AIBU - my neighbour's flower bed is my dog's toilet

[SevenWaystoLeave]

I routinely let my dog wander unsupervised around the neighbourhood and he's taken to going into my neighbour's garden, digging up their flower bed and taking a massive stinking dump there. It's his favourite spot to go. This has become a daily occurrence, but I can't stop him, he's an animal and needs his freedom, and I'm not going to clean up after him either because they can't technically prove it's my dog, and not someone else's free-roaming unsupervised dog.

...Yes this would be really fucking unreasonable wouldn't it and people would be quite rightly calling the authories on me and I'd get fined and a control order slapped on my dog. So why why why the ever living fuck is it considered okay and normal when cat owners do this?!? It's absolutely disgusting and I am so so sick of cleaning cat shit out my garden on a daily basis. AIBU?

Cats bury their poo.

Dogs just leave it on the pavement for you to step in…

That’s the difference.

Heh I knew this would be a cat thread

Cats are on the free roaming thing like wild animals. If you're bothered join cat campaigns to have cats recognised as pets and should be treated with the same dignity as dogs when knocked over or found dead They don't seem to realise what that will actually mean.

Cats on leads.

Don't know where the fallacy that cats don't shit in their own garden comes from. I can assure you they do. My boy poohs quite happily in the purposely dug area of earth in our garden. He also shits in my flower beds but that's a work in progress i tell my neighbour to let me know if he goes in theirs and also to scare him off with water. Other than that he also has a litter tray, which he uses and so far to date my neighbour has never alerted me to the fact my free roaming cat has shat on her lawn.

Possible solutions:
Sprinkle flower bed liberally and regularly with pepper or chilli powder to deter regular offender(s). They will establish a toilet elsewhere, at which point you can stop sprinkling.
Wear gloves to do your gardening.
Ask neighbours to please walk their cats on a lead and pick up their poo.
Erect tarpaulins over your garden in case birds shit in it. Ditto mice and rats when passing through.

@SGChome20

Is this my husband posting? We're having similar issues and it is disgusting. I'm actually nervous about letting DD out in the garden. Cats won't do their business in their own garden either so the neighbours likely unaware. I don't know what the answer is though apart from to have them as house cats. I've looked for repellants but can't find any!

That's a myth. My cat regularly does her business in our garden. I agree it is horrible and wish cats could be trained to not go to the toilet outside.

You can buy special no harmful pellets on the Internet to stop them doing this.

Plastic forks and spoons pointing up deters them as well. Stops them squatting.

@mumsie8

Don't know where the fallacy that cats don't shit in their own garden comes from. I can assure you they do. My boy poohs quite happily in the purposely dug area of earth in our garden. He also shits in my flower beds but that's a work in progress i tell my neighbour to let me know if he goes in theirs and also to scare him off with water. Other than that he also has a litter tray, which he uses and so far to date my neighbour has never alerted me to the fact my free roaming cat has shat on her lawn.

My cat is the complete opposite, he won't shit anywhere other than his litter box. (and yes I know for sure, he's mainly an indoor cat but has an outside enclosure and he comes in the garden when I'm there as well)

@Trulyweird1

YANBU, but cat owners will be on to tell you that cats have a ‘right to roam’ etc. Only thing that seems to work for me is covering the flower beds in Defenders cat-off. That and sending my dogs out to the garden when the little crapper thinks it wants to pay us a visit. It tends to skirt round our property these days .

I do chase them off when I see them. Thing is, my dog is a sighthound, he has a high chase drive, he could actually kill a cat if he got hold of one, which I really don't want to happen - which is yet another reason I don't want other people's cats in my garden. So the result is I have to restrict and supervise my own dog's access to my own garden because of other people's cats coming onto my property (and of course if he did harm a cat I'd be the bad guy, because god forbid a cat owner ever take responsibility for the safety of their own pet).

@NobleYeats1

I agree. Even worse for me was being out gardening when pregnant and unearthing cat poo ending up terrifying me about toxoplasmosis. It’s disgusting and dangerous for kids too. I’ve started going for the cat with a water gun when it comes onto our property now.

I had this happen to me too, got soil in scratches up my arms and was so worried.

@wanttomarryamillionaire

I agree op. I don't get why cat owners think its ok for them to let their pets wander wherever they please shitting and killing small animals and birds as they go. They should be responsible and cat proof their gardens.

