About 20 years ago, I walked into my bedroom and found that my cat had peed on my copy of Salman Rushdie’s “Is Nothing Sacred?”

He took it upon himself to answer the question before I could finish reading what Rushdie had to say in the Granta-published lecture.

So when my cat, a different one, peed into a potted aloe plant that I brought in from the cold the other week, I was reminded again, that, to cats, nothing is sacred.

When temperatures in Las Vegas dip below 32 degrees and we’re told to cover our plants or move them inside, what’s a cat owner to do? It’s not uncommon to find plant owners who double as cat owners.

I learned online that even in households with fresh litter boxes, cats will pee in plants. Websites provided helpful tips on deterring cats from peeing in houseplants. One site stated, “The smell can become overwhelming after a few dozen pees.” (Really? A few dozen? That’s 36 pees.)

The advice ranges from placing aluminum foil or chicken wire over the soil to setting pinecones in the pot or double sided sticky tape on its edges. Other suggestions include burying mothballs in the soil or the tying of a helium-inflated Mylar balloon to the plant.

Clearly, the people who wrote these tips are not cat owners. While shards of glass in wet soil may be a bit too extreme a punishment, there are certainly other ways to mess with cats, especially those who scheme for hours on ways to outwit (and psychologically abuse) their owners.

As determined earlier, nothing is sacred. Cats will pee on anything. But, if confused, insulted or slightly annoyed, they will flee the scene and you will win.

So, in the interest of really keeping the kitten out of the aloe, here’s another list of things that could help:

1) A trigger in the soil, that when stepped on, will play any number of Huey Lewis songs.

2) Or an accordionist wearing a shark costume.

3) Another cat.

4) Lint

5) Congress

6) The aggressive cat petter from next door

7) A photo of James Traficant’s hairdo

8) A photo of you with … a dog

9) Videotaped highlights of Olympic curling

10) Singing fish

11) Porcelain angel figurines

12) Taxidermy