I have a hundred or so orchids within reach of my girls. They don't bother them, however, when a past cat took interest, I sprayed the plants with Bitter Apple spray. That helped. I agree with ES and Spinrah, you aren't going to train them. Set up a grow light in a safe place and move your plants. Sorry, not good news.

Whew thanks for all the replies! I got totally tied up at work and forgot to check back in.

After reading all this, I think I'll bring in the orchid and see how it goes. I have 2 cats, and only 1 is really interested in eating plants (I have a wandering jew and some shamrocks that he loves to chew on) - but from reading the replies I'm hopeful that he just doesn't give a care to the orchid. That's why I'm just starting back up with a big box store phal and not something rare/expensive/difficult.

I've tried the spray bottle before, but unfortunately for me, one of my cats is a Maine Coon and he loves the water and thinks it's a reward, and taught the other one not to fear the bottle lol

My house is very small (under 1000 sqft), so unfortunately there is nowhere that our cats can't reach/go - and this is the only window in the entire house that gets acceptable light that I can use! And there's absolutely no space for a grow light setup! lol - hope to someday build a greenhouse and keep my orchids out there, but for now I'm hoping I can get my hobby restarted just with my one little shelf under my window.

---------- Post added at 08:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:59 AM ----------

This is totally hilarious, and 100% something my cat would do. In fact, he almost killed my wandering jew when I brought it in for the winter doing exactly this! No vanilla orchids for me I guess!

What about setting up a mini greenhouse on the table if you only have a few orchids. IKEA has one, and I'm sure you could improvise.

Be glad for your Maine Coon. I lost mine last October, one of the saddest days of my life. I'd trade all my orchids for another day with him.

my cat hates the smell of limonene (citrus oil), lavender, rosemary, mint really any common strong smelling essential oil. easy to spray over your collection as a deterrent. you can buy orange bathroom spray (pure orange oil) which works pretty good.

maybe some person in your life reached out to you on facebook and put you in an akward spot and 'convinced' you to buy essential oils and you aren't convinced of their healing properties. well now you have something you can use them for. just make sure to dilute heavily before spraying over your plants, and shake well to emulsify.

Could you possibly hang them in the window, instead of on the sill?

Then put some greenery on the sill, or elsewhere it would rather munch on?

I like WaterWitchin's idea of hanging the orchid. Or putting up a high shelf with a simple grow light (there are many on the market that are small and portable - they can just be attached to your shelf with a clip).

And, if all else fails, then I agree with Dollythehun -- forget the orchid... my cat comes first. :)

But, hopefully you'll find that even if your cat is a little curious about the new orchid at first, once they get a good sniff of it and rub their scent on it, they won't bother it again. My cat does smell and say 'hi' to the orchids once in a while by rubbing her face on the leaves, but other than that she's not concerned about them ... one of the reasons I got into orchids is because she lets me have them! :)

You mentioned there is only one window suitable for your orchids, is there a possibility of 'fencing' off the window?
Maybe a moveable scaffold of wood with some clear plastic, just until the cats get the idea the plants can be seen but not touched.

For awhile, I was "babysitting" my grandcat (my son's cat) The only orchids that I had to make sure were where he couldn't get to them (like on a small free-standing plant stand with no landing platform) or leave them outside were those with floppy leaves. Cymbidiums especially. If I slipped up even briefly he could chew them in a nanosecond. He had no interest at all in the stiff-leaved ones like Phals and Catts.

Ya know, I'd rather have just the shredded leaves instead of being Coupled with cat puke. It's a double whammy.

:rofl: