That cat-proofing should become a legal requirement?

[QueenCamilla]

As of June 2024 all pet cats will have to be microchipped by law or risk owners a £500 fine. It's a good start in the right direction, as it would allow the fed-up neighbours to identify the breeders of cat colonies and feeders of the feral populations. If chip-less I'd hope to be assumed owner-less and removed from living on the local streets.

I live in a run of back-to-back garden Victorian terraces and the problems with owned but roaming, feral and also intact cats of all sorts, are driving me mad.
I don't encounter as many dog shits in the streets as I do cat feces in my own garden (and that's just the paths and the patio).
I have spent near on £100 on deterrents. I'll spend another £100 in the summer on motion sprinklers. I'm building a new fence between the worst offending neighbour (who feeds all the neighbourhood cats in his garden and draws dozens of them to visit) at my expense, solely because of the problem with pests and their fouling. I bet the neighbour will try to put a ramp or something against the fence to enable "his" cats to roam.

Meanwhile, I can't take the bins out without clearing the turds and washing the paths first. I can't have builders round, without being out there at the crack of dawn looking for cat poos, so they don't get trod in (again).
I can't open a window downstairs or patio doors without smell of feces wafting in.
No garden or drainage improvements can be done without considering the cat problem first. I dig a trench for pipes and they shit in it. Gravel? That's just a giant litter box. I collect bramble branches to scatter them into flower beds and still a cat curled one out right next to the spikes. I have laid an ugly plastic grid as a walk-way over my lawn as it's impossible to not step into one otherwise.

I'm appalled that someone else's choice of pet is allowed to have such a detrimental effect on my finances and my enjoyment of my property.
Some cat owners dare to call these threads "boring". I'd rather call them a warning! I am growing increasingly angry at the situation and it won't be boring at all if I snap.

Would I be unreasonable to think that with the microchip requirement coming in, it would be a good time to force cat owners to spend money on their own pets and cat-proof their gardens?

I'm sure I could deal with an odd escapee (scan and return), but I'm losing the patience with the situation as it stands.

How do you know that it’s the cats though?

If you’re in the UK cats have free to roam status and class as property if you lay any traps or “snap” and do anything that endangers or harms anyone’s cat you can be arrested and charged. Rightfully so. Cats are territorial animals and will try and mark property that has no cat living there. I had this issue with cat poo and cats constantly fighting on my garden. I paid £20 and got a high pitched sonar animal deterrent from Amazon it works with cats and foxes alike. It’s solar and has worked perfectly all through summer and winter. Problem solved. You may need more than one depending on the size of your Garden. So your only option is to suck it up and pay out or move to a country where cats don’t have FTR status.

I spent my childhood summers on a farm. I've stood ankle deep in pig shit (in sandals, squelch!), we milked cows by hand, spread manure on potato fields, we had horses and geese. My aunty had a pig in her actual house one winter! It didn't poo in the house, just went out with the dog. The pig also slept ON the dog 🐷😂
Cats and dogs - both roamed and shat in the woods. It was a risk that other farmers might shoot the dog if it chased livestock.

Was quite a different life back then. Remembered fondly.

I don't see the relevance to cat poo piles outside my kitchen window in the city though.

I have cameras to the front and back of my house.

I rescue cats. We have five in residence, and the house is large enough to accommodate them. They have cost me around £10k in vet bills to fix their various health issues, get them neutered and provide special diets reflecting their medical needs. They cost me around £200 a month in food, supplements and treatments to keep them well. Cat breeders should be regulated like dog breeders, and that would cut down on irresponsible ownership. I never set out to have five cats, but I could not see them suffering either. Cats are beautiful creatures, and wonderful pets in the right hands. None of my cats produce what is shown in the photo, but we have visiting foxes and badgers that do. Either way, cleaning with white vinegar helps with smells and stains. Our cats all remain in the house, which gives them space to roam in safety over three floors. Animal shelters do not have room for adult cats, and some people just abandon their pets when they move home. We have one cat who became a stray because his owner died, and no one took him on afterwards. Another has one eye, and a kidney problem requiring a special diet. We think he was dumped because of his vet costs. Rounding up unneutered, stray cats would mean almost certain death for many of them. It is frustrating for householders having to deal with cat waste in their yards etc, but imagine how frightening it must be to be a stray cat with no certain source of food or shelter. It is the people who let their cats reproduce freely that are the problem, and not the poor cats.

Okbyethen · Today 18:15

I'm with you OP! I fucking hate cats and the fact that they're free to shit on other peoples property and everyone except the bloody owner has to deal with it! I hate that I have to spend my own money on trying to deter the bastards.

They're pests, I wish they were all kept indoors.

Horrible.

You have a neighbour problem not a cat problem

Even if there was a law saying cat proof gardens, chip and neuter you'd have to report him. If you don't want to do that then that's a neighbour issue. Bad neighbours can be bad with cats or dogs or other stuff too.

I can plant Lillies all I want, wash my stained patio with whatever chemicals work, get a dog with a good hunting instinct, stop protecting freshly painted surfaces in case a cat walks or jumps into them, I can use anti-climbing paint to deter burglars, I can use anti-freeze on my bike chain, I can also do absolutely nothing about diseased, unneutered, territorial ferals and encourage the natural selection. .. If that makes you uncomfortable then probably it's the right time to reach into your own pockets to protect your animal's welfare. Or suck up the risks. Or move to a less populated area.

