I’ve gotten emails from a visitors to my site a few times asking about the meaning of the PET bottles (plastic bottles) that can be seen outside some homes around Japan.
These "PET bottles" filled with water can sometimes be seen outside some homes in Japan...I see them less often now than I did when I first came to Japan, though.
So, I decided that since I’ve been asked about them more than once, I’d write a blog post and try to explain it. (By the way, feel free to contact me anytime with any questions you may have about Japan…and of course, comments on any blog post are always welcome!)
What do you imagine the meaning of these bottles is?
Well, they’re meant to be a type of 「ネコ避け」 (“cat deterrent”).
People want cats (and dogs) to stay off of their property so a numbers of years ago, a TV show here in Japan told viewers that sunlight reflects from water and scares cats away. So, the show said, people should put out plastic bottles of water for that purpose.
Overnight bottles of water could be seen outside many homes!
Nowadays, though, fewer people do this anymore because they’ve realized that it doesn’t actually work.
This cat could care less about those bottles...if he even noticed them at all!
As with any fad, manufacturers decided to try and cash in on people’s desire for an effective 「ネコ避け」 (cat deterrent) and they began to sell plastic mats with spikes that aren’t hard enough to actually harm an animal (or child) but aren’t pleasant to step on.
Close-up view of the plastic mat. The spikes don't harm anyone (or anything) that steps on them...but cats (and crows) don't like them.
My neighbor has some of these mats around their garden…and I’ve seen a cat walk on them, carefully stepping between the spikes! So, it seems, these mats don’t really work either.
(All images in this post were found on Google Images).
Tokyo Five 
Ha! As soon as I found your “What’s That?” page, I thought, I wonder if he knows why there are plastic bottles of water tied up around telephone poles and stuff. Sure enough, the third post down was about that very phenomenon. People do this a lot in Kyoto. It’s all over the place. I have heard that they are supposed to be a cat deterrent. Thanks.
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Not only in Kyoto, they can be seen all over Japan … but they’re not as common as they were in the ’90s.
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Oh darn! Just when I was going to tell my mother she could use those plastic bottles in her garden.
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>I was going to tell my mother she could use those plastic bottles in her garden.
Really? To keep cats away?
Do they do that in Hawaii, too?
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Until I began to have a pet cat, I had believed PET bottles with water would work. I even put some inside the house to block my naughty boy. However, they were not effective at all.
Anyway, congratulations on 1 million hits. Your interesting articles have always helped me study English.
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>I even put some inside the house to block my naughty boy.
Did you try to use ネコ避け (a cat deterrent) on your son? 😀
>Your interesting articles have always helped me study English.
Thank you! Please comment on my blog often!
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>I find a lot of them but they don’t blend in with the scenery as you think.
Maybe I’m just used to them now…I hardly even notice them anymore (kinda like the cats! 😉 )
>I wish that there would be beautiful ねこよけ。
More importantly, there should one that actually works. 😉
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I find a lot of them but they don’t blend in with the scenery as you think. 🙂
I wish that there would be beautiful ねこよけ。
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I’d like to know what the deterrent is to have my neighbors no longer walk their dogs along the front of my lawn, while allowing them to pee and poop at will, with total disregard to my grass/property. There is nothing worse than stepping in dog poop while mowing the grass. 😦
I don’t know who the real culprits are… it would be near impossible to pinpoint since there are so many dog owners in the neighborhood. BTW… that cat has twisted it’s body really funny, I own a cat and that is a new one for me! LOL… Our cat is a house cat… he is quite happy staying indoors, that is for sure.
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>I’d like to know what the deterrent is to have my neighbors no longer walk their dogs along the front of my lawn,
A security camera? 😉
Don’t people in America clean up after their dogs? That’s not much of a problem in Japan.
>that cat has twisted it’s body really funny
It’s looks to me like it was cleaning himself.
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