Neighbour’s cat shitting & spraying in my mother’s house.

[UnNiddeRides]

Is there a humane but very effective way to deter a cat? My mother is 85. Every time her back is turned a cat from a few doors down comes in. It’s been hell for her in the heatwave as she can’t leave any windows open as it gets in. Yesterday she woke up at 5:00 to go to the toilet, got back in bed & it was wet with cat urine. She’d left her window cracked open a tiny amount but the damn cat had wormed its way in. Today she was in the garden with a friend, saw it shoot in through the patio door & by the time she got upstairs it had shot upstairs and sprayed all over her bed & the carpet. It’s also got in through the front window & left a big shit on her carpet.
I went to drop off shopping yesterday and her house was boiling because she can’t ventilate it. She’s too old to be on her hands and knees scrubbing animal faeces off her carpet & urine off her furniture in 30 degrees. She’s tried turning the hose on it when she sees it but it’s not working.

How awful for her. What have the neighbours done to help? I’d go down and talk to your local vet and see if they have any ideas.

Can you get a cat alarm for the house? Presume the neighbours are being useless? As it’s spraying is it neutered? Id definitely keep spray bottles everywhere to spray / hose it every time it comes in too.

Borrow a friend's dog for a few nights. Dog will chase off cat and the cat will unlikely return.

She should use an enzyme spray to destroy the smell. It's more effective than soap or detergent. Cats tend to return to places that smell of their pee. You can get it from pets at home.
This won't be enough to deter the cat, but at least it won't be attracted to its own smell.

Sadly I've tried everything...only thing that worked was moving. Sorry doesn't help.

Get screens on windows. Keep doors closed. Borrow a friend’s dog for a fortnight.

What about window screens so she can open windows but the cat can't get in. Presumably, it's un-neutered, would the neighbours consider neutering? Are they aware of the problems it is causing?

It sounds like the cat needs to be neutered. Have you said anything to the neighbour OP?

Have you got any friends with a big dog you could borrow for an afternoon? That might deter the cat.

I bought lots of eucalyptus oil from home bargains - I think it’s about £1 a bottle and regularly would spray it around the garden, and leave some bottles open lying around in places that it liked to poo.
being totally honest, the cats never came back and my neighbours cat died about 2 weeks later of kidney failure. I really don’t know if it was related - I sincerely hope not.

Jeyes fluid on hard surfaces, they don’t like the smell.

Well as this is Mumsnet…. YABU. The cat has a right to piss and shit in your mums home whenever it pleases. If she doesn’t like it then she should move.

If it’s not chipped catch it and take it to the vets as a feral It will cost you £10 to get it spayed/castrated

A super soaker water gun works better as a deterrent. I’m not a cat hater just someone who has to defend my timid cat from the neighbourhood bully cat

That might work!

Flat cat screens on the windows so she can have them open.

Unfortunately it sounds like an unneutered tom so may not have an owner, and if it does owner won't be very helpful.

It would be, eucalyptus is very toxic to cats. Please be sure not to kill this cat OP. A visiting dog might sort it, or a conversation with the owner about neutering if this hasn't happened, or about rehoming as the cat may be frantic about some aspect of its own home. And/or a'cat gate!' on one or two windows, so they can be left wide open but protected.

This is really awful, how distressing. I don't think owners can be blamed for cat behaviour but in instances like this you should be able to claim for cleaning, which would encourage the owner to spay the cat.

Screens are your best bet. I have proper car ones on my bedroom windows to keep my own cats in but I think they're overkill and make opening and closing the window a pain, we have a cheap magnetic fly curtain on the patio doors and the cat doesn't go through it
Link https://amzn.eu/d/05HFwxJI

Thanks for all the replies.
She doesn’t know the owners, she knows which house it is because a while ago there were messages on the street WhatsApp about this cat roaming around & did anyone know whose it was. The owner isn’t in the group but someone said that they’d spoken to the owner who said not to worry about it as it always finds its way home.

The cat looks healthy so I don’t know whether the chat was because other people were having the same issue because a cat wandering around wouldn’t usually be a topic for discussion.

my mum already has anti-fly mesh screens that Velcro to the windows, but the cat can just push through. We discussed trying to fit a stair gate to her patio doors but it would just jump over.

She said she’d go and speak to the owner & I suggested asking on the chat group beforehand whether it was doing it in other houses so that she might get some support, but she thought that the owners might get wind of what she was asking and be annoyed.

It’s just so upsetting for her. When I went to her house on Saturday she’d only just had a shower and was already dripping with sweat.

Would it be unreasonable for her to ask them to keep the cat indoors?

Have had a quick google and the cat mesh is a lot tougher than the fly mesh - to the extent my heavy cat can hang off it with his full body weight and it doesn't come off or rip.

It would be worth upgrading.

Put tin foil on the windowsill (not ideal in hot weather I know) as they hate it and won't walk on it. It'll be straight back out again. You could also try putting a big picture of a cat's face in the window to scare it away.

Thank you. I’ll have a look at the cat mesh & suggest that she tries the tin foil.

Shoot the fucker.

I did read on a similar thread that a poster waited for the nuisance cat to enter a particular room in the house, shut the door behind it, and then banged a metal utensil onto a pan for a few times making a loud noise.

Cat apparently went berserk but couldn't escape.

eventually she let it out and is disappeared never to return.

This is one of the many reasons I bloody loathe cats.

Squirm with a water pistol with water and lemon juice in it? Or washing up liquid squirted at cat?

They are awful creatures.

We used garlic oil spray to deter foxes, and that worked, I wonder if it would work far cats? Spray around the window sill and on the ground outside.