I’m taking a break from my own tedium today (you can only whinge so much for so long without getting bored yourself).
Instead of me moaning on, here’s an extended anti-cat whinge (or anti-cat-shit whinge, to be precise) from the redoubtable writer and broadcaster Emma Cooper, compere and creator of the Alternative Kitchen Garden. It’s a lot more interesting that anything I could write today… and you may even learn something.
Take it away, Emma:
“Cats. Small ones are cute. Larger ones can be when they want to be. They have claws though, so I’m not entirely sure why people encourage them to sit on their laps and think they make good pets. Personally I find them completely unlovable for one reason – they crap in my garden.
They don’t crap in the out-of-reach places where I wouldn’t notice the smell. They crap in the middle of the bloody beds. Why? Personally I like a little more privacy for my personal moments, but apparently dead centre in a nicely planted bed is best for crapping if you’re a cat. Never mind that you’ve had to trample over an entire army of seedlings to get there (and it will be the second army of seeds sown, since the first will have been wiped out by the inevitable slug invasion of early spring).
And once they’ve done it, they make these laughable attempts to cover it over – which do nothing to cover the crap, or mask the smell (why should it? They need the smell to find their toilet again tomorrow) but only serves to disturb more of the benighted plants.
Commercial cat deterrents work on one of two principles – scaring cats away with loud (ultrasonic) noises or persuading them to crap elsewhere by making the area in question smell worse than cat crap. The citrus-smelling stuff doesn’t smell too bad, although it does pong, but you can buy packets of crap from bigger cats (on the basis that moggies are shit scared of tigers) – which surely just misses the point? I mean, weeing around the edge of your plot is supposed to deter foxes, but who wants a garden that smells of stinky wee?
There is another problem with these deterrents – they don’t get rid of the cats. They move the cats on. When the batteries run out, or the smell wears off, they will be back. In the meantime they will still be crapping in your garden, but in areas outside the reach of the deterrents that they’d previously left in peace.
Having said that, I think we’ve found a solution. Chicken manure pellets smell really strongly, and their smell deters cats from shitting in your garden. You can spread them liberally all around, re-apply as necessary, and the only side effect is that next year your courgettes will be enormous. No more crapping, no more trampled seedlings, no more dug up plants.
Of course, your garden will still smell of shit….”
I think we can safely file that one under ‘rants’, Emma, and I hope everyone chips in with their solutions for dealing with cat shit in the garden or down the allotment…
PS Anyone got a pic of a cat shitting which I can use to illustrate this piece?
Small is hardly beautiful in the vegetable world, but this year it’s the best I’m going to get… so I’m bloody thrilled.
