Tips to keep cats away from hedgehog food

17th August 2020

Leaving out supplementary food for hedgehogs is a great way to help them in your garden. Meaty cat food is recommended, but unsurprisingly when leaving this out for hedgehogs, it can attract… you guessed it – cats!

Luckily there are plenty of ways to ensure that hedgehogs can access this supplementary food, while keeping the curious cats away…

First things first, set up a feeding station with a hedgehog-sized entrance. This can be as simple as an upturned box with a hole cut out…

If smaller cats are still squeezing through the entry, here’s some other ideas to try…

Baffles inside the box
Adding bricks or walls within the feeding station, as shown below, will make it harder for larger animals like cats to get to the food.

Water at the entry
Putting a dish of water at the entrance will deter cats as they don’t like to get their paws wet!

The video below shows a hedgehog navigating around the barriers to get to the food.

If you have any other top tips for keeping cats away, please get in touch so we can share them – hedgehog@ptes.org

Extra tips from Hedgehog Champions

I have found that cats don’t seem to like Brambles dried hedgehog food so I use that. Magpies do like it but are not around at night.
Hedgehog Champion Jan

I found that if you use bricks to reduce the height of the ‘corridor’ the cats were not able to get through – unable to flatten to get through a low height and turn to get round the obstacles as well. The hogs managed to get through fine.
Hedgehog Champion Nicola