Catnip as a mosquito repellent

This isn't really a useless piece of information but hey, it's information!

Seeing that I just came back from a holiday to my home country which seems to be having trouble with dengue these days, I thought it would be good to look online for some natural mosquito repellents that I could use around the house.

I have found amongst other 'mosquito repelling' plants, catnip proved to be pretty effective against those pesky mossies.

In the Iowa study, the researchers noted that small doses of catnip oil were at least as effective at repelling mosquitoes as 10 times larger doses of DEET (which was used at typical recommended application rates for commercial products).

[link]

Sounds good to me. Things to note however is that you need to crush the leaves to release the aromatic oils in order for the plant to be useful. But here comes the problem: these oils also have an effect on cats - they make them 'high'. So, the plant might start attracting all the neighborhood cats to my garden!

The mess!

Nonetheless, I think I prefer cats to mossies. So I guess I shall be looking for catnip plants in nurseries near my home then.