To not want neighbours cats in my garden?

[Rainbow3210]

Our neighbour has cats and they keep coming into our garden. They have also made their way into our house several times through the window and back door. I’m currently pregnant and have two young children. The children get upset when they come in as they don’t understand why they come and go (they want them to stay to play with). We have a lot of songbirds birds that sit in a bush in our garden and the cats are constantly trying to hunt the birds.

The cats are also doing the toilet in the garden which my husband has to clean with a hose. I believe it’s not entirely safe to clean up cat mess when pregnant.

I spoke to the neighbour and asked if they could stop the cats coming into my house and garden. They said there is nothing that can be done.

Is it unreasonable that this is bothering me?

So you're very much in favour of killing anybody or anything that comes and poos in your garden, then? Got it.

That's assuming you understood the simple point that PP was making?

Cats aren't wildlife. They are property.

In the UK they have a right to roam by law. Dogs by law have to be under control.

After reading all the outright hatred of cats on here, people insisting that owners should keep them indoors, or trap them in their garden, putting barbed wire on top of fences, or encouraging their children to throw rocks at them, I'm really glad that in the 40 years I've owned cats I've never had any neighbour complain about my cats, every single one of which has roamed freely in other people's gardens and maybe even had a shit in them.

Not one of the vitriolic, hate-filled posts has made me think about restricting my cat, in fact completely the opposite, because most of the anti-cat brigade on here seem to have the most laughably ridiculous expectations, clearly know zilch about cats and appear to be verging on lunacy.

28°C in DS's room tonight.
Finally gave up and accepted I had to shut the window as the room was sticking from cat shit on the flat roof as mentioned earlier.
Went to the window only to find a pair of eyes looking back at me.
Shouted at it, it just looked at me.
Sat there while I went to the bathroom, filled a bottle of water, returned, opened window wider and threw the water at it.

Little shit didn't care at all.

Genuinely can't understand everyone on this thread who doesn't see this as a problem.
There are literally mounds on my roof I can't safely access, but I just have to accept it.

My son had more freedom in a cramped flat than this house we a garden we can use and now even upstairs is disgusting if we simply want a bit of air.

I don't hate cats, sheep, alpacas, goats or donkeys. I don't want any of them in my garden though and I don't want them coming into my garden to shit.

Well, yeah, have you ever seen a dog gracefully scale a fence?

Agree
I only have one property relatively near but I never felt more grateful of my neighbours.

All the others are cows …
sillage anyone

Most of us that don’t want cat shit in our gardens are not cat haters and I think there has been one poster who has said about being cruel and she’s been roundly and rightly told that she is wrong . I love cats , we have a cat but she stays on our property because we have cat proofed and she is perfectly happy . She also , according to our vet , is one of very few cats that he sees that is the correct weight . It is perfectly possible to keep cats on your property if you are prepared to put in the facilities and time for their enrichment .

Luckily we have neighbours who understand that animal poo is part of the outdoors and who also love and benefit from our cat. Also our cat behaves like a normal cat and buries their poo (I’ve watched them dig up the flower beds in our garden , poo and cover it). So all in all this has never been an issue for us- I have no idea whether they poo in other gardens or not. No complaints. However, if someone did and could prove it was our cat, yes I’d pick it up if they asked me to. I wouldn’t be able to prevent it in the first place though.

The people at the other end of our road are v uptight sorts; always complaining about a (different) cat that poos in their garden (allegedly). They text the street WhatsApp about it and generally make a massive fuss. So I often thank my lucky stars that we do not live next to them and our cat never goes there lol.

It is perfectly possible to keep cats on your property if you are prepared to put in the facilities and time for their enrichment

Nah. It totally depends on the cat. No amount of “enrichment” indoors/ enclosed would have made our cat’s life worthwhile.
i get it- no amount of “enrichment” indoors/
enclosed would make my life worthwhile either!

This

Yes I totally agree with OP, I use a water soaker when they come into mine. I get cat poo regularly so they don’t always cover up.
I have a real fear of them since I was a child (bad experience).
I don’t leave my doors open for fear they will come into the house.
Although much better since neighbour with two cats moved away.
Even on holiday I hate when others feed them even although told not to.
there was a case where a woman was scratched on holiday, became ill and later died of rabies . I know it’s rare but it happened I won’t let GC touch them when we are out.

Why do you assume that people have a right to own cats? Surely rights have to balanced against responsibilities? Why should your property be allowed to impinge on my quality of life?

