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..

Paw that would make sense for us as ours were semi-feral kittens and ours were the ones not kept with their mother - though they weren't rescued until they were 12 weeks old, so they would have had 12 weeks with mama to learn this, which they haven't. So maybe not.

We get cat poo from a cat on the estate in the hedge, which is a rather polite place for him to deposit it really. It’s no skin off my nose, if it’s in a bad place I’d pick it up, if it’s buried or out the way I leave it to rot. I wouldn’t put anything toxic out, a) the cat doesn’t deserve to die painfully and b) how could you be sure a hedgehog, shrew or non-pooing cat wouldn’t get hurt by it?

In any case, at least it’s not in the road posing a hazard to bikers like horse shit (also legal to leave anywhere and everywhere) usually is. I

We don’t have any borders. I find it hard to believe that every cat in the neighbourhood was removed from its mother too young. I wish their mothers had put more effort into teaching them to use litter trays.

I could understand people's anger if a cat or any other animal was coming into their house and pooing on their carpets but we're talking about cats pooing in an outdoor space. They don't recognise fences and hedges as marking territory, that's a human concept. They're just doing what all animals, domesticated or wild, naturally do.

Do people expect to be able to control the cleanliness of their outdoor space? That's a battle no-one can win. We think we own our gardens but animals and birds don't agree.

It's probably not every cat that's doing it, just some of them. But, if it is marking behaviour then it could be that the neighbourhood is too overcrowded with cats. Cats can get very stressed by this, and it can lead to undesirable behaviour. Like weeing and poohing on the carpet.

Some cat owners are reasonable.

Some cat owners aren’t.

Some are utterly barking like my next door neighbour. Their elderly cat broke into my house whilst we were renovating (through a supposed sealed cat flap). Sadly it didn’t survive the ordeal.

And yet they think it’s hilarious their younger cat comes in through windows etc. I’ve given up checking if it’s in before we go out.

Mouse droppings on my rhubarb - fine. Sloppy cat excrement on my rhubarb - not so fine. I don’t expect the neighbours dog/horse/snake/hamster/budgie/rabbit to come into my garden, why do cat owners have free licence not to take responsibility for the animals they have chosen to domesticize and keep?

We now have cats after 16 long years of being without a pet.
They haven't stopped other cats using our garden.
Our cats only let out in daylight hours and are litter box trained.
The best solution we've found it to put half full bottles of water on the ground. When cats are near it it vibrates and scares them away.
For the longest time our cats were coming home to use the litter tray (and still do over night) but they must be pooping outside now. I don't know where

why do cat owners have free licence not to take responsibility for the animals they have chosen to domesticize and keep?

There's a key word in that sentence. Domesticize. Cats are not domesticised. They are just pretending. And even that's not very good pretending.

dr

There's some fundamental lack of understanding about cats going on on this thread.

This is very true! Actually, I think I’d hate cats far less if they were wild and didn’t live in people’s houses at all. Then they’d just be annoying wild animals and not number-28’s-annoying-animal