Finally lost it with neighbours

[FinnalyCracked]

There’s four houses on the close - and none for miles (converted country barns - hence the being so close together and yet nothing for miles).

Neighbour A has three cats and all are outdoor cats. Me and Neighbour B have dogs. Neighbour C is irrelevant to this pet debacle.

Neighbours A’s cats, since they moved in, have constantly shit in everyone’s garden. Don’t come at me and tell me it’s not them as the closest village is six miles and no one else has sodding cats!! They sit on the garage and hiss at anyone who goes by and are, quite frankly, obnoxious.

I’ve bitten my tongue but neighbour Cs and B have not. Neighbour B has taken much delight in having their dogs chase the cats off. Neighbour C has invested in barbed wire and other such things to keep the cats out

Yesterday, neighbour A knocked on my door and asked me to call my dogs in as they were ‘destroying her enjoyment of her garden.’ I was very polite - but very firm - and told her to fuck off (not quite that frank, but you get the idea). I’d just finished work, so the dogs had been inside with me so they’d been out about five minutes when she appeared. She launched into a a bit of a diatribe about how B and I have been ruining her summers for years now with our dogs barking and running around.

I snapped. Said her cats constantly shit in my garden and I had to pick it up as I had small children and that her fucking hot tub was obnoxiously loud, so was their music and their shitheaps of cars (her partner always has a rotation of them that he tinkers with) all over the driveway lowered the tone and created exhaust fumes, and that if I ever saw her cats in my garden again I’d be taking a leaf out of neighbour Bs book and setting my dogs on them. Then I told her not to come onto my property again and slammed the door in her face.

It’s a first world problem, I know. But I am just so fucking sick of biting my tongue and being a good neighbour )including taking her fucking parcels) and she has the bloody gall to tell me my dogs can’t be in the garden, as their playing ‘ruins her enjoyment.’

WHAT ABOUT MY FUCKING ENJOYMENT, DEBBIE?!?!

That’s it. That’s all I wanted (just a place to rant)

If you’re going to the trouble of picking it up why not just put it in the bin? Or you could speak to her and ask her to remove it? You know like an actual adult. All this ‘throw it over her fence or dump it in her hot tub’ is just going to inflame the situation. People need to grow up.

You're fucking up the ecosystem, they're also meant to die of infected wounds from rats or fighting, have two litters of kittens a year every year until they die a horrible death and die off from starvation when the numbers get too high due to "living how they should live". That's how animals who live wild live and why efficient native predators don't decimate prey species. You give yours vet care (hopefully) spay them (hopefully) and feed them (hopefully), then let them loose on the ecosystem as a none native predator (domestic cats descend from an african species of cat) with no risk of injury and no natural predator and no end to their killing.
Toxoplasmosis brain will make you deny this, but anyone who likes wildlife and doesn't own a cat knows what they do outside to the ecosystem. Cat parasites make prey animals stupid and lazy and infects humans and domestic pets when you let Tiddles out to shit in someone elses garden, so it's not like the destruction ends at killing them, toxoplasmosis gondii fucks them over even more.
Why does your cat get the benefits of wild living but none of the drawbacks just because you think it's natural? A dog would love to be out mutilating wildlife without a human around and you could argue it's unnatural that they can't. People need to stop buying the current gene pool of half feral random cats that get out and breed successfully and domesticate them into something more suitable as a pet if the current selection of cats hates being a pet so much that keeping them inside is a cruelty, but instead people run out to rescue/buy whatever moggy they can find and think they're doing a good deed ignoring the miserable neighbours and decimated wildlife and kids blind from cat shit they cause with their roaming.

No clue if its your post - I just thought has the toddler been offended by a cat hissing at it.

Surely as a parent you keep the child away from any pet - cat, dog, hamster, snake etc that is potentially hostile anyway. Its probably just sat there in its home minding its own business.

Fucking the ecosystem? I bet you would be happy if those cats hunted rats around your home and if the op lives rural as she says she does then cats are ill actually keep vermin down . We keep cats é specifically for mice and rats as we have a steading with a chicken coop not far from the house. Our neighbours have since come to us and asked us what cat they could get as apparently since we moved 2 years their mice problem has vanished , they now have 2 cats themselves. We have pheasants , owls , eagles , chickens and cats only hunt mice and rats . Barn cats are doing a job just like sheep dogs do a job

People get so irrational when they’ve got a hatred of pets.