Well that is good to hear you would pick it up.

I don’t think your neighbours are upright, just correctly wanting the actual pet owners to be accountable for picking up their own animal’s poo.

I do understand that it is difficult to know or prevent cats getting into gardens- I’m sure some owners do try to cat proof their gardens, encourage use of litter trays, etc. I bet some absolutely send them out without caring at all where they poo though.

Surely you could wait until your cat has done a poo in its own litter tray at home before letting it out to roam? How many poos do they do a day?! Surely they get into a routine of using their own litter tray at certain key times of day, rewarded by cat treats, etc? I’m genuinely interested as I haven’t owned one myself. I do acknowledge they are harder to train than a dog, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qnuFmlJD5H8

After reading all the outright hatred of cats on here

Aside from the one horribly cruel poster whose family throw rocks at cats - which is outrageous and totally unacceptable - calling people who don't want somebody else's pet's poo in their garden a 'hater' is a completely illogical and false argument.

That reminds me of our really horrible neighbour, who believes that he owns the road and is always harassing and threatening others for stupid reasons that don't actually affect him at all, except that he likes to think that his random preferences are law and he has the perfect right to boss others around. He's elderly, so thankfully wouldn't be able to carry out most of his threats. Nobody on the street likes him and many now refuse to talk to him at all.

Another neighbour - one of the many nice ones - who lives nearer to him commented to me recently that, from what he has told her, he is convinced that people irrationally hate him because he is Jewish.

Nothing about his appearance or how he dresses gives any clues that he is Jewish. I had no idea that he was Jewish, and it makes no difference whatsoever to me now I happen to know that he is Jewish. We have people of a variety of faiths and none on the street, and we get on just fine. Oddly enough, people don't like him because of his nastiness and harassment, totally regardless of what religion he is.

In the same way, the vast majority of people don't actually hate cats at all. They hate the fact that they freely poo in gardens and sometimes try to get into stranger's houses through open windows. If they were only wandering through gardens and not fouling there, who would care?

I think it's probably more accurate to say that many people hate the entitled, unbothered attitude of a lot of cat owners - rather than that they actually hate cats per se.

Well plenty of people manage it so I can only assume you have neither the time , money , commitment or imagination to do it properly .

Then maybe you don't have the right environment to have a cat?

Most dogs with bolt given half the chance, we get daily reports of local dogs escaping their homes and wandering the streets. I would much rather have a cat wandering into the garden where my children are playing than a dog.

Possibly not. But the cats don’t know that.

Incidentally, OP, cats hunt birds. They don’t know how not to hunt birds. But they’re not your birds even if they are occasional visitors to your garden. Don’t worry - you’re not responsible for blue tits.

Well, that's a ninja, not a dog.

Nope. It's not my house, it's the nature of my/ many cats 😊. I've got a larger than average 4 bed with a lovely garden. No matter how enriching, both myself and the cat , and my children of course, could not be happy living our lives enclosed - that's just not in any of our natures :) . Same with dogs of course, which is why it's cruel to keep them without taking them for walks. It's bizarre to me that people think it ought to be ok to lock up a cat.

Plenty of people "manage" it , either because they have a cat with an unusually docile disposition (there are some cats like this of course), or because they are choosing convenience for themselves over the wellbeing of the cat (which many people do, evidenced by the fact that they have to spend considerable efforts to keep the cats from escaping, which they are desperate to do at every opportunity). We could have "managed" it, of course, it was just very clear that it was detrimental to the wellbeing of the cat whose natural instincts are to roam freely / explore outdoors. Cats have a right to roam, there are very good animal welfare reasons for this.

What amazes me is local neighbourhoods constantly advertising for information on their missing cats usually for weeks at a time.

we have a litter tray of course and try to encourage the cat to use it but she hates it for some reason. She prefers go in one of our big flower beds lol. Actually I do watch her regularly go out first thing in the morning and pooing there before she does anything else. If we keep her in the house she'll hold it until she's desperate and then poo in the pot of one of our indoor plants lol. Maybe we should get her a new litter tray and see if she likes it better. I'm sure she poos more than once a day though, so as to her afternoon/ evening poo(s) I couldn't really say... :/
But anyways as I said we haven't had any complaints there are quite a few cats on a street and the only neighbours who ever seem to have a problem are the ones down the end of the road (who are also wound up about a range of other matters), so I guess judging by this thread I am lucky. 🙏