Cats using house plants as liter box

Hello,

I have 6 cats. All but one because she is too new to the house go outside whenever they want. I keep a clean litter box for them and yet a few of them mainly the 3 ferral siblings we rescued will use the plants. They are about 3 years old now and know they are not suppose to use the plants, my father is threatening to kick them all out. Please give me some suggestions on how I can keep them from digging and using the house plants as a potty. I believe I heard somewhere that sticks and stones will keep them out.

Thanks for the info in advance.

Jen

I have 4 cats. They're all indoor/outdoor. Yet I have 4 litterboxes inside the house for their use. They don't bother the house plants.

If you have 6 cats and one litter pan, no wonder your plants get raided. Add more litter pans- ideally you should have two per cat-

More litterbox's is a must with 6 cats, also after you add the litterbox's I found putting river stones (You can get them at Wal-mart pretty cheaply) in the plants keeps the cats out.

Stones work, or make a kind of Elisabethan collar with cardboard and fit it round the plants to cover the earth. But as said, you need more boxes.

If the urine is in the soil, you also need to eliminate the smell from the soil, which means pulling the plants out of the pot, shaking away the contaminated soil and replacing it with fresh.

Depending on the size of the plant, I either used chicken wire (large pots) with cut outs for the plants and the edges wrapped over the sides, or masking tape that was criss-crossed around the plants. Basically think of things that they would not like to walk across.

I no longer have house plants - the draw to them is very strong and it wasn't worth the bother.

A simple solution that works for me is, if I have cats (and I always do) I don't keep houseplants.
I have a lot of plants on my balcony but because my kitties are indoor only, they are not a problem.

Another idea to keep them out of the plants. Buy some plastic forks. Break them off and stick them in the dirt. The fork tines won't hurt your cats. Because they are plastic. Put in a few push them down firmly so they are just sticking out a little,. the cats usually won't dig around because they won't like the forks sticking out. You need to change the dirt for sure as it now smells like a litterbox too them. And for sure more litter boxes are needed.