The myth of plastic bottle

July 7, 2013 July 7, 2013 Juju Kurihara 4 Comments

I personally like cats. When I first got my camera, my teacher told me to find a subject I like and take as many photos as possible. So I picked cats as my subject. I´d buy Tokyo Sanpo magazine (Tokyo take a walk magazine) and every weekend I picked one spot to chase cats. I mean I love cats.

But obviously there are people who hate cats, especially gardeners and flower lovers. In my neighbourhood, I found a small Bonsai collection.

His garden was relatively organized and maintained. He had a well trimmed black pine tree in the garden and what I found was a line of plastic bottles filled with water. Not a few, all around the garden.

Unfortunately cats are unpopular among garden fans. Because cats are free and leave No.1 and No.2 anywhere they like. This is a never ending battle.

I know some plants lovers sprinkle poison in the garden. The problem is, it´s not so good for the plants or their dogs (for plants lovers dogs are often not a big issue). There is a risk that their kids touch the poison in the garden too. Anyway, killing cats to me really cruel and what do they do if the cat dies in their garden? Too much trouble, isn´t it?

Then someone discovered an effective and cheap way to protect his plants from cats. The solution is a plastic bottle filled with water. Apparently the irregular reflection of the light scars cats and they avoid getting closer.

If you want to protect whole garden, obviously you need to drink loads of coke or Aquiarius to collect enough bottles. This method came out more than 10 years ago and it seems to work well. Only thing is that on rainy day, it may not work since there is no light to reflect.

When you see these plastic bottles around a plant, don´t think that is an auto-watering system. It´s not so high-tech. They are just scarecats, if the word exists.

I personally like this system because this way cats are not harmed.

More Japanese custom

Kids´ footprint

Uchimizu

More about Japanese cats

Doraemon

Neko no te mo karitai

Cat in the circle

4 Comments

itazula 3 years Reply

Another article said this method does not work. And one man is said to have burned up part of his home, because of the focused sunlight.
Anika 8 years Reply

Thank you so much for this article! I really wondered what’s about those bottles..
That’s such a nice system to protect gardens.

I really like gardens and plants but I also like cats.
What I don’t like are people who feed cats in parks with a sand playground for children…
Calling the BS 8 years Reply

An article about water bottles in trees witout any pictures of bottles in trees
- juju.kurihara 8 years
  
  Thank you for your comment, Anika.
  
  I too like both plants and cats but I don´t like people give cats poison to protect their garden.
  
  Not only cats, some dog owners let dogs wee in the sand area, which is not nice.