Selfsufficientish.com

i scatter all my citrus peel everywhere and this seems to keep most of the local cats out

i have covered my new beds with prickly cuttings for the time being. plan to put an inviting dry gravely area nearby. 3 cats of my own !

Cat lover here - I'd certainly recommend the water spray method. It's the way I train my own cats not to do something that they shouldn't or that could be dangerous to them (like sneaking into the hen house when I'm not looking). Put a bit of flea spray into the mix and they'll be gone for good.

Zoe

For empty beds, I also use cuttings (raspberries, roses etc)
The water spray works well when you're around: it doesn't take long for a cat to learn. We use it on our cat too and he still comes home for cuddles so he's not traumatised... :p

My mum had a similar problem in a raised bed by her front door, and found a coleus canina plant worked really well, smells horrible but easily propogated by breaking bits off. unfortunately the frost got it but the cats have not returned yet. My mother-in-law also had cat problems and the sonic deterrent worked on them all except for the one which slept next to the post. Apparently it is deaf! I now have no problem with cats (used to cuss the neighbours one all the time) ...my son's staffie sorted that one out!

Oh and my OH recomennds broken lightbulbs scattered round on any bare earth!

We use the scarecrow device at night to convince a neighbourhood tomcat to leave our garden alone. He scares our cats into undesired behaviour (they're now 'marking' their own territory; including our living room). So we lock our cats in at night and hope the scarecrow gives the horrible tomcat a good soaking when he ventures into our garden at night.

Against our own cats' scratching up the beds... I've had one of our own cats dig up all of my carefully planted onion sets. He must have had a ball, 'cause it took him only 10 minutes. Much shorter than it took me to plant the things in nice straight rows! Anyway, I now cover recently dug beds with concrete reinforcements mats, cut in manageble sections. Works like a charm and as soon as the stuff in the bed is growing I can remove the mats and the cats will leave the beds alone.

Als I try to keep a bit of freshly dug soil somewhere where it doesn't really matter. So, carrot and stick, that's the way to go :-)

We had a similar problem, though with our own cat! Obviously needed a cat-friendly solution, we tried a few things like the crystal repellents but we found this repeller worked best:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/PestBye-Battery ... 650&sr=8-1

We've had it a couple of months now and have noticed a marked improvement. If you do try it, make sure to get the frequencies off the amazon page as they're not in the instructions - also noticed now that amazon themselves are selling it! So free delivery! We got it off a different seller (but I think it was a fairly similar price - and much cheaper than other ones out there anyway). I do recommend it, it worked really quickly for us.