One alternative—one for the patient, perhaps, but just as effective as most others—is to make your garden a hostile environment to cats. The surest way to keep them and others from invading your space is to make it unappealing to them. Here’s how, using nature to your advantage.

1.Toss pine cones, nut shells, and short stakes on the perimeter of your garden and especially around your most prized plants. Cats don’t like walking on noisy, sticky, or sharp things (anybody who owns a cat and uses aluminum foil and double-sided tape in front of the television knows this one). Try putting eggshells and coffee grounds in your garden. Bonus: they also make great fertilizer.

2.Crush mothballs and put them around your garden.

3.Have some sort of citrus fruit for breakfast every morning and leave the peels and rinds where you don’t want cats walking.

4.Sprinkle crushed pepper in the borders. The smell will irritate cats. Cayenne works best, but you’ll need to reapply it after it rains. Bonus: pepper plants might sprout up.

5.If you’re already a fan of essential oils, this one should be easy: splash some eucalyptus oil, lavender oil, lemon grass oil, and citronella oil near your plants. Mustard oil works, too.

6.Combine hot pepper liquid, lemon juice, and tea of rue and spray it on plants.

7.Add plants to your garden with pungent smells cats don’t like. Rue. It’s blue, it’s pretty, and cats can’t stand them. Thorny roses Geranium Garlic Lemon Thyme Lemon Verbena Lavender Pennyroyal Plectranthus caninus, otherwise known as Coleus canina and Scaredy Cat Plant. The jury’s still out on this one, but many people swear that this member of the mint family Lamiaceae is a natural repellant to cats and dogs.

Heather is a freelance writer and the resident blogger for "Go college.com", a free informational website offering tips and advice about college sites online.

Help from Havahart –

Hi Terry, sorry you're having trouble trapping those pesky squirrels! Try hanging the bait from the top of the trap, just above the trip plate so the squirrel has to stand on the trap to get to it.  Also you mentioned the traps was "small"… but if you haven't done so already, make sure it is the right size for the critter because a trap that is too big won't catch small animals.  

If you need some more help you are welcome to call us  – 800-800-1819 and Thank you for using Havahart Traps!

Finally, after hours of moving things around and cleaning non-stop all afternoon, my hero of a husband waltzes in and finds the cause of this putrid odor – the garage door. I have been jokingly threatening to get rid of my cats for weeks and it wasn't even the cats that were spraying! As one of my neighbors was walking by I explained to him what had happened and thinking it was stray cats that would smell my cats in the garage and spray the outside, he takes one whiff and says "that is fox pee!"

It turns out that fox urine is one potent pee and very difficult to get rid of. Imagine cat spray times 50! Yes, that bad! So after a little digging and cleaning, I learned that there is one way to get rid of foxes without killing or relocating them. It required a little help from my husband and alot of "water". I begged my husband to wait until after dark and to go around the house and, well, pee. When the foxes came by and smelled another males urine, they would get scared and run.

So, being the good sport he is, my husband urinated all around our house. This was a week or so ago and thankfully, there has not been one problem since. Of course, he will have to pee around the house a few more times to keep these sly foxes away, but I don't think he minds. In fact, I think it makes him feel like the king of his castle, literally!

Heather Green is a freelance writer, pet lover and the resident blogger for GoCollege.com, a free informational website offering tips and advice on online colleges.

Luckily Havahart can help, with a Feral Cat Trap including a shroud to keep the cat safe and calm during transport. Also try Critter Ridder to keep them away from your home, lawn and garden.

Another reaction to feral cats of equal importance is the desire to help these animals. They have a poor lot in life, especially in the winter and the Humane Society or a local vet can help with taking care of these creatures or at least controlling the population with an inexpensive spay/neuter program. Try using a bait like fish or catnip to trap these cats and bring them to the vet. (for more bait options visit our feral cat bait page)

Some people even open their homes to these animals to give them a second chance at happiness. We recommend only doing this under the supervision of the Humane Society so they can help the cat re-acclimate into a home situation and ensure your future pet is disease free and safe before you bring it home but in many cases, though there may be a few added challenges, these cats can become loving and caring pets who appreciate a warm bed and food in their tummies. For more information from the Humane Society about this program, visit their website: http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/feral_cats/

Wether you want to keep these cats away from your home or bring them in to become a loving pet, Havahart can help with traps and repellents to take care of these animals humanely.