How can you cat proof a garden? Cats will always get out of it.

Well, i mean, dogs are allowed in pubs and on trains etc. cats aren't.

You may find cat shit in your garden. I'm forever stepping over dog shit on the pavement on my way to work.

You can't legally just knock a dog down and leave it for dead. You can with a cat.

Some dogs bark and make a hell of a racket wakening neighbours up in the early hours of the morning. Cats generally don't.

Some dogs maul young children to death. Cats don't.

They are just entirely different species of animals and behave accordingly 🤷‍♀️ I'm not sure trying to draw comparisons like that is a helpful way to think of it.

@IncompleteSenten yet people say that can't be done and you proved it can

My cats poo in my own flower beds which is highly annoying. The neighbours both sides have dogs so are safe.

I use to chop bit off my pyracanthas hedge and lay them in the flower beds to deter persistent cats. they’re so spiky, it stops them squatting

One of mine shits on our grass and one comes in to use the litter tray. Stray cats shit in my flower beds as do foxes. Annoying as it is I have other things boil my piss

Birds, foxes and other wildlife do this too.

Yes, they do - but that is absolutely not the point. I have a fox that regularly comes into my garden. It has actually never crapped in the garden as far as I know, but it has scratched up the lawn before now, looking for grubs, so it does occasionally cause a bit of inconvenience. However, the big difference here is that I get pleasure from seeing a fox in my garden, and in fact I have deliberately left a little hole in my fence so it can come in, so I have made a choice to accept occasional inconvenience because I enjoy seeing the fox so much. That is my decision about my property. Someone else's cat coming in is not my decision about my property, and I'm getting zero benefit from it to balance out the constant shit. So no, it's not remotely the same.

As for other wildlife - I have squirrels and the occasional hedgehog in my garden and a lot of birds. They produce tiny little poos that don't smell of anything and they don't dig holes in my flower beds to do it.

It will take a while if your garden is now a part of their routine but keep a supersoaker water pistol to and you’ll soon make it so they change their routine and avoid your garden

So, I'm supposed to sit at my window 24 hours a day with a loaded supersoaker waiting for someone else's pet to do its routine shit every day until it gets the message? Not terribly practical, that. Again, very much the person who doesn't own a cat who's being inconvenienced by the cat-owner's choices, isn't it?

My neighbour frequently lets me know when my cat poos in her garden. However, having spent the last 5 years picking her cat poo out of mine, I don't feel she can really complain as we're quite even!

Just wish I could repay the favour to the dog walker who has taken to letting their dog poo on my front lawn every few days....

I do chase them off when I see them. Thing is, my dog is a sighthound, he has a high chase drive, he could actually kill a cat if he got hold of one, which I really don't want to happen - which is yet another reason I don't want other people's cats in my garden. So the result is I have to restrict and supervise my own dog's access to my own garden because of other people's cats coming onto my property (and of course if he did harm a cat I'd be the bad guy, because god forbid a cat owner ever take responsibility for the safety of their own pet).

You shouldn't, he probably wouldn't catch a cat anyway and it would deter them from coming into the garden

Cat lovers here.. no longer own a cat. it's vile, I agree. www.ebay.co.uk/itm/402859463553?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=7101533165274578&mkcid=2&itemid=402859463553&targetid=4584826055637461&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=&poi=&campaignid=412354546&mkgroupid=1299623041023876&rlsatarget=pla-4584826055637461&abcId=9300541&merchantid=87779&msclkid=bf34f5268e4918672113977e850ca696

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon bingo , so many cats don't and if its a flower bed what activity are you likely to be doing
My neighbour had stones our front and cats used as a litter tray and they tried all sorts , eventually they concreted the small area over and the cat still shits there

“AIBU to be annoyed I stepped into a pile of squirrel, bird, mice, rat [insert other small animal] poo in my garden.”

Except no one’s ever seen a thread on that - just cats

Love our cats. But it's DH and I dealing with the crap because they're indoor cats. Not fond of dealing with other cat's crap in our garden.

There seems to be an increasing amount of dog crap around too - at least it's not in our garden.

I've got 2 cats who both pop in my garden and also now we have a badger, who also poos in the garden.

It's shit city here, but to be expected.

Cats can't be controlled so you just have to get on with it I'm afraid.

Cats are not dogs.

@rosesarebluey there are such things in existence