How to encourage garden birds and discourage cats?

[Grockle]

I'm redoing my garden - more or less from scratch. I want birds to visit us but we are surrounded by cats. They tend not to linger long as my chickens frighten them but they are always present, sitting on next doors shed or walking along the fence. We have a few sparrows and blue tits that occasionally hop around the lawn but what can I do to:

a) stop the cats prowling
b) get more birds

cats hate moth balls so you hang some in the garden, water too, as in bowls of it and net off any entrances if possible in to your garden.
As much as I like cats,I used a water gun to discouarge them as they are hunters and will return if encouraged.
We use a wide variety of food to attract the birds and get lots of different tits(no frankie howard jokes please) so fat ball( in hanger not nets) fat square, sunflower seeds, peanuts and best loved the no mess seed for wild birds by gardman at b& Q, they love it, bought a cheap feeder for all of these but the no mess one has 2 feeding holes.
It did cost a little at the start but has been lovely to see them all especially the tits and robins, wrens too. Nothing but a few stragglers when we first moved in but within weeks the numbers have grown weekly.
if only it worked for hedgehogs, Id love some!

Agree about the water gun - as recommended by good friend who is a cat lover (I'm not)

Also think about making your garden less tidy - birds seem to thrive in half neglected areas!

I've suspended several bird feeders on a wall on my patio off clematis wire.I initially suspended them in a hedge that the birds sit in but they weren't touched[probably wasn't safe enough].I have a meal worm feeder,a peanut cage for the tits and a bird seed with nigella seeds in for the finches.None of them are strong enough for the crows/ravens/magpies or wood pigeons that are menaces round here.The cats or squirrels can't get at them at the moment[i'm not sure that the squirrels will be able to climb the clematis in the summer though].After a couple of weeks i've had lots of birds-sometimes up to 5 at a time.I can sit at the kitchen table and watch them.I also have a large bird table at the front which gets raided by the squirrels and wood pigeons and crows and a few little birds.But we get through a massive amount of bird seed in this spot.
So in essence find the right spot,preferably where you can see them and is safe,use a mixture of seeds and meal worms and use the small wire baskets and plastic seed feeders that the bigger birds ,squirrels can't access.My local poundworld has really cheap bird feeders and seed/mealworms to buy[sadly i discovered this after spending 40 pounds in pets at home].

I shall invest in a water gun. I did use DS's water pistol last year but it wasn't powerful enough. Is it cruel to purposefully buy a water gun to discourage cats? I think a trip to poundland is in order. I have a squirrel problem too.

I don't aim at their heads,bums mainly so do my best not to be cruel, but it's lesser of2 evils.
The untidy bit is very true,we had a pile of hawthorn cuttings and were waiting for green bin to be emptied before refilling, they loved it, lots of them sitting in it.
We only have 1 squirrel and love him but know they can become a pest,only idea is to buy squirrel proof stuff but it's not cheap.