We adopted a big ol' barn kitten we named 'Scamp.' As he grew, we realized that hunting gophers was one of his favorite things. For all the time we had him (14 years), I never had a gopher in my garden. One time I noticed that a gopher had dug a new hole right at the fence line. As a joke, I picked Scamp up and put him by the hole. Ten minutes later he was back with the gopher. What a cat.
Now we have Tiki. He is a purebred Ragdoll, and considers gophers to be his best friends. He would no more harm a gopher than he would consider making a Rottweiler his best friend. If he sees a gopher, he runs the other way. He also likes to use the garden as his litter box, so I tend to keep him away from it, tethering him to other parts of the yard. I also in the past have roto-tilled him his own litter box away from the garden, but he prefers the garden.
So for growing season, Tiki is catsona non-grata around the garden.
Tale of two kitties: Scamp vs. Tiki
We adopted a big ol' barn kitten we named 'Scamp.' As he grew, we realized that hunting gophers was one of his favorite things. For all the time we had him (14 years), I never had a gopher in my garden. One time I noticed that a gopher had dug a new hole right at the fence line. As a joke, I picked Scamp up and put him by the hole. Ten minutes later he was back with the gopher. What a cat.
Now we have Tiki. He is a purebred Ragdoll, and considers gophers to be his best friends. He would no more harm a gopher than he would consider making a Rottweiler his best friend. If he sees a gopher, he runs the other way. He also likes to use the garden as his litter box, so I tend to keep him away from it, tethering him to other parts of the yard. I also in the past have roto-tilled him his own litter box away from the garden, but he prefers the garden.
So for growing season, Tiki is catsona non-grata around the garden.