For example, my next door neighbour had a cat, but felt lonely when her daughter moved away, so she allowed the cat to to have young. Now she has six cats. But cats are not like dogs. My dog stays in my garden not upsetting anyone apart from by barking if a stranger walks past the gate However, that is his job and he is not only warning me but the neighbours as well. These six cats do not remain in their own garden though, so we have all acquired six cats whether we want them or not.
The first problem I became aware of was that birds stopped coming to pick my dog's bowl clean in the afternoon. Then I saw a cat killing a lizard, a lovely nine inch specimen and then I remembered not seeing many lizards lately. There is one lizard, the Tokay, that they have totally wiped out - I used to listen to them calling at night, but no longer.
Cats also dig up flowers when they defecate and use furniture as clawing boards, so I do not want these destructive animals in my garden. But how do you keep cats out of your garden?
Walls are rarely protection against cats, but cats will often prowl along the bottom of walls and if they come across a gap, they will probably go in out of inquisitiveness, so repair all low-level openings in your fences. There is not much you can do about the top of your wall other than putting broken glass or electrified wiring up there, but that is not a good idea.
Some dogs are good at keeping cats away, but not all. My dog got a vicious and totally unanticipated swipe of claws across his nose one day. He used to run after them when they were kittens, but now they have grown up, he only growls to tell me a cat is on the premises. I cannot blame him.
In Australia, a lot of gardeners believe that transparent bottles full of water confuse cats, so they stay away, but in my experience, only Australian cats behave in that way.
A row of thorny bushes or flowers along the base of a wall where cats regularly come in helps. At the bottom of high walls too, where the cat cannot see them until he is on top of the wall. I often see cats mewing (in frustration, I hope) on the top of one of my walls. The only route down is to go back.
If you still cannot keep cats out, then you will need to train them not to come in. This is best achieved by using a few methods. If cats are utilizing your flower pots are toilets, try rubing the pots with pepper, lavender, lemon, mustard, or tobacco. Or you could leave a mothball in each pot. Some of these will have the desired result for you, others will not.
Then there are commercial repellents, but I do not want to resort to them. However, if you have a big garden and a big problem, it might be the only way. There are also high frequency sound emitters. Humans cannot hear them, but almost all animals can, so I think that that is unacceptable as well.
At night, motion-activated exterior lighting is a huge shock to cats. Cats have extremely sensitive night vision so a quick flash from a floodlamp really puts them off a garden.
The best disincentive is water. You can get motion-activated sprinklers, which are excellent at keeping cats out of your garden, but I like to sit in my office or in the garden with a powerful water pistol and squirt them by hand. The lizards have not come back yet, but neither do the cats quite so frequently either.
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