Indoor cats and house plants! Is there a way to live in harmony?

My kittens are destroying my house plants, and while it is very funny to watch them play - so much so that I havent watched TV for weeks. I do like my plants.

I realise that kittens have their own mind and it is difficult to punish them for curious play, but is there anything I can put in the plant pots to deter them?

Indoor cats and house plants! Is there a way to live in harmony?
Lilies are extremely toxic to cats, so please don't have them in your home. Even if the kittens just brush against the pollen and then wash it from their fur, this can be enough to cause death.



If the kittens are digging up the plants, then try placing small pebbles or stones over the soil so that they can't get to it. Provide them with their own pots of cat grass. They'll love eating this and hopefully leave your other plants alone.



The link below has a list of plants that are poisononous to cats.



http://www.cfainc.org/articles/plants.ht...
Reply:I've got five in the house and I use orange peels. I sometimes stick one to the arms of the furniture and thus far it's kept them from using the furniture for a scratching post. I can't guarantee it works for all of them but it's worked with all five of mine quite well.

I used to have several birds in an aviary outside and orange peels kept the strays away from the aviary also.
Reply:the water gun is a good idea but you could also grow some pots for the cats to have fun with---they love catnip also you need to be careful as some plants can be poisonous. Take the plants away in another room when you are not on guard or want to relax-----good luck
Reply:Why don't you buy a low cost plant just for them? Or an artificial plant would do.. You could even give them a little garden in the yard... Get them something else to play with. Or get them the Cat mint plant.
Reply:put tinfoil round the soil it will keep your cats of your plants good luck
Reply:I would just elevate the plants so that they can't reach them and they will leave them alone.
Reply:My 8 month old kitten is doing the same thing!! I have been using a spray bottle of water to squirt him when he attacks my plants... it gets his attention but doesn't hurt him (although I do feel bad sometimes when he gives me that shocked look, like 'WHAT was that?'!). I don't drench him at all, even though he ignores me half the time. It has gotten to the point now that I can just say 'NO!' and sometimes he will stop bothering the plants. Good luck...
Reply:Put the cats or the plants in a cage.
Reply:How large are these plants? Can you put them in a high windowsill, or possible in a room where you can shut the door until the kittens mature a bit?
Reply:If they're still kittens, things will probably get a bit better when they're old. Kittens are just insane.



I had to put all my plants on my dining room buffet, and I have a few others very high up where they can't get to them.



Sophie was able to get onto the buffet, though, so I also had to invest in a Sofa Scram. When any weight is put on it it screeches. That fixed her wagon!



There's another product out there, I think it's called Sssscat, that has a motion detector. It sprays something harmless. This would work too and would take up less space than the thing I'm using.



Or there's yet another product - overpriced in my opinion - that you can buy. You would cut it to fit over the top of the pot. It's plastic and has spikes on top.



I believe you can find the latter two products at Drs. Foster and Smith.
Reply:You can spray him and give him a stern NO when he plays in them. Do you know what type of lilly plant they are? Lillies can be toxic to cats hon, if they are ingested, they can cause some serious damage!!! You may want to invest in some cat grass for your kitties, that way they have their own plant to play in!
Reply:You can buy polished stones to cover the soil. They look quite attractive and help to anchor the pot so kitty can't tip it over or dig in the dirt. When my cats were little, the attraction was the dirt, but the leaves suffered as well. Watching them is fun, but if you get a squirt bottle and squirt them in the face with water when they go for the plant and say "NO" in a loud voice they might get the hint. I also got a planter pole and some macrame hangers for my smaller plants. I could put this in front of the window and away from the walls so the cats could only look in wonder and try to jump up and fail time after time. Some of them don't give up too easily.



It sounds like you've got a bunch of furry delinquents on your hands. Try passive treatments first and stay away from chemical repellents. They are not suitable for inside the home because they do smell terrible.



As a last resort I put some hot sauce on the edges of the leaves of a couple of plants they'd been bothering the most. If it tastes bad they won't return.
Reply:replace them with cactus
Reply:You seem very concerned very concerned about your plants. Have you thought about the fact that LOTS of houseplants are TOXIC to cats - especially small kittens?



The only thing you really can do is just have hanging plants that aren't near any furniture they can climb to (I had a cat once jump from my TV into a hanging ivy plant!) or have them up on high shelves. Other than that best may be to keep the plants outdoors. Another thing with plants is that your cats may confuse the dirt in them for the litter box!
Reply:LOL LOL LOL sorry the added info was funny :-) ya just gotta love 'em don't ya lol



hmmm orange peels is what we tried but that only seemed to keep them away from the soil area and not the leaves themselves. We than got plant hanging thingies and hung the ones I really liked from the ceiling, which we than had to move AWAY from anything they could climb and still reach plant when we found that the ceiling corner near the patio doors was not a safe place.. who the heck knew they could climb accross that darn thing LOL



I now collect cactuses instead of plants :-)
Reply:you need to condition them. just like the person above, whenever the kitten played with the plant, she squirted it with a water bottle. so after several times of this happening, the cat will learn not to play with the plant, unless it want to get squirted with water that is. i would do something similar to this, and maybe after a few trials they will finally get the idea. haha but yeah, i have 4 cats at my house and i am constantly having to vacuum up leaves and little sticks and what not. =D
Reply:You could try putting a wedge of lemon in the plant pot, or something lemon scented, cats hate the smell of lemon and they shouldn't go near it, you can also by a spray from the pet shop which is lemon scented which you can spray on to areas you don't want your cats to go near, I found this very helpful with my kittens
Reply:Just enjoy them being kittens it won't last long. You can always buy new plants when they grow up.

Or let them play with the oldest and tiredest plant and farm the others out for a month or so