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)

It wasn't the implication though to everyone else, just you. You unilaterally decided to be offended by something that wasn't offensive.

I've said several times now, the dogs don't bark - that's the whole point! They bark for 5 mins, perhaps twice a day, when they have a game with each other. They're a guarding breeding (GSDs) so literally bred to bark at anything. But they don't...should have got a Dachshund

Honestly you all sound awful and the answer is not not live in the countryside with unsocialised people.

But they aren’t supposed to be indoor? That’s cruel. My cats are all barn cats. Lives might be shorter but they are living how they should live.

This.

there are a lot of proud, vocal cat owners on here that don't think their cat shit stinks. Pardon the pun.

toss it back over. Yes the 'law' says cats can roam, but there's no 'law' to say you can't toss their stinking shit over the owners garden.

You had me until
“cars lowering the tone”

You all need to get in the hot tub together with a bottle of wine and hammer out a way forward in a spirit of mutual understanding and tolerance. Let's face it. Everyone is responsible for generating a portion of the aggro. Maybe neighbour C is more sinned upon than sinning though - and deserves a little more sympathy and an extra glass of wine.

Living in an isolated place with a handful of neighbours thrust upon you, rather than selected, is always going to be challenging. Things can get intense.

Is there any way for a communal vegetable patch to be organised? You could bond through working together on a shared project.

It's crazy, isn't it? It's like the adult equivalent of demanding that mummy punish your sister because she broke your toy when you whacked her over the head with it!

I'm baffled too as to how many people have deliberately misrepresented 'barking for a few minutes when it sees an intruder' as 'barking continuously 24/7' - and have then argued against the construction of their imagination rather than against the actual reality!

Christ if I have read ‘legal right to roam’ one more time…..

i hate the way they decimate the wildlife. The impact on the song bird population. Saw neighbour’s 2 cats injuring a baby bird once, passing it between them. Was truly horrific. Only animals that kill for fun. Big no from me. I do every thing legal to keep them out my garden.

If you can find any way to deter the cats from coming in your garden, you're going to be significantly less stressed by Debbie.

Having endured relentless cat shit, it became such a triggering thing for me that I was continually riled by the cat owner neighbour until they left. I also lost it with them after a catalogue of things that all grew. The cat shit was the hardest. It was daily,not was always sludgy and wrecked my grass. Having kids it was just horrible.

I'd risk the consequences of my dog attacking a cat if it would result in no more crapping.

Team dog, seriously when did anyone say anything about dogs barking all day??
If someone else just let their pet shit wherever it wants I would go nuts ar her too!

out of all the op said the bit that enraged you was the Debbie reference? 😂

You are very different from a great many cat owners, though.

Just because you are not a lazy cat owner, that doesn't mean that very many cat owners aren't lazy - or that a cat doesn't naturally lend itself to lazy pet ownership, in a way that a dog doesn't.

Did Debbie actually use the words "Destroying her enjoyment of her garden"? ( in the correct tense of course).

I.ve had words with NDN and dogs usually after very late night barking or the dogs getting into my garden ( neighbours fence) and it went along the lines of " can you shut your dogs up, they.ve been barking for three hours and I'm not having it / can you keep your bloody dog out of my garden and sort your fence"

I didn't read the thread properly so I'll take a naughty sticker for that.

I am confused why people are being so horrible on this thread. MN is turning into a cesspit.

You can love animals and feel utterly destroyed by a cat crapping non stop in your garden when you have kids. It's gross. When you own the cat you aren't seeing it in your own garden.

My nan used to squirt toxic cleaning products at cat's if she caught them. I thought how cruel. Then I kind of got it as an adult dealing with a relentless sludge crapper.

the op said that the neighbour had said it:

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.

op thinks the cats and cars are an issue and the neighbour thinks barking dogs and threats to have her dogs attack her cats are the issue.

the team cat/dog thing is pretty weird from grown women.

end of the day, you both sound like a nightmare and I wouldn’t want to live next to either of you.

This reminds me of why I live in a city. Let people live their own lives and be a bit tolerant FFS.

If your dogs bark for five minutes twice a day only, what exactly was she complaining about and why, knowing it can’t have been your dogs barking, didn’t you simply ask her instead of losing your temper and shutting the door in her face. How can playing dogs disturb her enjoyment of her garden if they aren’t barking?
You’ve hardly done yourself any favours OP as you still don’t know what she was really complaining about and therefore can’t work towards a solution. Maybe she was confusing your dogs with neighbour B’s dogs who may well be noisier than yours but you will never know as you politely but firmly told her to go away. YABU.

Omg I read this as "letting her cats shit on your hand". 😂😂😂

Anyway. Yappy dogs are annoying but so is cat shit. I would sling the crap back into their garden or gently squirt water at the cats to deter them from coming into your garden. I have a cat who luckily poos in his litter box like a good boy, but if he started crapping in my neighbours' garden I would give them my consent to spray a little water at him to keep him out. Not sure how to tackle the dog issue though.

You sound absolutely delightful.

Just to say if your dog chased and killed one of my pets, I’d get my shotgun and make sure it was the last thing it did, so be wary of escalating things. Your neighbour might take matters further than you want.

Well done Op. Shitting cats are foul, let the dogs loose. I'd be slinging all that cat shit back into her garden, time for her to learn to be a responsible pet owner and clean up after her pets herself and not expect the rest of the neighbours to do the job for her, lazy bint.

This thread is bonkers

You must be going nuts at dog owners then. The amount of dog shit everywhere in cities is revolting, and so are the little bags of shit dangling like a psychopath’s Xmas decorations from trees, or pushed thoughtfully into hedges.

Fox poo and cat poo are distinctively different and if there are cats next door then the law of averages suggests it will be the cats
Ummmm, not when you are living in a converted barn in the country with no other houses in a 3 miles vicinity 😁 and frankly, if it's cat poo rather than fox poo, that's a blessing because the latter sticks much worse and the noise foxes make is quite horrendous too.

The very fact that you have named this person online on a public forum is unreasonable. It won't take much for people who know her to work out who you are talking about, really poor form