AIBU to find it utterly astounding that it's socially acceptable in England for pet cats to poop in other people's gardens??!

[DrawsSword]

I honestly cannot get my head round this. We've moved into a new house and the garden is full of cat shit. Not a single cat owner I know has a little tray for their cat to use. Where do cat owners think their cats poop? Do you honestly not care that it's in other peoples gardens?
My dh is from in a country where this is not socially acceptable and cat owners have litter trays and the cats bloody use them.

*how

@TwinklyBranch

Quite right. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland there are laws against this sort of thing.

Really? Well I'm in NI and I call BS on this.

OP Unfortunately cats are free spirits and can climb fences. They are also creatures of habit. You'll need to break the habit of them toileting in your garden and hope they go elsewhere. You need to ruthlessly remove every poop as soon as possible and daily, scatter some cat repellent granules about, have a loaded water pistol at the ready and hope you'll make your garden undesirable for them.

@Lady08 oh give over. If you look at all these "cat hating" posts the same theme is coming up again and again. People dont like other people's cats defecating in their gardens If cat owners sorted that then 98% of the "cat hating" would stop overnight.

And let's stop with the spurious comparisons with wildlifeshall we? There are about 17 cats living on my road alone. There are foxes and other wildlife but at nothing like such high a population density.

@XelaM

Outdoor cats are disgusting dirty animals and I also don't see the point in having them as pets if they are effectively wild-roaming. If it's your pet, either keep it indoors, cat-proof your garden or build a catio.

No wonder so many get killed in road traffic accidents. It's completely the owners' fault!

Disgusting, dirty animals! Have a word with yourself.

😂😂😂

@minatrina

Watching this thread with great interest for cat any repelling tips, lol

I've never really had an issue with cats before, sure I'd see one in the garden now and then but it was hardly an issue and I didn't ever notice a poo problem.

I've just moved into a new house, and it appears to be a cat hotspot - if I only notice five different cats in the garden in a day then it's been a quiet day on the cat-spotting front! I imagine it's because before we moved in, the house was unoccupied for quite some time so they've gotten used to it as their hangout spot. They aren't just passing through either, they really are spending a lot of time here 🤣

I've not investigated the poo situation yet as the garden is an awful tip that we probably won't get round to starting work on until the spring, but I imagine it's not great

I must say though, it hadn't occurred to me to be annoyed at the owners of the cats, but maybe I will start now to inject a little drama into the neighbourhood

The fencing we used to keep our cats in also keeps other cats out. It is a smaller version of what you see in a zoo, so vertical fence with supports at the top at about 45 degrees with wire fencing on it. My cats couldn't get out as if they climbed the fence the couldn't get over the bit that sticks out and if cats try to climb in they'd have to climb the fence, go out on the sticking out bit which they don't seem inclined to do.

I'll see if I can find a pictute.

@HoardingSamphireSaurus

And how the hell do you stop a dog marking lamp posts?

Apart from the fact that it is cruel, stops them from communicating naturally.

If you want to be that puritanical what about chewing gum, cellophane litter, food detritus, human piss and shit?

Train them to go in the gutter. Pull them along to stop them doing it. If it's possible to stop cats pooing outside then it's possible to stop dogs weeing up everything, surely?

Please stop shaming the cats. They're already anti-social as it is without them coming across this thread and seeing cat-haters gossiping about their smelly shite.

I don’t have a cat but love the ones that visit my suntrap garden. They don’t poo here though, and if they did I would use the various methods to ward them off.

How the heck do you know they don't have litter trays?? What a ridiculous statement to make!. I have a litter tray for my cat but she won't use it. Cats can shit wherever they want really and there's not a damn thing you or anybody else can do about it. Put deterrents down!

Like this protectapet.com/products/protectapet-cat-fence-barrier-kit?variant=37756016820401&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqfOi9ruG9AIVDtTtCh3clgW8EAQYASABEgJC-fD_BwE

I agree with this OP. Everyone on here says ‘cats bury their poo’… tell that to the cat who curls one out on my patio every morning. I have to go and clean it up every day before my kids are allowed in our garden.
Honestly, I don’t think cats are suitable animals to be kept as pets 🤷🏻‍♀️.
But most disagree so I’ll just quietly clean up a stinking cat shit from my garden every morning.

@Omemiserum

I have a disabled family member who would investigate cat shit and eat it. It's NOT OK for all you cat lovers to say hard luck. My family have a litter tray it's not hard to train a cat to use it if you can be bothered. Cats shit can contain extremely harmful bacteria. I'm stopping now because people who think this is OK are disgusting and make me so angry.

there are over 900,000 (that's nearly a million) wild/feral/rural/stray cats in the UK, which outnumbers the amount of owned domestic cats... who is expected to train these wild animals to shit in a box.

Why don't people say what they mean here?

basically, people want a mass cull and irradiation of an animal so it can only be domestically imprisoned - you want to force captivity on a non-endangered species for your own pleasure.

All the cat owners on here saying their cat in unhappy indoors and need to poo - CAT-PROOF your garden!! There are companies that do it for you. It's nit your neighbours' fault you want to keep an allegedly wild animal as a pet

@LaBellina

Yes I agree with you. We keep our DCat indoors as we don’t want others to have to deal with our pets waste as one of the reasons.

Poor cat. Humans need to accept that we share the world with animals, some of whom frequent our gardens. Foxes, cats, hedgehogs, mice, birds all have to shit as nature intended.

*owned free-roaming domestic cats

@ChrissyPlummer

It is odd hoe people think it’s fine for a cat, but the opposite for dogs. Just had a post on local FB group complaining about someone’s dog pooing in someone’s garden. All front gardens are open plan, someone asked if it could be a cat, as they’d had the same and checked their CCTV camera and it was a cat.

Next door has a cat that doesn’t usually come into our garden as we have a dog. Yesterday we were out all day and this morning I had to pick cat shit up off my (enclosed, gated, bolted) back lawn. If it’s a dog, people go berserk, but cats they’re like “meh, what can you do?”.

Because the law says dogs must be under the control of their owners, which means they will be with you when they poo. The same law would not apply to cats as it is considered unreasonable for owners to be able to control every movement of their cat. Similarly, a dog is allowed to wee wherever it wants because it is understood that this would be almost impossible to control.

Ooo interesting thank you @ancientgran! I'll have to add it to the list for when we start the garden... of course that depends on whether we actually get round to finishing the house first lol

I've consulted our cat. He says: bollocks to you, and could you keep your music down please, it's disturbing his midnight screeching contest.

@ThePoisonousMushroom

I agree with this OP. Everyone on here says ‘cats bury their poo’… tell that to the cat who curls one out on my patio every morning. I have to go and clean it up every day before my kids are allowed in our garden. Honestly, I don’t think cats are suitable animals to be kept as pets 🤷🏻‍♀️. But most disagree so I’ll just quietly clean up a stinking cat shit from my garden every morning.

You would still be cleaning it up if it wasn't a pet though, the animal doesn't cease to exist lol.

Speaking as someone who also doesn't particularly like cats and also gets random cat poos in our garden: there is a difference bc someone else's pet/choice/ life they are responsible for has given me extra work or aggravation cleaning off school shoes or off the lawn.
Natural wildlife is just that. When you choose to own a cat and don't encourage it to use a litter tray then I become responsible for clearing up after it or keeping it safe and costing a fortune repairing the damage they do to plants and fences.

We have a litter tray but the cats won't use it. Thankfully they shit under the bush in our garden - I can see them doing it from the living area.