It’s no se­cret that stray cats have be­come more com­mon in Trinidad and To­ba­go in re­cent years, large­ly due to ir­re­spon­si­ble pet own­er­ship. Some cit­i­zens at­tempt to cap­ture, neuter and re­lease the cats in their neigh­bour­hood, oth­ers poi­son them. For­tu­nate stray kit­tens may be adopt­ed, but the gen­er­al at­ti­tude to­wards stray cats is that they have be­come nui­sances. They strew garbage over the pave­ments and roads while rip­ping through the con­tents of bins in search of food, mat­ing cats cat­er­waul and dis­turb the peace at night, they stress in­door pets, they use flow­er­pots as lit­ter box­es, and they scare away or kill the birds and oth­er wildlife in gar­dens.

When cats move in­to a com­mu­ni­ty, it is usu­al­ly as a re­sult of be­ing fed and cared for by some­one in the neigh­bour­hood. Iden­ti­fy­ing this per­son (or per­sons) is im­por­tant, and en­cour­ag­ing that per­son and fel­low res­i­dents to in­vest in spay­ing the fe­males and neu­ter­ing the males is a longer-term so­lu­tion than sim­ply try­ing to re­move or kill the cats. When the ex­ist­ing cats are moved, dif­fer­ent cats will move in­to the area to take ad­van­tage of the hand­outs and oth­er food re­sources. By ster­il­is­ing and re­turn­ing the ex­ist­ing cats, a colony is cre­at­ed that is not breed­ing and there­fore not fur­ther con­tribut­ing to the in­creas­ing pop­u­la­tion, and these cats will keep new cats out of the ter­ri­to­ry. Over time, the num­ber of stray cats will be re­duced.

Deal­ing with the prob­lem clos­er to home in­volves mak­ing your yard less at­trac­tive to cats.

Cat-proof fenc­ing prod­ucts keep cats out of yards and con­sist main­ly of net­ting that cats can­not climb, and rollers (long tubes that spin) or rolling bars that are in­stalled on top of ex­ist­ing fences and walls. These are ex­pen­sive, so if keep­ing cats com­plete­ly out is not with­in your bud­get, you can fo­cus on mak­ing the gar­den less ap­peal­ing to cats. Phys­i­cal de­ter­rents in­clude plac­ing small-gauge chick­en wire just un­der the soil; us­ing sharp-edged mulch, stones or grav­el on the soil; or lay­ing a plas­tic car­pet run­ner or scat mat with the spikes fac­ing up in your gar­den – these all have the ef­fect of mak­ing the ground un­com­fort­able for the cat to walk on or dig in.

When it comes to the use of scent-based cat re­pel­lents, it is not­ed that there is very lit­tle sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence to sup­port the ef­fec­tive­ness of these. Nonethe­less, com­mer­cial cat re­pel­lents are avail­able at pet shops, but you can al­so scat­ter fra­grant items that cats gen­er­al­ly dis­like. These in­clude or­ange, lemon, lime and any oth­er cit­rus peels, vine­gar, cit­ronel­la and cit­rus-scent­ed sprays, cof­fee grounds, laven­der oil, lemon­grass, eu­ca­lyp­tus oil, pep­per­mint oil, cayenne pep­per and chilli pep­per flakes, among oth­ers.

Some gar­den­ers rec­om­mend plant­i­ng aro­mat­ic plants that cats find of­fen­sive, such as rose­mary and rue. What works for one cat may not work for all, so you may need to ex­per­i­ment with dif­fer­ent scent-based re­pel­lents. Re­mem­ber that scents fade over time and are washed away by rain, so they will need to be reap­plied every few days.

You can con­sid­er in­stalling an ul­tra­son­ic an­i­mal re­pel­lent or a mo­tion-ac­ti­vat­ed wa­ter sprin­kler. Cats can be­come ha­bit­u­at­ed or learn to ma­noeu­vre around the de­vice’s trig­ger, so chang­ing the lo­ca­tion or adding oth­er de­ter­rents can im­prove your chances of suc­cess. If you have dogs, you will need to take them in­to con­sid­er­a­tion when po­si­tion­ing the de­vices, as they may al­so be both­ered by the ul­tra­son­ic sound.

Fi­nal­ly, re­move any­thing in your yard that may en­cour­age stray cats. This in­cludes en­sur­ing that any food waste or garbage is se­cured in cov­ered bins, and pick­ing up your pet’s bowl af­ter feed­ing so that un­eat­en pet food does not en­cour­age cats them­selves, or rats, which will at­tract preda­to­ry cats.

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