areas where cats have sprayed with your garden hose and soap, you might interrupt this cycle and keep cats from returning. You can also try an enzyme cleaner formulated for cat urine and outdoor use to bust through strong scents.

While you’re cleaning your garden, put away outdoor pet and bird feeders, remove wood and brush piles, and cover open compost piles. These areas often attract rodents, but they also draw in hungry stray cats on the hunt for a meal. Blocking off crawlspaces under your deck, patio, and home can also be helpful, but check those spaces carefully before closing them to ensure no animals are hiding inside.

5.  Provide a Cat-Friendly Space

If stray cats are already visiting your yard, trying using their catnip cravings as a distraction that will help keep kitties away from vegetable and flower beds. Plant catnip or cat grass in a pot far from the spots you don’t want cats to go. You can also add a small sandbox to an out-of-the-way corner of your yard to keep kitties from digging in your garden beds. Strays are often less destructive when they have a little space to call their own.

Related: Catmint vs. Catnip: Know the Differences Before You Plant

6. Use Barriers

To protect your valuable veggies, try covering growing beds with a layer of chicken wire or hardware cloth anchored to the soil with landscape staples. Most plants can grow through the material, but cats won’t be able to dig up your beds and leave behind droppings.

Fencing is a more costly and involved option, but may be helpful if you have an ongoing issue with many strays. Because cats can jump and climb, you’ll need a fence that’s at least 8 feet tall and made of loose or wobbly material that cats can’t easily climb or jump over. Cats can climb wood, so wire mesh fences are usually better than wood ones. Such a fence can also help you fend off deer and other critters.

7. Contact a Shelter

Before contacting a shelter about stray cats, talk to your neighbors to make sure those “strays” aren’t someone’s pets. However, if you know the cats in your neighborhood are true strays, you may want to contact a no-kill shelter to see how they can help. Shelters might be able to find a home for the strays in your garden, or they may participate in a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program. These programs provide spaying and neutering services for unowned cats, which reduces stray populations humanely over time and prevents new feral cats from moving into the area.

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