The solution I found was a visit to the Havahart website. Their name says it all – every animal control product they offer is safe for humans and easy on animals. They stock reusable live animal traps for just about every shape and size of animal. Well, not every size because you probably don’t want to trap a deer! That’s why they also offer a wide range of animal repellants that stop the critters before they even think about entering your yard. I've been using Deer Off this year – all-natural sprays that work all over my yard. It works for up to 3 months unless there is substantial rain fall and now I'm reapplying it so the Deer stay away instead of foraging in my landscaping now that the leaves are starting to turn. The best thing about Deer Off is it keeps those darn squirrels away too so they won't dig in my yard or eat the produce from my veggie garden. I just planted my bulbs for the spring and sprayed deer off to keep critters away over the winter too.

So I'm enjoying all the work I did this year and as it gets a little cooler it is nice to sit outside in my garden… knowing that its protected with Havahart repellents makes it all the better.

At dinner I mentioned my discovery and all I got back were blank stares and “wasn’t us”. So what was living in there? I sent the boys out to investigate and they came back quite amused. Turns out I’d lovingly helped a mouse with her nest and she’d repaid the favor by having babies in the fish tank! We put the whole works (tipped sideways) on the edge of our woods.

In the hopes of keeping the mom and her babies out of my warm garage this winter, I checked out Havahart's website and found some great tips to to keep them from coming back…. and how to trap the little creatures (without using my fish tank)….

First of all, I must admit, skunks scare me. When I was a kid someone told me that skunk spray can blind a person. This is actually true although the effects are temporary. Still. The thought of smelling like a skunk for a week or two is not my idea of a good time. (If it happens, take a bath in ketchup.) Second, I have never had a problem with skunks at my house. I am very, vigilant about trash and never store garbage any place animals can get to it. My neighbor, just down the road, however, is less careful. When he came over to our house and told us about a mother skunk and her 4 little babies who had taken up residence under his porch I had to roll my eyes a bit.

I said, “Oh, back by where the garbage cans are?”

He said, “Don’t give me that look?”

I said, “What look?” and at that point I do believe I rolled my eyes.

Well. Somehow my attitude got me signed up for Skunk Capture duty. This “duty” took place at night, as skunks are nocturnal. I had, as is my way, called up the Havahart company and asked for instructions. They recommended the feral cat trap, as the size is about the same and the cover is darn handy. So there we were, my friend, his 10 year old son and me. In the moonlight, watching for skunks. Now any skunk that saw us, or in fact any human being that saw us, would have been scared because we were dressed in an odd and eccentric fashion. We had raincoats on with plastic trash bags on our legs and arms and a paper bag over our heads with holes cut out. If we saw a skunk we were to duck down so the spray wouldn’t hit us in the cut out eyes. We looked like big lumps of left-over Halloween costumes.

The trap was set out with sardines (stinky to catch stinky). The mama skunk came out and we didn’t see what happened as we were shielding out eyes in the paper bags but after a while we heard the snap of the trap.

I did not go to release the skunk into the wild blue yonder but my friend followed orders and went with a covered cage (that comes with the trap), wore his raincoat and paperbag, carried the trap very low and slow, waited until the skunk was quiet and then released it and froze like a statue of a crazed skunk releaser. I am so glad it wasn’t me. 

The first morning my trap had been sprung but the back panel release door was open and the critter was gone. The ground below the trap was tilled up and the inside of the trap full of dirt. I adjusted the trap by securing the release door with a twist tie in addition to the manufacturer’s steel rings and bars. Next morning, same thing. Door open, twist tie gone and trap full of dirt. The final time I used a plastic zip tie. That release door would have to be opened with wire snips now. This morning the trap again was sprung and empty. The release door was demolished – just the zip tie holding it on. Again, ground tilled up, trap full of dirt.

Can a raccoon really do this to a Havahart trap? Are they so strong as to be able to bend that wire mesh? Or do I have a neighbor who kicked in the release panel? John