Alas, I'm hoping for a better solution for everyone involved than the current situation that only breeds hostility.

@QueenCamilla Someone needs to help those poor cats! They'll be inter-breeding and prone to disease. Plus I'm sure they fight. God knows what the poor souls are riddled with. Feeding them isn't enough. Contact a local rescue for help with them. At least if they were neutered, that would ease the kitten situation.

The amount of poo seems extreme! We've around 8 cats that regularly are in our garden, and they don't leave much mess at all. Most of them belong to our neighbours, though there's one we think is a stray. We tried to trap him but he wasn't having any of it!

I have three rescues, one was straying in the city streets, one was neglected and the other's owner died. All of them were used to being outdoors. Since they've been with us, they haven't looked once to go out.

Our last boy was indoor/outdoor and he used to come into the house through his cat flap to use the litter tray!!

I don't get the hate on cats? I adore them!

@Sodndashitall

Yeah but I don't want to report to have a mad neighbour plus his cats.
It might be worth it however if there were at least some consequences (particularly financial) to his unreasonable behaviour. He might even stop then.

I have literally NO grounds to report him as it stands.

@QueenCamilla a cat rescue can get involved. That literally happened with one of mine. The rescuer was collecting other cats and someone pointed out our girl, and the rescuer talked the owner into surrendering her into their care.

I see dog poop on the pavement every day of my life (Londoner). I have literally never seen cat poop.

It must be fox poop, surely... I lived in London and there were LOADS of foxes, unlike here. Yeah, must be foxes. Or badgers.

🤔🙄

OP if you engage a rescue organisation they may be able to help. If they did TNR then st least the cats would stop breeding and seems like potentially the visible turds are a unneutered male thing. No reputable rescue would condone what your neighbour is doing and would try to help

That's relying on reasoning with totally unreasonable people...

That's fair. That's why I'm waiting till summer to act, so the trapped cats (and there will be loads) can at least be identified as claimed/unclaimed. I don't want to take anyone's dear pet away, so at least I'll be able to avoid that.

@QueenCamilla
For all the naysayers saying those pallid turds on concrete aren’t cat mess , read this:

“My neighbors and I had that problem for years. We had a plague of an estimated 100 feral cats, and they did not bury their poop. They pooped on the roof, on the driveway, you name it they pooped on it. The place stank with poop and pee. Cats only bury when there is soft digging ground, so it is a myth that cats always bury.
Another problem was cats killing other cats and kittens, and associated health problems—such a flies—associated with feces and decaying bodies.
The way we handled this was to trap them, then take them to the animal shelter. “

This was in USA, but ferals desperately need neutering, worming and they will be fighting and passing on disease to each other FIV especially.

Report sooner rather than later.

People who care for their cats will have them chipped and neutered/ spayed already .

The ferals are likely the ones territory marking and having unhealthy coloured poop all over your yard.

QueenCamilla · Today 18:52

That's relying on reasoning with totally unreasonable people...

Trust me, the rescues are well used to doing just that!

He's actually being cruel to these cats. They deserve better. They're bound to be spraying all over the place too?

I have two cats and clean out their litter trays twice daily, so I see a lot of cat poo and it never, ever looks like that. As others have said, it’s fox poo.

I watched a catfight in the garden and the "winner" sprayed up my garden immediately after, in full sight of the loser, to make a point.
So yeah, they do that too.

What I'll do, is I'll place a tentative call to RSPCA, describe the situation and ask what they might be able to do. Then I'll go by their answer whether to act now or later in the summer.

@Lookingatthesunset Quite agree- Feeding ferals is doing them no favours unless they are spayed and neutered first.
It’s shocking how much damage an entire male cat can do to pet cats in the area- fighting and causing nasty abscesses.
We had an antisocial neighbour who had an entire male, a grubby white cat with a face like it had been through wars.
Torn ears, scars-
He was forever fighting with neutered males
The idiot woman had a female whom she allowed to get pregnant while a kitten herself

She said she was a cat lover, but cat lovers look after and spay and neuter their cats and keep them safe- either Indoors or on a cat proof garden where they can’t get out.

@QueenCamilla In my experience, the smaller local rescues are more proactive than the bigger national charities, if you can find someone local to you.

That is very different to large, unneutered, territorial male cats, with dodgy diets and dodgy guts.
Also, the poop in the pic has been rained on.
If I had that number of foxes visiting nightly (and they don't, I have cameras) there be no feral kittens left living in the gardens.

If you hear hooves... It's Horses, not Zebras.

I completely sympathise OP, I have the same problem. I’ve tried to grow salads in pots on my patio and had to give up because the cats shit in there. The only thing that works is to cover the soil in branches and prickly things like holly, and even that just displaces the issue to my flowerbeds. I love cats and always had them growing up but now can’t as DH is allergic, and unfortunately I think this means all the local cats are fighting over my garden. I literally have to remove shit every single day and they absolutely do not bury it. I think there should be limits on the number of cats people can keep in urban areas, unless they’re prepared to keep them indoors (which is quite normal in many countries).

These pictures don't look like cat poo to me. I would say it's fox poo.
IME cats tend to poo in soil and then bury it out of sight.