Wednesday 16 September 2009

El Gato Guerro

I typed my husband's name into a lucha libre name generator just now and it came up as El Gato Guerro - the Cat War which is hilarious as I'm currently fighting a cat war. They are poo-ing in my garden and I want the beasties gone, gone, GONE.
This I have discovered, is not a unique problem. Even one of our own SE bloggers posted about the issue a few years back and hilariously they were advised to use Lion Poo. http://plumssel.blogspot.com/2007/09/roys-stores.html
Now I'm not sure about that as it seems to be replacing small moggy poo with large ferocious beastie poo. So we are trying other methods.
When we moved back to our house last year we noticed cats were using planters filled with pebbles as their own personal litter trays. I chucked those out and we got a sonic device from B&Q. That works well as long as the batteries are working. So yay a batlle won and we have a clean patio.
The war has moved to a new frontier...the front garden. As I want to replant this, we have been simple digging the soil (that's what it's called according to Gardener's World). But the soil is in poor shape and we have to replenish it with manure. That doesn't arrive until Friday so until then, I have to keep the cats off.
Hubby got an even more fang dangle sonic repellent and ...it's not working. So I bought curry plants from Thompsons.
This morning there was more poo. So I have placed the curry plants strategically and have also doused the whole area in chilli powder. Had to wear some glasses as the wind blew the powder straight into my eyes and stung like hell. I feel a bit guilty that the cats are going to be hurt but it's only temporary and all's fair in love and war. I do wonder if curry restaurants have a beastie problem as they must always smell of curry. I also wonder if it is worth just dumping left overs from curry dinners in the garden...bit nasty for us to watch it decompose though.


If this doesn't work we still have the following options:
  • lion poo
  • moth balls
  • citrus peel
  • citronella
  • citrus plant (can you see a pattern forming)
  • clear plastic bottles half filled with water
  • cat repellent chemicals from diy store
  • water pistol
  • gun ....No not me, I'm a pacifist.
This is all distracting me from creating a beautiful garden. Someone at a toddler group asked if this latest fad was due to my recent miscarriage. Maybe. And my war on cats is also a war on toxoplasmosis...it may not have caused the miscarriage, but it may have. Stupid me for weeding without gloves.
On a more positive note, we had a wasp nest in our roof and a man in a suit descended on our property to spray some wasp eliminating stuff in the roof. Hopefully that beatie problem will now be resolved.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you find anything that works let me know! we have a real problem with it, i have tried sonic things (Rain gets in them, then the stop working), some plants the lady in the gardening centre mentioned, grapefruit halves, lion poo, cat get off, cat pepper spray, water bottle (They just played with that) and hurling pennies at them (oops)! still nothing works...

Plummy Mummy said...

Well we came back from a day out today and found some poo.This was in the area not covered by the sonic thingy nor by the chilly powder. So I guess the curry plants don't work (or are too small to be effective).
I've covered the poo-ed on area and the rest of the space with chilly so lets see what happens now. Tomorrow our manure arrives, so I'll have to do chilly covering again but as we live so close to Plumstead high street, I can buy in bulk quite cheaply.