To not put bells on my cats?

[Mousesmummy]

Right the story goes :

Have lived in our house for 5 years, had 2 cats for the last 3 years.
Normally get on very well with our neighbours, they get children Easter eggs etc.
Neighbour man is 89, feeds the birds in his garden.
LOTS of cats in the street.
Inevitably there have been a few bird deaths!!
Their daughter asked us to put bells on our cats.
We said we had been advised not to as collars can be a strangle risk, even the 'snapping' ones.
She is not happy and has said if anything happens to her dad (whilst he is getting up to chase our cats away) she will hold me personally responsible.
I am p**d off at this comment to say the least.
So AIBU to say no?

Could you buy him a water pistol - a very good cat deterrent

She sounds loopy. Ignore her.

Agree with the water pistol, and I am a huge cat lover!!!

YANBU. Bells don't work anyway. One of our cats catches animals (mostly mice) with or without a bell and constantly loses collars so we have just given up putting them back on him.

She sounds very unreasonable.

I have a cat and would not let her out without a bell on her collar. As far as i am aware the elasticated collars dont have a strangulation risk.

I understand that they are your pets but the elderly man probably gets as much enjoyment out of feeding the birds as you do your cats. It is for pet owners to minimise any damage done to the environment / wildlife as much as possible.

Could you order tiger poo online and ask him to put some around where he feeds the birds. Perhaps raise the bird feeder or cut back and shrubs around it?

It will at least look as though you are being sympathetic.

If they were my cats I'd put collars & bells on them.
Cats are very territorial, so odds are that cats living close to your neighbour are the same ones going in his garden.
Do your cats actually go into his garden? Bit much to ask you to bell if not.
I hope they don't poo over there (this thread could go VERY pear shaped if they do).
Mind, I think I read that Bells on Collars only reduce predation rates by about 15% :(. But British song and other small wildbirds are generally doing badly in general, need all the help they can get.
Apparently some collars are safer than others? Something to think about.

You could put a bell on the old man so that when he leaps up your cats will be distracted.

www.rspb.org.uk/advice/gardening/unwantedvisitors/cats/birddeclines.aspx Print this off for him. There is no evidence that domestic cats have any effect at all on our population of birds and it is likely that they only manage to catch the weaker birds, who would die before the next breeding season anyway.

I don't have this problem. My cat is only capable of hunting spiders and carier bags and even that he is not good at

YABU other people's cats are a bloody pain in the arse.

at grovel.

I get really pissed off with my neighbours vile shit machines killing birds in my garden. I throw bits of gravel at them.

Yabu.

Keep the bloody things in, they are a menace.

I think it's a reasonable request. Her dad gets joy out of feeding the birds and it's such a small thing to ask. You are being petty.

FFS you're worrying about the tiny possibility that your cat might get strangled when your elderly neighbour (i.e. a human being) has the very REAL possibility of tripping or falling and seriously injuring himself when shooing your bloody pets out of HIS garden - not to mention his REAL distress that you now are causing by appearing not to give enough of a fuck, even after accepting years of gifts, to compromise even a little bit in order that he can feed the birds he loves??

YABU.

I don't think their request for your cats to have bells is an unreasonable one, and I am a cat owner too. Putting a bell on my puss put a stop to him bringing birds in, so for us at least it has worked!

That is a GREAT screen name btw HeadfirstForHalos, I LOVE that song!

YABU.

It must be upsetting for an old man who enjoys feeding birds to find corpses and piles of feathers - it seems a small enough thing for the daughter to have asked. She probably wasn't expecting a negative response to a simple request so was upset when she replied as she did - which wasn't reasonable but two wrongs don't make a right.

non of my cats have collars on them ,an old lady i knew her cat went missing and she only found it when the leaves dropped from a tree the cat was decomposed ,got its collar stuck on branch

I put a collar on our cat once. He went out and came back an hour later without it

I would have said yabu a couple of months ago, except my cat managed to get his front leg stuck through his (elasticated) collar; this resulted in an operation, 36 stitches and him having to live in a cage till completely healed. Poor Frank. Oh, and a £500 vet bill. Poor me.

I'd get some of that cat deterrent spray ( it works well and is nicer than piles of tiger poo imo) and a water pistol as others have said.

YABU. It's up to pet owners to limit the damage that their pets do to wildlife and to their neighbours.