Cats
Felis catus
A freshly raked seedbed is, to a cat, a litter tray. Small, frequently asked about, and gently answerable — mostly with prickly mulch and a bit of netting.
How to know it
No difficulty identifying the animal. What identifies the damage is the scrape: soil dug and then pushed back into a small mound, in the softest, finest, most recently prepared bed in the garden, with seedlings knocked aside rather than eaten.
What you'll see
- Scraped and re-covered patches in a freshly sown or newly raked bed.
- Seedlings knocked over, buried or uprooted with no sign of chewing.
- Fouling in the same few spots, always in loose dry soil.
- Flattened patches in low planting where a cat has slept in the sun.
- Nothing eaten at all — the plants are collateral, not food.
Where it comes from
Neighborhood cats hold overlapping ranges and patrol them by habit, so the same few animals will use the same few spots repeatedly. They choose loose, dry, fine soil for the same reason they choose a litter tray, and they will not use ground that is wet, prickly or covered.
Any garden with cats nearby and any freshly prepared seedbed. Dry, fine, open soil is the whole attraction; a mulched or planted bed is largely ignored.
Dealing with it
- Cover new sowings with netting, chicken wire laid flat, or a cloche until the seedlings are up and the ground is no longer bare.
- Lay short prunings of holly, berberis or rose over the soil, or push twiggy sticks in upright.
- Mulch bare soil with something coarse — bark, gravel, pine cones — so there is nothing fine to scrape.
- Water the bed; damp soil is much less attractive.
- Try a motion-activated sprinkler on a bed that is being used repeatedly, which does work while it is novel.
Keeping it out
- Leave no bare, fine, dry soil in the open: sow, mulch or cover it.
- Sow in modules and plant out, so the bed is never bare and fine at the crucial moment.
- Plant densely; a full bed is not used.
- Grow a patch of catmint or catnip deliberately in a far corner as an alternative attraction.
- Accept the cats. They are also the reason you have fewer voles and mice, and the damage here is genuinely small.
What it goes for
Seedbeds and newly planted beds. Nothing is eaten.
See also
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's bestiary at cottagegardencompanion.com