House Plants VS Cats
 

So, I grow Aloe Vera. It's edible, good for burns and cuts. Makes a nice skin and hair moisturizer. It's a nice plant to have around the house in case of emergencies. I live in an apartment so there aren't many places to stick a plant. The only place to stick an aloe is at the living room window? My room gets no light at all, and mom's room the window ledge isn't wide enough.

I also have 2 cats. They've been known to knock the aloe off the window sill and off the plant stand thing I got not long ago. Well the plant stand had a small Plant Box on the bottom half of the stand, so I took that out, cleaned it up, drilled some holes into the bottom for drainage..

So, the first day, my aloe were enjoying their new home in the box.


next thing i knew, the aloe on the far right was squashed, the 2 inner most leaves were broken off.. luckily a new leaf, too tiny to be hurt by this (as far as i can tell) is coming through.



2 leaves off that plant! D:<

this morning, the aloe next to the one that was already squashed... was squashed!



So what have I started doing to try to keep the cats away? In the spoiler above, you can see i added orange peels to the dirt and also to the table around the plant box.

I've also added some black pepper for now, i plan on getting red pepper to add to the dirt.

My last tactic is Brown Vinegar lightly diluted with water sprayed around the area.

I'm hoping that I won't see anymore damage to my Plant Box and the aloe inside tomorrow morning.

So, do you have pets that get into your house plants? How do you keep them out of the house plants? Tell us your stories and share your tips and tricks.

Hmm, that's a tough one.

We don't keep plants in the house because our cat loves trying to eat them. If my husband buys me some flowers, I put it in our bedroom with the door closed.

Lucky for us, we have a balcony. So we put all our plants out there. We have 4 pots out there. Tomato, basil, cilantro and green onions. I plan on getting ahold of a mint plant sometime in the future.

What you can try is sticky tape. We used to do that when we didn't want our cat going under the couch or around the balcony door (and knocking over the blinds).

o3o -adds sticky tape to her things of needs- thanks! ovo

I would also recommend:

A hanging window plant shelf
http://beautifulviews.net/wp-content...-Lucille-2.jpg
Bookcase
http://cdn.homedit.com/wp-content/up...cal-garden.jpg

bird cage or chicken wire/mesh
http://www.coxandcox.co.uk/media/cat...cageplan_1.png

Aloe vera is toxic to cats. It's not just a question of ruining your plants; your poor kitties could die from it if they eat any. It's not quite the "one bite of the leaf and you're looking at kidney failure" that some kinds of lilies are, but it's still not good.

I would recommend a greenhouse, or put the plants outside. Stuff to deter them won't be enough, especially if they've already established for themselves that this is a thing they can mess with.

EDIT: Aloe is toxic to humans, too, for the record. Safe on the skin and good for burns, yeah, and the white inner pulp (but NOT the green inner skin that's right up against the pulp) does have some reputed health benefits in reasonable amounts (there are ways to prepare it that remove the toxin but it also reduces the health benefit), but too much of it causes intestinal distress, diarrhea, stomach pain, cramps, kidney trouble, blood in the urine, heart disturbances, potassium deficiency, muscle weakness...

I second Galla's suggestion...

...The main thing I know about training cats is that if you catch a cat eating a bird, if you ram a finger covered in bird down their throat, they'll avoid birds for a few years...or at least that's what my folk did when they caught the cat and a dead bird. Similar work with dogs. I am not certain of the other ramifications, and as one of them was a vet assistant, I assume they knew how to do it without harming the cat.
...either that, or I truly have been raised by two crazy people

My actual idea would be something that would give a little jolt if the cats got into the plants. Just something to deter them.

You've been raised by crazy people. >.> Feline psychology doesn't work like that. Cats don't do a very good job of associating cause and effect across time. The cause and effect have to happen at very close to the same time for them to learn from it -- if they bite something and it burns their tongue, they'll learn from that; if they try to pounce a porcupine and get a face full of quills, they'll learn from that.

But if they pee on the rug and you swat them, they don't see a relationship between cause and effect. They just learn to associate angry humans with getting swatted... but they don't pick up that the human is angry because they peed on the rug, ESPECIALLY if you don't catch them in the act. At best, they learn to pee on the rug when you're not watching. Rubbing their face in it doesn't help either; they get cause and effect backwards ("angry human means I get my nose shoved in pee", not "pee means angry human").

What DOES work is interrupting the undesirable action. Cats learn from the environment. If you squirt them with water (NOT swat them, that just doesn't work at all for cats, because "big scary human" overrides whatever other cause they might be thinking about) when they start to pee on the rug, then they associate the unpleasantness of getting wet with urination outside the litterbox. If you make a loud noise and make them jump when they start to claw on something, they associate clawing on things with scary noises. If you put hot pepper sauce on things they chew on, the next time they take a bite they learn that it burns.

That's sort of what they did - when the cat was caught eating the bird, mom stuffed part of the bird down into the cat's throat. still a bit extreme, possibly...

Okay, in that case it does make sense, or at least less crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ4ghlgxmjs


ovo he shows you how to properly fillet an aloe leaf (their aloe grow so big down in florida.. so jelly)


But yea, you got to remove the Aloin (yellow stuff) the clear gel inside is what's healthy for you. You can buy jugs of it at the store except most places dilute the gel so its not as healthy as a freshly harvested leaf.

Also freezing leaves isn't a good idea. if you want to freeze aloe, remove the gel first.

---

Yea I just remembered Zeke eats tape so I can't use tape (just caught him chewing on the tape of a box that came today) Dx


The cats aren't eating the aloe, they are sitting on it and skishing it D8 skish skish


since I live in an apartment, a bookshelf won't help cause it wouldn't get any sunlight, we aren't allowed hanging plants near the window in case the plant thing swings and breaks the window.

I also don't want to put wire or mesh around it.. mainly because the oldest plant is the biggest and the mesh/wire could cause damage to the leaves. The leaves are the most fragile part. When Aloe is damaged, it will heal itself by sealing off that section of leaf meaning it no longer will get water thus less gel and it looks terrible.

I'm waiting for a few of those aloe to grow a few more leaves just so I can prune the ones the cats had already damaged by knocking the plants down when they were in the old containers.


Also Can't have a greenhouse, apartment is too small, and if we put the plants outside the kids would destroyed them (our windows can't be opened to put them on the window ledge and if we forced them open, we'd get kicked out.

Which is why i'm looking for home made cat repellents that won't hurt the cats but just make them stay away from the plant box.

The tape was a good idea... but zeke eats tape.. I read a blog about putting rocks with sharp edges in the plant box.. but I don't want them cutting their paws ;-;

If the plants are small, what about putting them in the bottom of a sturdy plastic vase sort of thing? It makes a little sort of green house, and if the top is small enough the cat might not fit, or getting stuck inside one or two times might be enough of a deterrent that they stop messing with it.

I want the aloe to get bigger, and the more room the root balls have to grow the bigger the aloe gets. The bigger the aloe gets, the more gel that can be harvested.

The smaller the container, the less it grows but the root ball will have a chance to start producing pups. I'd rather the plants get bigger before producing pups.


The other problem with that is the cats would just knock down the vase. The reason they were put into the plant box was so they couldn't knock the aloe down anymore. Aloe roots are sturdy but up to a point. If the aloe gets knocked down too much and the roots keep breaking off, it will kill the aloe. They've already killed one.

edit: I just checked my aloe, the orange peels, black pepper, and diluted vinegar seems to be working. The aloe isn't squashed and are how i left them last night!!! ovo I'm gonna run out of orange peels eventually ... we're out of food stamps so i can't get more xD