to not expect b*^£"rd cats to use my garden as a toilet??

[lucyellensmum]

I know i am being unreasonable, cats will be cats but since our dog died we have done our garden for the baby to play in and now it is full of cat shit. i'll paste this in gardening to see if there are any child friendly cat detterants on the market. I know about lion poo but the zoo here wont give it out anymore (health and safety!)

Cat owners? would you be horribly offended if someone knocked on your door, having never spoken to you before (newish neighbours) and asked if your cats had worms, i am worried about the health implications and could easily get them some wormers.

Gardeners - any child safe, veggie plot safe cat detterants - that work?

The best deterrent is get your own cat or one of those sonic cat scarers - not that it seemed to have much effect in our garden in previous years . A water pistol is good as the cats will associate you appearing with getting an undignified jet of water after a few times and scarper accordingly.

Tiger/lion dung based fertiliser will sacre off most domestic cats. You can buy it in garden centres

thanks Peachy, I like the gift idea - sometimes the poos are all runny.... and the pee stinks in hot weather. Plus they kill the birds - lots of bodies hanging around. Tried expensive sonic device, think cats had good laugh at it. Possibly they are deaf cats. Still, if poos too runny to gather, could try replacing them with some other faeces...
oh, doesn't this bring out the wickedness in one?
Will buy small lion or hurry to sell house before 1st June.

And if no lions for sale, perhaps you oculd purchase a hawk? Reckon that'd work too LOL

(HATE irresponsible cat owners, both aours are victims of them- oldest was sealed in a box and left to die because they were tored of him, youngest was just abandoned, we odnt know how old but he had 3 week old bone breaks and was about 8 weeks whren he was found0

Oh Peachy, that's horrible. Many years ago, I knew of someone who shut her cat into a chest of drawers every day whilst she went to work. Luckily she lost her job and decided to give the cat away to my friend, who found it a lovely home with a stay at home garden designer (I couldn't take it in as I was pregnant with DD at the time).

My DP says our cats are pampered because I spent most of yesterday trawling round different supermarkets trying to find their favourite food (Nature's Best - only Tesco seem to stock it round here) - but they repay this little care with so much, and they're very ornamental - and apart from the hairballs, are very tidy in their habits !

AND they don't (so far as I know poo in neighbours gardens, since their litter tray is well used!

Peachy is it really neglect to have your cats out at night? One of mine was part feral so there is no way we can keep him in if he doesn't want to be

Peachy - these cats will eat the hawk.

snuggle theoretically but TBH if its a feral I bet the RSPCA would rather you homed it tbh.

Our old cat is a great lazy gitwat, but the little one (almost 1) is lovely- sleeps on our pilows, even kisses us hello in the mornigs LOL

I can't believe these people talking about poison. I hope it's a sick, sick joke rather than a serious idea. If you put poison out, you can be prosecuted and imprisoned, quite apart from the complete lack of morality involved. Stupid, evil thing to say. How the hell do you know which animal - or small child - is going to eat the poison, anyway?

Human beings share the world with animals. That's just the way it is.

Poison!!!! I cant find where that was mentioned. But that is against the law!! Cats are not vermin. They are domestic animals and you could have the police at your door!!! What cruel bastards would do that?!
people have to accept that cats will be cats. Everyone has the same problem, its just life and there is nothing you can do Isnt there more important things for you people to worry about, you know, real life problems?!

(this is directed at people who want to use poison or hoses!!!!!)

LeiselVentouse's DH puts down poison.
I have to say, if I knew who he was in RL I would call the police.

Hose isn't a problem though, it gets them wet and thats it.

poison is such a hugely different issue.

What In would say to poeple though is remember there are a huge number of strays about and mostly at night so you wouldn't know. Don't automatically blame your neighbours cats unless you see them at it.

Yes I don't think the use of a hose is on the same lines as poison tbh. I think it is perfectly acceptable if the cat is toileting in somebody else's garden. They do bury it in my garden but in the process also dig up bulbs, young bedding plants etc.

We keep a bit at the back of our garden for our cat to use as a loo. dd can't get into it so we leave the grass longer for him. I know he uses it 'cos I've seen him loads of times & so do various other neighbourhood cats. I did catch him years ago going to have a crap on our neighbour's lawn (I was mortified) but chased him in time & that's when we made him the outside privy

He is out all night tho' as he just won't stay in. If he is still in when I go to bed he's guaranteed to start yowling to get out by about 2 in the morning anyway. There's loads of places in our graden for him to shelter if need be & his favourite place just now is under the picnic bench. Didn't know this was seen as neglect - I'd think it'd be crueler to keep him in?

I've got two cats & although they have a tray indoors & get locked in at night, I know they use my garden & aren't always great at burying their shit. Am pretty sure that they don't use neighbours (dogs on either side)- I hope.

Don't know about the thingie's which emit high-pitched noise. My approach has always been to visit neighbours when we've moved to a new house & hand out water pistols/give them full permission to turn the hose on the cats. Doesn't hurt the cats but really seems to work discouraging them. If you can catch them in your garden, would do this as often as you can....

FWIW I wouldn't mind if our neighbours used a hose or water pistol on him as I've had the urge to do it myself when I see the little bugger stalking the newly fledged birds (we keep our garden mostly quite wild & there are loads of birds). If I thought someone was putting down poison tho' it'd be reported straight away & if I knew who the person mentioned in an earlier post was he would be reported - putting down poison is just sick & he better hope to hell no kids get a hold of it!

Agree with Kerryum. ''Cats will be cats'' is trotted out to justify irresponsible pet-ownership. The owners buy the cats and artificially increase the problem of rampant crapping in built-up areas.Alot of people get cats with no thought whatsoever to the fact that their cats go elswhere to distribute their poo.As other people have pointed out there are costs to the neighbours too. My mother has had her window boxes regularly dug up and spent a fortune on replacement plants.

Must ay we always found it easier when we had acat flap, but can't in this house.

Worth thinking about if you can have one though, so much better for everyone and its not neglect then is it? Surely? AS long as they can get in.

I don't understand why people think it is OK to buy an animal and then let it wander into other peoples gardens. You wouldn't do this with a dog. Our neighbours cat jumps in our dustbin and rips the binbags open to get at the nappies. It makes a terrible mess. I wish they would keep it indoors at night.

Our old dog killed a couple of cats in our garden. He was a rescued lurcher and had been trained to hunt rabbits by his previous owners. We used to have to check the garden (enclosed by a high fence) before we let him out, but cats can hide . It was not a nice job going round to the neighbours to tell them their beloved pet had been killed but I could not blame my dog he was just doing what he had been trained to do. We could never let him off the lead when we were out but it would have been cruel not to let him run in the garden.

Would you consider getting a cat yourself? That seems to be a good way to get other cats out of the garden. We have two and they patrol a few of the neighbours gardens and they don't crap in any of them (no, why when we have freshly dug beds).

A short term solution is to fill 2 litre pop bottles with water and plant them upside down, cats are irked by their own reflection you see.

Also, plant some catnip in your neighbours gardens when they aren't looking, then they'll go there (I have bushes of the bloody stuff and all the cats come into our garden to browse for it, get stoned and wander off. Having said they don't crap when they are stoned so maybe that's a solution).

Depends if you want them out, or just their crap.

The lion crap thing doesn't work IME.

Compost spread on the ground seems to work though, they hate to be sticky.

Our old next door neighbour was convinced our cat was crapping in her garden (only at night) and we trained a camera on the area and found it was actually HER SODDING DOG!