Mumsnet Talk

We have a lot of garden, front and back. I work in a garden office in the back garden. It's my workplace. I like it to be pleasant.

I've always noticed lots of cats in my garden. I shoo them off, but slowly the cat crap is sneaking fully into my life. Two cat poo's outside my office door and one on the path in the past week.

First spring(ish) day today, so I've gone out to tackle the dead stuff in the front garden. The place is literally stinking with cat shit. It's ALL OVER.

We have no pets as my son is severely allergic (we're talking dangerous reactions here) - so it seems that ALL the neighbourhood cats are using our garden to crap in.

I'm so livid

Sorry, rant over. Is there anyway to stop this? I've tried planting something called 'catnip' all over the place but it made no difference. Can anyone recommend anything that actually works???

Please help meeee.

I may post in homes & gardens too.

Put a bung in their exhaust pipes? (Read your title !!)

I think you need several sonic alarms dotted around the garden.

BTW cats just loooooooooooooove catnip and will roll in it and sit in it and generally adore it, so I'd dig it up straight away if I were you !!!!!

Are you sure it's cats? Most cats tend to do their business in dirt so they can cover it, but foxes like to crap anywhere, especially paths <voice of bitter experience>

You can get a cat deterrent spray from Pet Shops (I've always found a water pistol a good deterrent too!)

your typo in the title...

I've heard about something that smells like lion droppings and scares them off. Also about a device that makes an intolerable noise to their ears but which we can't pick up. But don't know if any of this works.

bloody things crap under one bush in my front garden every time I walk past it it stinks. we have had some success by leaving orange peel over any newly dug areas as they love newly turned earth. RivieraKid our local cats appear too lazy or too delicate to get their pretty paws dirty digging to cover it as my horrid neighbours garden testifies, a shett blew into it over the fence and when I went to retrieve there was crap everywhere <boak> on path / patio / lawn etc, they have 2 cats. haven't seen a fax round here for a good few years either.

shett = sheet fax = fox

aw well not as bad as Cars crap in the garden [ggrin]

ffs wonky fingers... will give up now

Just read the typo. Imagine a car poo? A much bigger problem.

I'm sure it's cats. They just don't seem bothered to cover it up. However, we live fairly rurally so it could be foxes too. We do get a lot up here, including badgers too. It can't just be foxes though - considering the sheer amount of it.

I will do some googling.....

Catnip will definitely attract cats! Dig it up ASAP.

Good luck with this, OP.

You will get people telling you:

It's not cats, it's foxes. (even if you can see them)
You are uptight if you don't like shit. There is nothing wrong with shit. Relaxed, nice people, bathe in shit.
You do other things which are as bad, like hang the washing out IN YOUR OWN GARDEN (or in your case, presumably, working there, which may offend your neighbours for all you know)
GET a GRIP and GROW UP.

I feel your pain.

Who the hell told you to plant catnip?????

Cats adore it, it's like a drug.

This is like planting your garden full of cannabis plants and wondering why there were suddenly a load of stoners hanging round.

Well the catnip advice from my friend was good then! Most of it is dead now anyway.

I'd go for the sonic option - PiLs have it and haven't seen a beastie in the garden since installing. PiLs did check with the neighbours who own two of the offenders that the sound wasn't upsetting the cats outside the perimeter, and it seemed not to be causing an issue.

Another cat thread NO

I agree with others who have said get rid of the cat nip its attracting the cats to your garden.

Cats even know where a catnip plant has been, I've seen them rolling around on the dead roots of a plant. I'd still dig it up.

I only wish I knew, our garden is covered and yes it definitely is cats. Yesterday I watched next door's cat hunker down to dump a massive load metres away from me, while I was powerless to give chase because I was embroiled in the business of cleaning a previous squidged turd from my shoe. And none of the ones round here bury it.

@ thread title, brightened my otherwise shitty day.

@ curry this isn't aibu so it shouldn't be too bad

Def get rid of cat nip. Citrus peelings help, as does the lion poo smell. I know you can't, but I convinced DH to get 2 cats as it would stop the endless mounds of shit in our garden. It didn't. Our make cat is too lazy to leave home, EVER! So he shots all over our lawn. He makes NO attempt to cover it up.

Cats love catnip. They hate citrus peel though, so you could try leaving that. But it does sound like it could be foxes.

Catnip is like hash for cats. They're probably attracted by it, roll in it, get high and crap but are too blissed out to bother covering it up
Cats will generally go in loose each or shingle rather than grass. My mad old cat has recently started going on the lawn but he is 19 and quite loopy.
If you have a family of foxes then it could be them.
A sonic repeller would probably work best whatever small mammal it is.

@ Balloon now! I have an image of feral, unwashed teens hanging out listening to the grateful dead & me chasing them off with the hose!

Yeah listen to those cats carefully, they aren't saying Miaow, they're saying Maaaaaaaan

I thought we had foxes pooing in our garden, until one early morning I spotted a neighbours cat taking a huuuge dump in the middle of our lawn. No effort to cover it, nothing. He started coming and doing this every day.

When they stuck up a poster to say he had gone missing I was secretly very relieved.

Stop! I'm cradling sleeping, poorly dd & bursting for a wee!

Sonic works for a time but they seem to get used to it, ditto lion dung but they are good.

Water pistol is a must.

I'm tempted to put paracetamol in food as apparently they can't metabolise it...

Boy, your friend got it seriously wrong didn't she? Catnip to deter cats? Nooo, it's the other way round. Oh dear.

Anyhoo, what I was going to say was that I think you can order lion poo online. God knows what it costs.

Springhare why didn't you just throw the other shoe at the hunkering cat? I would imagine that would have put it off its stride rather.