@Crazyworldmum How did you train your cat to kill mice and rats (humanely obviously, as opposed to mauling them and leaving them to die a slow death) but to leave other wildlife alone? Asking on behalf of the cats in our street and surrounding area who haven’t mastered that.

Er, never had a cat, neighbours don't have cats. All have dogs. Number of mice? 0

Buy a motion detector water sprayer to see the cats off. I have a cat but I set it up at night when mine is in to stop a cat in the neighbourhood spraying up our catflap.

As someone else said, the hot tub noise would annoy me more.

Plenty ? I bet you can’t name 3

On the other hand Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin … all of em dog owners.

That's true that if keeping the cats in was the only goal that it could be achieved. The garden would look like a prison camp and all the plants would be at ground level, and great care would be needed to avoid a gap appearing in the fencing, or a gate being left open, or a window in the house being opened more than an inch in hot weather.
I don't want my cats to inconvenience the neighbours and try to avoid this, but I won't go to those lengths.
Dogs inconvenience neighbours too, at least some of the time: the nervous ones who bark constantly when left alone, the feisty ones who knock over vulnerable people by charging around off the lead (this happened to me soon after a knee replacement) and fouling the pavements. But I wouldn't expect dog lovers not to have their favourite pet, or to go to extreme lengths to stop them bothering anyone else.

That's a bit of a stretch. A well designed garden would still look lovely, with no need for everything to be at ground level.

But yeah. What I expect, but didn't get, from my neighbours is reasonable efforts. Shrug of the shoulders and told cats will wander.

Same with dogs. One of mine is a barker. She starts barking, she's called in.

That is annoying for you. The least they could do is set up attractive toilets for the cats on their own property. How much trouble would it be really.

I know. He's a total gobshite in lots of other ways too but all my other neighbours are lovely.

I love dogs, but barking dogs send me insane. Especially the loud yapping kind.

The best was my NND complaining that I blocked off the cat ‘right of way’ into my garden because it meant he couldn’t shelter from the sun behind the shed. FFS. Like that’s my problem!

So the dogs don’t bark , but they bark for 5 minutes twice a day?
It’s probably more than that , barking dogs are a nightmare.

That's honestly horrific and she broke the law by poisoning your poor cat I'm so sorry you went through this.

With nice little hand towels and fancy soap?

The only sane one is neighbour C here. Dogs are loud i love pets but they do park alot. I have cats u find it strange they are actively leaving poo on display cats usually bury there poo mine certainly do they dig a little hole do the business and cover it back up. I suggest to her getting some sort of flower bed just with soil in it they would use it as a litter box essentially although I do wonder are u sure its not the other neighbour's dogs?

I think you are out of order.

I had a dog, I adore them. I also now have cats.

If any animal poos in my garden I clean it- no big deal. Annoying at times but im picking up poop anyway.

Its cruel and wrong to say you will set dogs on innocent animals.

you actually sound awful.

my neighbours dog drives me insane barking its horrific some days.

i have a hot tub too I dont think I am your kind of person……x

Ps: the cars would definately annoy me- I had a nearby neighbour parking cars he tinkers on for weeks on end in my culdesac rather than his own street or driveway and it bugged me. I am with you on that one!

if my cat shit in someones garden I would happily come clean it x

YANBU OP and I think you're getting an unfair time on here its clear you snapped and I can see why. Cat Neighbour was bloody rude, being a cheeky fucker and really shouldn't be complaining especially as she isn't squeaky clean herself.

@FinnalyCracked Good for you for telling her where to go I would have done the same too and throw that cat shit back into her garden her cats her problem.

To those posters saying its what cats do and what do they want the neighbour to do about it, well cleaning up her own cats shit would be start and to the poster who asked why can't the OP just clean it whats one extra turd, why the hell should the OP clean up shit that doesn't belong to her pets?

I say this as a cat owner myself and I'd be offering to clean up their shit or cat proof my own garden so they don't roam into neighbours gardens its common curtesy.

Team cat here!

As it is, dogs were out on the patio all day yesterday until gone 8pm and I worked at my study (overlooking garden, by patio doors)…guess what, no cats. Usually they’re in and out all day. Not a peep yesterday.

I guess cats can be stopped from going into peoples gardens and shitting all over them, you just have to try. No cat shit in my garden this morning either.

I was feeling a touch guilty about finally snapping, but now I’m glad I did since clearly all Debbie needed was someone bring crystal clear with her in order for her to get a grip.

Long may it continue!

OP, it’s not hard to guess why next door’s cats won’t go into your garden if your two barky-for-only-five-minutes-dogs are on the patio all day until gone 8pm.