How to Stop Cats from using Garden as a Toilet

How to Stop Cats from Pooping in your Yard / Garden?
What is the Most Effective Cat Repellent?
Home Remedies for Keeping Cats Away

This is the most annoying and heartsick moments when you find cat shit on your favorite plant. Worse, the plant been dug-up and thrown out of the pot or mixed with poo when the cat used the pot / flower bed as a toilet.

These are my years of experience and I would like to share my trials and error and
How I had successfully deterred cats from using my garden as a toilet.

Cats have character and so different cats have different character traits.
You may lose one or two battle in the process but understanding cat behavior makes is easier to win the war.

Some works, and some doesn't.
You may have to try and figure it out on how much discouragement you can use to deter them away.

These are my tips:

1) MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE CAT

MAKE PEACE FIRST
IF all attempts fails, only then go all out for War.

I must tell you that cats somehow sense it
whether the residence/garden is friendly or hostile.

If they sense that you are welcoming and gracious,
they will guard your garden and consider it their home and protect it from all other vermin and pest.

And when they sense that you are their ally
- they will never make their toilet in your garden.

At times,
the cat tries to make peace offering by bring a dead rat/mice body portion at the entrance door. This is how the cat communicates - they are intelligent creatures.

Do remember, these animals were once worshiped as gods.
And I think, centuries may had past but still they remember and behave as such.

I asked my friends about the cats that comes and make the mess in their garden:
(neighborhood cats or stray cats around the vicinity)

I asked them - how does the cat behave when it sees you?
I always get the same response saying that the cats flee at the sight of the gardener.

SOLUTIONS:

a) Feed Cat snacks and encourage the cat to come and be friendly with you.
This is the challenging part - gaining trust in making friends.

It requires patience and lots of coaxing - sometimes it will take months.
Cat nip can be a great help but I haven't tried it as I'm very natural with cats.

b) Let the Cat rub it cheeks on you.
It means that the cat owns you and therefore won't desecrate you or your dwelling place.

c) Occasionally Play with the Cat and Win the Cat's Trust.

You know you had achieved this when the cat walks gently towards you and rub herself against you.

Also the appearance of joy when the tail is upright and purrs when she touches you.

d) The Cat becomes Your Garden Guardian.

I had one stray cat which considered my garden as her domain.
So much so, she kills whatever pest, vermin or anything from coming into my garden.
She chased away rats, shrews, mice and even killed a snake.
Such ferocious was this feline.

NO SOLUTIONS - NEXT STEP:

Another factor is some gardeners just HATE CATS!

Whatever good reason you can come up with - once you hate cats, there is nothing much you can do. I had come across "dog person" and typically no amount of reasoning is going to make the gardener in anyway interested to make friends with cats.

So what should you do when dealing with the next situation?
Cat Deterrent:

1) WOOD VINEGAR

Cats rely their sense of smell more often when it comes to their comfort zone.
The effects of Wood Vinegar discourages cats from coming over to the garden.

I found sprinkling wood vinegar helps to a certain degree but it is can be considered temporary if rain washes it off and in some cases it doesn't make any difference to some cats.

2) CHILI POWDER

This is another strong deterrent. I had used it few times when I ran of options.
I sprinkled the chili powder along the walkway trails and around the borders where the cat does the business. It worked for few days but when it get washed away - the cat came back again.

Truly - I had experience with this one mad sick cat:
(It doesn't want to make friend because another cat had made dominance in my garden space and so it was a battle of territory and my garden - this cat's war zone)
It was hell-bend to make my gardening en-devour a miserable experience.

3) CROWN OF THORNS

Finally I found my trump-card: a thorny plant.

Cat's need to dig before they do their business.
And I realized that they hate anything sharp and pointy
and I have used the Crown of Thorns spiky branches as borders
and place them in certain angle on the pots and pathways.

CAUTION:

Do wash it thoroughly over tap water as the newly cut stem releases heavy sap is poisonous & toxic causing irritation to skin and very dangerous if accidentally rubbed upon the eyes.

What I do is I handle it using the scissors that I used to cut it and also use that scissors as tweezers and carefully place it on ground and heavily spray water on it to wash off all the sap off.

What I used is:
Trimming short sections of the branch and placing them around / inside the pot.
It appears to be a temporary solution but actually very much effective than chemical deterrents.

This had finally made that mad cat turned off totally from turning over my potted plants
and it had found a different comfortable position for it's preferred toilet.

UNORTHODOX METHOD:

I have heard this and even tried it and found it strange as it may seemed:
It worked!

Let's say you had already made friend with the cat but it still poo's in the flower pot / vegetable patch.
I was told to bring the cat over to the poo - the cat will react in a restrained mood.
Catch and bring the cat's face close to the "crime scene" and scold the cat for doing the mess.
Believe it or not - the cat stopped doing the toilet in that place ever again.