Keeping cat out my garden?

[sunfloweryy]

I redid my garden last summer and made a little stoney area under my cherry tree with a comfy chair and plant pots. It was my favourite place to be!

But I’ve just been out there to fetch something and discovered that a cat (I suspect next doors as I’ve seen it lurking over there lots) has shat literally all over it. Piles and piles of it, not buried and it some of it looks so liquidy 🤢

I’m raging now! Obviously I know I need to clear it up but does anyone have any good ways of stopping it from using my garden as a toilet in future? We are TTC and I know pregnant women can’t touch cat poo so it can’t go on, plus I don’t want any potential infants falling in it/picking it up/traipsing it in the house.

I’ve read about things like lion dung, high pitched noise emitters etc but does anyone have any experience of these things actually working?

tia

Water pistol to deter the fucker. I did this in our old house. The bastard was coming up under the fence so I sat there and waited - got him twice and he never came back.

Lavender plants will help deter them too. There's another plant too, smells a bit like curry but I can't remember the name of it.

We had a high pitched noise emitter in our garden and the cats were deterred by it and stopped going in the garden! Took it away and no poo found since.

Check your garden more often and clean up any poo quickly, then shake a little chilli powder around. If a place smells like poo, cats will keep going there to poo - you might get more than one dumping there! The chilli powder makes it a bit unpleasant if they come to sniff or dig around.

Next door's cat used to shit in our garden a lot until I started giving it treats every now and again. I think they don't shit where they eat! It started shitting in its own garden instead :)

Try a sensor activated water sprinkler. They don’t like water and it saves you trying to catch it in the act. It will make your garden a less enjoyable place to shit.

Get a sonic cat repeller alarm. They sell them in B&Q. I had one in my last house and worked brilliantly

Second the motion activated water sprinkler. It won't hurt the cat but cats HATE not knowing where an 'attack' came from. It'll be wet and it won't know why, it can't predict your garden after that so it'll likely not come back. Best of luck OP!

Get a cat.

Or... get a saucepan & wooden spoon, bang very loudly it should scare the cat away.
Worked for me with a persistent feisty cat that kept attacking my smaller cat.

Please consider sonic alarms as a last resort OP - my neighbour has these in his garden to deter foxes. He is late 60s and can't hear them, but we can (late 20s). All. summer. Long. It's horrible

I had sonic alarms in my garden when I was in my 20s and couldn't hear them. Maybe the brand?

A greyhound.....never yet seen a cat in my garden! (Unless DGreyhound has caught and eaten them.....)

Even better than a greyhound, get five of them

You used to be able to get a type of citrus-scented gel from the pet shop to deter cats. Cats hate citrus whereas many people like it (you can’t really smell it anyway, though cats can), so something like that would be ideal.

Change the stones for paving. You’ve basically created a giant litter tray out there.