Catnip is what the thing they put in cat toys that makes them go bonkers and act like kittens again!

Definitely dig it up!

I bought some green, stinky gel type stuff off amazon as our lawn was covered. It worked a treat but you have to use quite a lot at first and top up every few days and every time it rains. The cats soon found somewhere else to go and I only had to sprinkle the stuff every week or two.

Well I regularly see foxes, but see about 5 different cats a day.

About the catnip, although its not funny iyswim.

I've googled and citrus seems a regular tip. Will try that, as well as some sonic stuff. I just don't want my garden to stink of shit. They go on the soil they can find mainly but don't cover it up. They shit on the grass too.

OP does your friend live near you? Was she trying to get the cats to stop crapping in her garden?

'Yy I planted cat nip & it worked, you should try it...'

I "plant" thorny clippings in the garden, so my neighbour's 7 cats have no space to "assume the position". It's worked fairly well so far, in the past I have used citrus peelings and ground pepper, and olbas oil-infused tea bags to good effect. The trick seems to be to vary tactics, the get used to each method you use eventually.
How about giving your cat-owning friends a gift of some potted catnip plants, thus ridding yourself of catnip and ensuring your feline neighbours get their "fix" away from your garden.

Cars pooing in your garden, no faxes to be found, and then those dastardly shetts! Will nobody think of the shetts?! ( shetland ponies?)

Sorry OP, sounds stressful

No, the 'catnip' friend is in a different neighbourhood. She said it worked a treat for her. I seriously think she got her names mixed up!

Not having any pets, I'm none the wiser. However, the catnip went in years ago. Now it's all dead, I've only noticed the problem getting bad thus last year. Weird.

Buy a really large dog and train it to chase them!
Poxy things, cant stand them! Alternatively, a high powered hose works quite well!

Ah now, I would LOVE a dog....dd is obsessed with dogs. However ds is dangerously allergic to them too. Any furrys in fact

Get your own cat. They don't crap in their own garden and will keep other cats out of yours.

Ilovemydog I was tempted! However, since I know that this particular beast has rather loose 'motions' I didn't feel like risking contaminating my second suede boot. Still, the colour is probably fairly similar...

Get your own cat. They don't crap in their own garden and will keep other cats out of yours
Ha, in the case of 3 consecutive cats belonging to my ILs, they dont shit in the garden, they just go in random places in the house instead! I will never bleach the smell and sight from my memory when I happened to look behind the tv in their front room! <<boak>>

Put holly and rose prunings everywhere, set up a sprinkler on a timer, put deterrent spiky strip on your fences at the access points the cat uses. Put some mirrors at ground level so they think another cat is there.
Feel your pain, I hate cat shit.

Springhare forewarned is forearmed. Keep something small, accurate and heavy but non-fatal in your pocket at all times and practice your throwing arm.

Or keep a water pistol handy. Or a recording of a loud dog barking, to really give it the shits, so to speak.

I could go on.

Ill bet my beer money it's not fox shit, you really would know if you were within 10m of a pile of fox shit, it's the most vile smelling stuff on earth.

Yes that's true actually, it does stink. Got some on my coat whilst sitting on the back of the trailer and people commented all day about this awful fox stink.

As I said in the OP, I can't get my own cat as ds is properly allergic.

I feel like planting barbed wire in between the plants!

Mayaswell, there's some good tips there thanks

Your wasting your time, until we can communicate with animals (which I personally am looking forward to) there is no old wives tale or battery powered gadget that will solve it.

I'm afraid the typo in the title made me find this www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/attachments/interior-exterior-visual-tech/28592d1232488715-passenger-seat-upgrade-car-toilet.jpg

The ultrasonic scarers didn't work for us. Then we found out that next door's cat was deaf.

However, interestingly, a young lad who came to decorate our house could hear it. So, if you would also like to chase away the local youth, then it could come in handy.

The cats in our neighbourhood even crap on the driveway. Not all cats bury it. We have used sonic sensors, some hideous smelling garlic spray, water pistol for when we see them and the metal cats that you stick in the garden to put them off. The kids next door nicked the marbles out of the eyes of those though everything worked for a short time. Now we are back to square one.

Apparently tiger shit is just the thing.

Or a big fuck-off scary dog.

We've got one of those sonic things, that seems to have worked for us. (Although the batteries have probably died by now).

Is there a plant that has the opposite effect to catnip?

Failing that get a cat, then it can fight the other feckers off its territory .

Sorry ignore last bit I see your son is allergic.

I've never seen any neighbourhood cars crapping in my garden before...how does that work?

Sorry! Just joking! Get the typo....I have had this problem in the past and will be out investigating in better weather around our back garden since the new neighbours moved in, they've got a cat so goodness knows if it's been crapping in the garden or not...

Since you work outside in the your garden you're at an advantage to have several water pistols loaded and keep shooting water at them every time you see one.

Once the cats have chosen their spot and the smell is there it's difficult to persuade them to stop using 'their' patch. I've stopped it by clearing it every day, sticking small bamboo sticks all over bare patches of soil and orange peel for the persistant ones. I have thrown a few cups of water out the window towards them at times so they get the idea that my garden is not their patch.

Fox poo smells much worse even than cat poo. For us, the only thing that worked (for foxes) was to dot used teabags in the used areas and every night put a few drops of olbas oil on them. Neighbours must have thought I was mad.

Is there a plant that has the opposite effect to catnip

Yep, Plectranthus ornatus otherwise known as Scaredycat and not harmful at all. Seemed to do the trick in our last garden, nice pretty blue flowers too.

OP, this could be the plant your friend was thinking of but confusing it with catnip