AIBU To want to stop our neighbour’s cats crapping on our grass several times a week?

[wildfellhall]

Does anything work?

We’ve tried chilli pepper in one flower bed but it doesn’t work for long. They keep crapping in the middle of the grass regardless.

I know it isn’t fox crap as that smells and looks different.

I know cats just don’t crap in their own gardens so how is it ok that the owners know that and just shrug?

It is such a huge imposition on your neighbours.

How would you do that if your neighbours asked?

I used a combination of essential oils. Lemon cintronella and orange. It did the trick, but they were shitting just outside our backdoor, so I could put the oils on the patio in a small area. It seemed to work. Id try putting it if there's a specific area they keep crapping in.

i had a cat use just outside my back door as his daily toilet and I got one of those cheap massive things of ground black pepper and sprinkle absolutely tons of it all over the area every day for a couple of days and he stopped doing it no harm no fuss no mess :)

Please don't do this. My cat almost died from liver toxicity from licking a tiny bit of Jeyes fluid from her paw.

Why should they have to go through the awkward process of asking you?

Your cat, you offer!

Why is it logistically impossible to cat proof your property? Some excuses may be more valid than others, but unless you have had a professional company assess it for you, more might be possible than you think.

if it is genuinely impossible, then having a cat is not a good choice of pet unless you also actively schools to be a selfish, inconsiderate neighbour.

Then keep it on your own property and you won’t need to worry about risks like jeyes fluid or cars.

Even more reason to take responsibility for your cat. People don’t want to have to keep dealing with your pet.

I’ve got two dogs who don’t like cats coming in but that only works if they are in the garden. Bloody cat was stalking a young wood pigeon on my patio today.
The cats that crap in my raised bed are from two doors down so I can’t chuck the crap over the fence.
We no longer grow veg because of the cat crap and that makes me cross.

I tried getting round it with putting netting over my veg, can you do that? They are such pests though. We have to keep coming up with solutions while the bloody cat owners sit on their arses and laugh.

Ultrasonic cat scarers work well sometimes.

I have 2x and they keep the cats away. But they don't stop all cats - I must be lucky. Worth a try.

This keeps foxes away from chicken runs too 😂so definitely worth a try OP, or a motion sprinkler - we've just set one of these up next to our koi pond to keep the neighbourhood heron away, our cats are most unimpressed!

It's unfair to claim that all cat owners are selfish. There are very few truly effective ways to ensure that your cat never ventures beyond your own garden. Cats climb and they are notoriously good at squeezing themselves through small gaps.
We have a high fence, and we've tried to make our garden appealing for our cats to spend time in by having lots of shrubbery, natural scratching posts (logs etc), planting cat nip and cat thyme, as well as creating a designated 'toilet' area with freshly dug soil to encourage them to go in their own garden. I can't completely guarantee they'll never shit elsewhere, but I certainly try. I also make them wear a bell to try to prevent them killing local wildlife by the way, as do many cat owners, contrary to what a previous poster claims.

We used cocktail sticks.

I used bramble branches between plants. Cats are smart enough to know what they are and keep off. Made sure they are higher, not really stuffed into soil (that would be shitty thing to do) and visible so they don't get hurt.
Netting was an issue for 2 reasons. 1. One cat still managed to shit on one which was directly on a ground. 2. Sparrow got caught under.

Can confirm my cat only craps in her own garden. Apparently right in the middle of our lawn is much more preferable to her clean indoor litter tray. Unfortunately this has sent out some sort of bat signal (or cat signal rather) for all the neighbours cats to use our garden as their toilet too.

I used to have a gravelled front garden which was the local litter tray. I bought one of those sonic deterrents and bingo! No cats! It did really work.

Now I have a dog, different house, also a gravelled area but dog uses it as her toilet! No cats apart from a sneaky one that creeps through an open window or through the dog flap, sleeps on the beds or wanders around the kitchen looking for dog treats. I'm allergic to cats, so it's a race between me and dog who can scare cat off first!

I welcome any tips on how to surgically attach a bell to my cat who has gone through 4 collars (different fastening types) and finds a way to pull it off. So much so I once found him with his jaw stuck in the collar. 🙄

I suggest a) get a dog.

B) put up a massive bullet proof glass dome over your house and garden so pesky air, birds, wildlife of any kind inc foxes can't come anywhere near your property.

C) go read the other 10 million posts on this subject on mumsnet and see if they have come up with any foolproof answers yet.

Confirm my two use their litter trays with the occasional odd lapse and use the back lawn which we think is because neighbours cat uses our back lawn

Neighbours cat also uses our front lawn but our cats rarely venture out there, they prefer the back garden

Not true that cats don't crap in their garden, because our cat does. She's pretty consistent where she does her business.

Before we adopted our cat, I would just spray them with ds' water bazooka. Also tried other things like teabags with citrus oil, orange peel, pepper with varying rates of success.

VINEGAR

It must be an urban issue. Everyone here has dogs and cats. They all stick to their own gardens, or go out into the countryside.

I wouldn't, indeed couldn't, cat proof my garden. Hundreds of feet of privet, garden gates, no fencing or walls. Everything comes and goes. It's a wildlife haven. Sealing off gardens is really bad for wildlife, especially hoghedges.

I chased my neighbours cats away whenever I saw them squatting down and it did improve. It's an awful problem, it stinks and I hate having to pick it out of my flower beds. My neighbours are lovely, but they have 4 cats...... There's not much they can do to stop the problem though, it's just one of those very annoying things that comes from living close to others. I guess it's a silver lining that the human owners are very nice neighbours, I've read some terrible threads about nightmare neighbours on here!!

It is bit of an urban issue. If you have 20 small-ish gardens back to back, side to side and 10 have cats... Well... Yeah.
And then the cats decide that one garden is their fave and have turf war over it by pooping and spraying, it's not fun. I grew up with plenty of open spaces around too and cats weren't a problem like they are when many are concentrated in small spaces.

Just deal with it OP. Or get a cat.

If it's in the middle of a lawn, it will be foxes. Cats cover their poo over with soil.