>They hate citrus zest - the white part of the fruit, not the zest itself.
>You might try boiling an orange peel in water and squirting them with that.
>Might work.

Yeah, cats do seem to hate citrus of any sort, silly creatures. Though not
enough to keep them away from bird feeders, I've tried it... I wouldn't
use ammonia as someone suggested; it's pretty caustic and could cause eye
damage. Almost worse, any that falls on the carpet says "pee here"!

A training method that does work well with cats (and some wild birds and
dolphins and dogs and ferrets and ...) is click/treat training (operant
conditioning). See the book _Don't Shoot the Dog!_ by Karen Pryor (also
tons of information on the web). The technique could presumably also be
used on neighborhood cats to encourage them to stay away from bird feeders,
though it would take some creativity to think of how to apply it, and some
time to carry it out (and one would have to make friends again with those
blasted beasts one has been chasing for years :-)). I don't know enough
yet to try it with my two chief feeder offenders.

If one does choose to squirt one's cats (applies to feeder lurkers, too),
it helps tremendously to not let them know that _you_ are doing it. Carry
the squirt bottle everywhere, so that it's part of you, and only shoot when
you're certain of hitting the back of their head, without them seeing you
do it, and when they are still touching or just about to touch the
off-limits object in question. That way they'll behave even when you
aren't there, or don't have your bottle in reach :-) My cats respond
instantly to 'no', because they understand it in the sense of a helpful
warning that the 'something' they are near might get them wet rather than
in the sense of 'I'm going to stop you from having fun'. They are also
completely reliable when I'm gone. I've even left a plate of sardines on
the kitchen counter as a test, and it went untouched all day while I was at
work.

For the original poster: do you provide plants just for your cats to eat?
Start growing wheat grass for them (wheat berries from the health food
store will sprout). Cats really want about 10% of their diet to be
recognizable vegetation, and highly processed grains in cat foods doesn't
'count'. If you provide them with plants they are allowed to eat, they'll
probably leave your other plants alone. They don't regurgitate wheat grass
or barley grass like they do lawn grass, so that shouldn't be a problem.


Allyn Weaks
allyn at cornetto.chem.washington.edu aka allyn at u.washington.edu
Pacific Northwest Native Wildlife Gardening:
http://chemwww.chem.washington.edu/natives/