To NOT want the neighbours cats shitting in my garden?

[legolimb]

Newish house - with a large garden.

Our neighbours seem to all have cats which wander where they like.

Just been out to shoo one away and caught it casually squeezing one out whilst staring me in the eye. It couldn't care less.

Obviously IANBU to not want this - so what suggestions does anyone have to keep the dirty little beggars out?

I can still smell it sick, not envy..

My rescue is litter trained. But he really doesn't like it.
He much prefers to go outside.
I'd be fine with someone spraying him or chasing him off. I'm not going to stop him going out.

The water bottle won’t woke. They will just do it again and you can’t sit there all day waiting for the cat!

I wish people wouldn’t buy the noise deterrents. I can actually hear them and it’s a horrible screechy noise!

The only thing that works is your own cat, preferably Male. I have two females and always have half the street’s cats in my garden. They don’t use my garden as a toilet though. I do have a litter tray for my own and they come indoors to use it.

Both sides of me have dogs and my cats LOVE to wind them up by strutting the full length of the fence.
I have given both neighbours permission to chuck water at them if they want rid of them.
Only had 1 cat come back wet so far.
If anyone shot my cat with a bb gun I would go to the police.

They are all animals, grumpy (if we're naming dwarfs) and therefore don't worry about human boundaries.

Birds, foxes and hedgehogs are WILD animals. Birds are irrelevant as their poo is tiny. Hedgehogs can be avoided if you have a proper fence. Foxes are pretty rare in most places. Cats are there because their human owners have put them there and can't be arsed to train them. Completely different.

Love to know how someone trains a cat. Mine gives zero fucks what i want on any given day.

We have cats and unfortunately they do cause a problem for our neighbours on one side (keen gardeners). We have always had litter trays in the house (which the cats do use) and have suggested that our neighbours squirt the cats with water when they go in their garden. Reading the above - I might also buy them a bag of Lion poo (hope they wouldn't take that the wrong way!).

My mum swears by used coffee beans. Your local café can give you a bagful, place small handfuls around the edges of the garden.

@Kazzyhoward cats don't act any differently to wild animals when it comes to territory. They aren't going to respect human concepts of boundaries and property ownership. Therefore the only solution is to make a garden an unpleasant environment for the cat to be in using non cruel methods that PPs have suggested.

I'm perplexed by some people's insistence that cats should behave differently to other animals. They're probably angry with the owners but direct it towards an animal that is just doing what animals do.

We have a cat poo problem. My two year old stepped in some in the garden and on the drive- I don’t always find them until Sod’s law one of the kids steps in them. It drives me bonkers as cat poo contains worms that are dangerous and it stinks!
We have a dog (who never poops in the garden for some reason and is wormed anyway!) and we do release her on the cat if I see it. But we can have any of those sonic cat deterrents as they would affect the dog too. We’ve tried orange peel and garlic. Neither work.

Cats are so antisocial - killing birds and crapping on someone else’s garden.

Cat proof fencing works. Our gardens were done before we moved in. They work.

There are a lot of feral cats around our village and some people use anti climb paint which seems to work.

..... but, of course, it is no way "cruel and unpleasant" to keep an animal captive for your own personal reasons; animals that kill over 55 million songbirds every year, not counting the further tens of millions of chicks/eggs left parentless to die slow, lingering deaths in untended nests.

I throw stones against my metal shed. Scares the cat; they haven't been coming in nearly as much since I started doing that.

(And before anyone huffs that I might hit the cat, my garden is large, I throw stones nowhere near the cat and I'm a good shot).

See also dropping old pan out of the window.

The point Pawtrayt, is that selfish humans create the problem by bringing cats, sometimes multiple cats as described by a previous poster, to the neighborhood, without caring about the nuisance they will cause to neighbours. No-one has to have a cat. It is a selfish indulgence, especially when you don't cat-proof your property boundary. Yes, it can be done effectively, but cat owners don't want to spend money on that.

@itsaboojum yes, cats do kill birds as they are predatory animals but generally domestic cats which are well fed don't kill many, they mostly find sick and injured birds.

Studies looking at the impact of cats on bird populations don't separate feral and domestic cats so the statistics are pretty ropey. Man-made structures, particularly ones with a lot of glass, are more of a hazard to birds than domestic cats.

Free-roaming domestic cats are not 'captive'. If they didn't like their cushy, pampered lives they would go elsewhere.

The use of a water pistol reminds me of the thread where the OP's partner put bleach in her cats eyes. Poor thing

No-one has to have a cat.

And yet we have a lot of cats that exist and need feeding, and if they were all feral we'd have a heck of a lot more.
Taking in a rescue cat, and spaying them, or a feral kitten (I gather that feral adult cats often can't be domesticated) means the cat will be healthier and not have any more kittens. These cats already exist.

Pick up the cat shit pronto so your garden doesn't smell of cat shit and signal toileting place to them.

I made friends with our neighbour's cat by giving it treats whenever it came round. It stopped shitting in our garden and started shitting in theirs instead.

Solar Pet repellents have done the trick for us. The cats come along the fencing at the bottom of our neighbour's garden and stop at the boundary. They stare at the Repeller but don't jump down into the garden.
We have 3 as largish garden and they were £35 for the pack of 3 and cover 23 square metres.

Poo-free. Great. I the the smell of cat poo which is 1000 times worse than dog poo.

DH bought a BB gun. Some of you may be upset by this, but boy does it work. It doesn't kill them of course, but does give them a hell of a sting. DH spent many happy hours sat by the upstairs windows aiming for the little git.

Shooting a cat with a BB gun is a crime and can seriously injure or kill them.

No one in their right mind would do this.

I meant I hate the smell of cat poo.

No deterrent is 100% and this is totally how it starts with the becoming completely irrational (I have been there!). I realised I was wasting my hard earned money and time on their cats. I vote for catproofing as much as possible and maybe a motion activated sprinkler near the flowerbeds or preferred areas.

A BB gun? Fuck off. I hope he gets reported to the police, the odious prick.

I made friends with our neighbour's cat by giving it treats whenever it came round. It stopped shitting in our garden and started shitting in theirs instead.

I love this!

I've heard Jeyes fluid watered around the area they use to shit in deters them.

I'm perplexed by some people's insistence that cats should behave differently to other animals.
So you would be OK if your neighbours dog used your garden as a toilet?