Vinegar should work. Sometimes I get a few ants near my cat food upstairs and I just spray my homemade cleaning solution (half water, half vinegar) and then make sure I'm super careful to pick up any food I've spilled and make sure the cats haven't left a trail.

I can second mam101606's comment. I recently battled an ant invasion by spraying vinegar wherever I saw the ants. They were coming in through my back door, and after just a couple days of spraying they gave up. The smell dissipates quickly, and I'd rather smell vinegar than nasty bug spray anyway.

Just place the food bowls in a shallow dish and add water. Ants can't swim. Worked like a charm for me.

Bowl moat has always been successful for us. No ant has ever braved the waters.

I have my cats food in a small tupperware container meant for a sandwich, and while I have had ants in other areas of my home, they have never bothered with the cat food. I don't know if it's because the side of the tupperware is too slick, or if it's because the lip that the lid snaps into is too hard for them to get over, or if it's because the containers are deeper than a regular cat bowl and therefore contain the smell better...but not a single problem! My biggest problem was with one of the cats learning to drink from the square container...he'd lap out of the corner and splash water out of the bowl...but he figured it out.

Cucumber peels. Ants hate 'em. I got rid of a massive ant infestation one time just by peeling a couple of cucumbers and leaving the peels all around the kitchen.

A friend who lives in St. John, US Virgin Islands, where the regular insect infestation and humidity is enormous, places his cats' food bowls in a saucer with water. But he doesn't leave the food out all the time, as I do here in New England. so it may be that the food isn't out long enough for the ants to find it.

The moat has work for us too.

i had this problem in an old apartment.... it was horrible because the ants would get into the big bag of cat food... so i bought a tuperware container with a snap lid to store it in and it worked fine. i still use it even though i no longer live in that apartment.... i like to think it keeps the food fresh!

i always read that ants hated mint and to plant mint all over the place - maybe you could rig up a system of storing fresh mint somewhere around the bowls. unless pets hate mint too? seems like all the peSts do but i am not sure about pets...

nevanna, thanks for the cuke tip!

I've also heard boric acid works, but haven't checked it out for myself. Thankfully, I've been spared ant invasions (but the mice once came in through my dryer vent!).

Never "spray" for ants. It may temporarily kill the ones you see, but spray scatters them and they simply create more colonies. Ants should always be baited. It takes longer but it is the only way to kill the queen and the rest of the colony.

You must thoroughly wash the "ant" trail with disinfectant to kill the ants' "scent" trail. That's how the ants keep finding the pet food bowls.

I second the recommendation for mint. As a former Master Gardener, this is an excellent organic remedy against ants. Sprinkle some crushed mint around the bowls, perhaps nesting the food bowl in a bigger bowl with the mint in the bigger bowl surrounding the food bowl.

My outdoor organic "pesticide" is a mix of mint, garlic and hot pepper sauce blended with a few drops of dish detergent (to make it stick) and then mixed with water in a spray bottle. Bugs hate it.

The moat trick worked for me, too (I used a plastic moat attachment to the bottom of the bowls that they sell at pet stores and online). If it didn't work for you, you might try adding a drop of dishwashing liquid or vegetable oil to the moat water--this is what the moat manufacturer recommends. Even if those ants can swim, they won't be able to with that stuff in the water. And the moat attachments I refer to are not so large that the dog/cat can really get into the oil-slicked moat water.

you've just GOT to find the point(s) of entry and seal them. yes, it takes time and work but once done, no more fretting.

i live in manhattan and had my own set of city bugs to deal with day in and day out. they went straight to my cat's bowls.

i took a weekend day to seal every possible hole and crack they could be entering with spray foam and caulk (they just love getting in at the gaps around pipes).

Once done, I haven't had a SINGLE bug come back to my kitchen!

The moat thing only works if you put soap in the water. I like Dr Bronner's peppermint or Method's lavender dish soap because ants hate those herbs.

pammyfay and lorigami are right -- you have to put in a little soap. It breaks the surface tension of the water and the ants will drown. It's how I keep ants out of my cats' dry food when we leave town for the weekend.

My cats also get canned food, and I mix one can of cat food with about 2/3 can of water before serving. That way, they don't make a mess around the bowl when they eat.

And K T G is 100% correct that it depends on what kind of ant you have. What works for one species may not work for another, and so take any broad advice you get with a grain of salt (or boric acid, or chalk, or diatomaceous earth).

(As an aside, I'd guess K T G had pharoah ants, not argentines.)

Cedar oil kills insects, and you can buy it in spray cans. It lasts a week or so. Mint oil works, too, but after a few uses you'll start to associate the smell of mint with armies of dead ants, and you won't enjoy mint chocolate chip ice cream ever again. Trust me on this.

For some species of ants, bait works well. Which bait to use would depend on the species, and the season, and the weather. And for some species (such as the argentine), baits will never work. You have to make barriers to entry, and you have to find any existing nest and kill kill kill.

I had ants coming in the window of my 6th floor apartment a few years back. Yup, they were crawling up the outside of the building, all the way up from the ground.

I wiped up their trails inside with ammonia, so they couldn't immediately find their way back to the food source. Then I sprinkled cinnamon in the window tracks. Most ants won't cross cinnamon, for some reason. They never came back.

Ants leave a scent trail (to communicate with other ants). I have always just wiped the trail (wearing household cleaning gloves) with lemon juice. Then use sections of the peel and twist (like you would for a Martini) along the trail to release the oils. The acidity and the scent keeps pests away.

Plus it makes your kitchen smell good.

This works for other household pests too. Like on counter tops.

We keep our cats' food dishes on top of the washer/dryer, and any opened food products in the kitchen above the counter (instead of in the cabinets below). The ants can't seem to get the hang of the height (though they love the counter, so it's a great place to put out those bait traps at the change of season when we are most likely to have ant issues). The only problem with this method is having a high enough place to put the food that the cats can get to (particularly difficult if you have an aging cat) that is still convenient.

Good luck!

ants can and, if sufficiently motivated, will build bridges across water by sacrificing some so the others can walk across their carcasses. it's just a matter of how badly they want your food.

I'm having this problem right now actually. I'm in Florida and after the last hurricane rolled through ALL the bugs came out to play. I ended up with a bad pest infestation on one of my plants and lots of ants inside. To get rid of them I filled a spray bottle with water, a tablespoon of Bronner's Peppermint and a dash of rubbing alcohol and I use it everywhere. On the plants, floors, walls, window sills... where ever I see bugs. It kills them instantly and gets rid of their scent so they don't come back. I also put a small ring of Vaseline on the bottom of the cat bowls and they haven't gone near it since.

Borax is excellent for most pests. I've sprinkled it all over the carpets in our house when we got a flea invasion. (vacuum up in a few days).

It isn't toxic to pets or children, but you don't want them ingesting large quantities so be careful where you're using it.

I am dealing with sugar ants in my kitchen right now, and the borax powder wasn't doing anything, so I found a product called Terro which is ant bait that uses borax with a liquid mix that they seem crazy for. You put out drops of it where you see ants (and pets or kids can't get to) and they eat it and take it back to the colony to feed the others - it kills but it's delayed long enough for the whole nest to get fed and take them out... takes longer than spraying, but it's more permanent and not spraying poison all over the place.